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

Connecting UI values to player variables

To allow our UI elements to pull data from our player variables, we need to revisit the HUD Widget Blueprint. To get our UI to update with player data, we will create a binding. Bindings give us the ability to tie variables or functions of a Blueprint to a Widget. Whenever the variable or function is updated, that change is reflected in the Widget automatically.

So, instead of manually updating both the player's health stats and our Widget every time the player takes damage (so that the health meter display changes), we can bind the meter to the PlayerHealth player variable. Then, only one value will need to be updated.

Creating bindings for health and stamina

To create the bindings of the PlayerHealth and PlayerStamina variables with the progress bars' UI, follow these steps:

  1. In the Content Browser, access the /Content/FirstPersonBP/UI folder and double-click on the HUD Widget Blueprint.
  2. In the HUD UMG Editor...