Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5 - Third Edition

By : Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell
5 (1)
Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5 - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine's Blueprint visual scripting system enables designers to script their games and programmers to create base elements that can be extended by designers. With this book, you'll explore all the features of the Blueprint Editor, along with expert tips, shortcuts, and best practices. The book guides you through using variables, macros, and functions, and helps you learn about object-oriented programming (OOP). You'll discover the Gameplay Framework and advance to learning how Blueprint Communication allows one Blueprint to access information from another Blueprint. Later chapters focus on building a fully functional game step by step. You'll start with a basic first-person shooter (FPS) template, and each chapter will build on the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You'll then progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to more complex systems such as user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. The book demonstrates how to use arrays, maps, enums, and vector operations and introduces the elements needed for VR game development. In the final chapters, you’ll learn how to implement procedural generation and create a product configurator. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to build a fully functional game and have the skills required to develop an entertaining experience for your audience.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: Blueprint Fundamentals
6
Part 2: Developing a Game
11
Part 3: Enhancing the Game
16
Part 4: Advanced Blueprints
21
Part 5: Extra Tools

Points and vectors

There is a structure in Unreal Engine named Vector, which has three variables of the float type: X, Y, and Z. Same as the concept of a vector in mathematics, this Vector can be used to represent a point (location) in 3D space or velocity (speed in a specified direction).

Let's first look at an example of using Vector as a point in 3D space. The following screenshot has two actors. One actor represents a character and the other represents a couch.

Figure 14.8 – Two actors on the level

The following screenshot shows the character's location. The Location variable of the Transform structure is of the Vector type (X, Y, and Z), and one Unreal unit equals 1.0 cm by default.

Figure 14.9 – The character's location

We can represent the character's location simply as (50.0, 0.0, 20.0). The couch's location is (450.0, 0.0, 20.0), which can be seen in the following screenshot:

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