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

Blueprint best practices

In a project, you will deal with several Blueprint classes, and some of these Blueprint classes will be complex, with many nodes. The tips in this section will help you analyze your project and carry out some practices that will make your Blueprint classes more manageable. I separated these tips into two categories: Blueprint responsibilities and Blueprint complexities.

Blueprint responsibilities

When creating a Blueprint, you need to decide what its responsibilities will be. This refers to what it will do and what it will not do. You need to make the Blueprint as independent as possible. A Blueprint must be responsible for its internal state.

To illustrate the concept of Blueprint responsibilities, let's work with a simple example created for teaching purposes. In a game, the player is represented by the FirstPersonCharacter Blueprint. If the player collides with an enemy Blueprint, then the player will die, and an explosion effect will be spawned...