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

Changing direction

In this section, we will implement the logic to change the target's direction periodically. This will result in a target that moves back and forth between two points regularly, much like a shooting gallery target:

  1. Right-click in an empty space of the EventGraph to open the context menu and search for custom event. Select the Add Custom Event option. Rename the event ChangeDirection:

Figure 5.36 – Creating a custom event

  1. We are going to invert the Direction vector by multiplying it by -1:

Figure 5.37 – Invert the direction of a vector by multiplying it by -1

  1. Drag the Direction variable from the My Blueprint panel and drop it into the EventGraph. Choose the Get Direction option to create a node.
  2. Drag from the output pin of the Direction node and drop it into an empty space. Type an asterisk (*) in the search field and select the Multiply node.
  3. The previous step...