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

Event Dispatchers

An Event Dispatcher allows a Blueprint to inform other Blueprints when an Event happens. The Level Blueprint and other Blueprint classes can listen to this Event, and they may have different Actions that run when the Event is triggered.

We create Event Dispatchers in the My Blueprint panel. As an example, let's create a Blueprint named BP_Platform. When an Actor overlaps the BP_Platform Blueprint, it calls an Event Dispatcher called PlatformPressed. The Level Blueprint is listening for the PlatformPressed Event and spawns an explosion when this Event is triggered:

  1. Create or use an existing project based on the Third Person template with the starter content.
  2. Create a Blueprint and use Actor as the parent class. Name it BP_Platform and open it in the Blueprint Editor.
  3. Click the Add button in the Components panel and choose the Static Mesh Component. In the Details panel, choose the Shape_Cylinder Static Mesh and change the Z value of the Scale...