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

Casting in Blueprints

There is a node named Cast To that tries to convert reference variable types to new specified types. To understand casting, it is necessary to remember the concept of inheritance between classes, which we covered in Chapter 3, Actors and the Gameplay Framework.

The following diagram represents a Blueprint called BP_GameModeWithScore. Game Mode Base is the parent class of this Blueprint. Based on the inheritance concept, we can use a variable of the Game Mode Base object reference type to reference an instance of BP_GameModeWithScore. However, this variable is unable to access the variables and functions of a subclass like those defined in the BP_GameModeWithScore Blueprint, because a Game Mode Base reference only knows the variables and functions that are defined in the Game Mode Base class:

Figure 4.11 – BP_GameModeWithScore inherits from Game Mode Base

Therefore, if we have a Game Mode Base object reference, we can try to cast...