Book Image

Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

By : Muhammad A.Moniem
Book Image

Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

By: Muhammad A.Moniem

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine 4 has garnered a lot of attention in the gaming world because of its new and improved graphics and rendering engine, the physics simulator, particle generator, and more. This book is the ideal guide to help you leverage all these features to create state-of-the-art games that capture the eye of your audience. Inside we’ll explain advanced shaders and effects techniques and how you can implement them in your games. You’ll create custom lighting effects, use the physics simulator to add that extra edge to your games, and create customized game environments that look visually stunning using the rendering technique. You’ll find out how to use the new rendering engine efficiently, add amazing post-processing effects, and use data tables to create data-driven gameplay that is engaging and exciting. By the end of this book, you will be able to create professional games with stunning graphics using Unreal Engine 4!
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Cooking the content


Previously when we discussed the packaging process, I've mentioned that it happens in different phases, and one of those phases is called cooking the content. When it comes to packaging a game, Unreal is very smart and they thinks about how to make the best of your time as a developer.

Let's assume that you have made a huge game, about 10 GB in size. What if you have changed a single texture? Do you have to build the whole thing in order to test it? Or do you have to build the whole thing in order to publish it?

Unreal does a good separation between the game logic and its content, and as long as you want to rebuild the content itself, you can always do it by cooking. Content such as textures or sound files always have their own file formats, like PNG, JPG, WAV, or MP3, but when you package the game, you never find those files, as the engine works on converting those files to more encrypted and engine-friendly formats that match the targeted platforms. And that's called...