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

Exploring the other Gameplay Framework classes

One of the first steps when creating a new Blueprint is choosing the parent class that will be used as a template. The following screenshot shows the panel that is displayed for choosing the parent class. The classes that are displayed on the buttons are known as Common Classes and are part of the Gameplay Framework. To use another class as the parent class, expand the All Classes category and search for your desired class:

Figure 3.23 – Choosing the parent class

The following diagram shows the hierarchy of Common Classes. In Unreal Engine, there is a parent class called Object. Classes inherit the characteristics of the class above it, which is their parent class. Based on the inheritance concept of OOP, we can state that an instance of the Character class is of type Character, type Pawn, and type Actor:

Figure 3.24 – Hierarchy of Common Classes

By analyzing this hierarchy...