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

Procedural generation with the Construction Script

Procedural generation is a method of creating level content using scripts instead of manually. It can be used to avoid repetitive tasks in level editing. Our main tool to make procedural generation in Blueprints is the Construction Script.

We saw how to use the Construction Script in Chapter 3, Object-Oriented Programming and the Gameplay Framework, to allow a Level Designer to change the Static Mesh of a Blueprint in the Level Editor.

A useful component for procedural generation is the Instanced Static Mesh component. This component is optimized to render multiple copies of the same mesh in the level.

Note

There is also the Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh component, which is similar to Instanced Static Mesh but is useful when the mesh has a Level of Detail (LOD).

We set the Static Mesh in the component and use the Add Instance function to add an instance on the level using Instance Transform:

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