Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4

William Sherif

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781784396572
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Objektorientierte Programmierung

Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4

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Table of Contents

Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more

Why subscribe?

Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What is a game engine anyway?

What will using UE4 cost me?

Why don't I just program my own engine and save the 5 percent?

A game's overview – the Play-Reward-Growth loop

Monetization

Why C++

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Coding with C++

Setting up our project

Using Microsoft Visual C++ on Windows

Using XCode on a Mac

Creating your first C++ program

Semicolons

Handling errors

Warnings

What is building and compiling?

Scripting

Exercise – ASCII art

Summary

2. Variables and Memory

Variables

Declaring variables – touching the silicon

Reading and writing to your reserved spot in memory

Numbers are everything

More on variables

Math in C++

Exercises

Generalized variable syntax

Primitive types

Object types

Exercise – Player

Solution

Pointers

What can pointers do?

Address of operator &

The Null pointers

cin

printf()

Exercise

Solution

Summary

3. If, Else, and Switch

Branching

Controlling the flow of your program

The == operator

Coding if statements

Coding else statements

Testing for inequalities using other comparison operators (>, >=, <, <=, and !=)

Using logical operators

The Not (!) operator

Exercises

Solution

The And (&&) operator

The Or (||) operator

Our first example with Unreal Engine

Exercise

Solution

Branching code in more than two ways

The else if statement

Exercise

Solution

The switch statement

Switch versus if

Exercise

Solution

Summary

4. Looping

The while loop

Infinite loops

Exercises

Solutions

The do/while loop

The for loop

Exercises

Solutions

Looping with Unreal Engine

Summary

5. Functions and Macros

Functions

An example of a <cmath> library function – sqrt()

Writing our own functions

A sample program trace

Exercise

Solution

Functions with arguments

Functions that return values

Exercises

Solutions

Variables, revisited

Global variables

Local variables

The scope of a variable

Static local variables

Const variables

Function prototypes

.h and .cpp files

prototypes.h contains

funcs.cpp contains

main.cpp contains

Extern variables

Macros

Advice – try to use const variables where possible

Macros with arguments

Advice – use inline functions instead of macros with arguments

Summary

6. Objects, Classes, and Inheritance

struct objects

Member functions

The this keyword

Strings are objects?

Invoking a member function

Exercises

Solutions

Privates and encapsulation

Some people like it public

class versus struct

Getters and setters

Getters

Setters

But what's the point of get/set operations?

Constructors and destructors

Class inheritance

Derived classes

Syntax of inheritance

What does inheritance do?

is-a relationship

protected variables

Virtual functions

Purely virtual functions (and abstract classes)

Multiple inheritance

private inheritance

Putting your classes into headers

.h and .cpp

Exercise

Summary

7. Dynamic Memory Allocation

Dynamic memory allocation

The delete keyword

Memory leaks

Regular arrays

The array syntax

Exercise

Solutions

C++ style dynamic size arrays (new[] and delete[])

Dynamic C-style arrays

Summary

8. Actors and Pawns

Actors versus pawns

Creating a world to put your actors in

The UE4 editor

Editor controls

Play mode controls

Adding objects to the scene

Starting from scratch

Adding light sources

Collision volumes

Adding collision detection for the objects editor

Adding an actor to the scene

Creating a player entity

Inheriting from UE4 GameFramework classes

Associating a model with the Avatar class

Downloading free models

Loading the mesh

Creating a blueprint from our C++ class

Writing C++ code that controls the game's character

Making the player an instance of the Avatar class

Setting up controller inputs

Exercise

Solution

Yaw and pitch

Creating non-player character entities

Displaying a quote from each NPC dialog box

Displaying messages on the HUD

Using TArray<Message>

Exercise

Solution

Triggering an event when it is near an NPC

Make the NPC display something to the HUD when something is nearby

Exercises

Solutions

Summary

9. Templates and Commonly Used Containers

Debugging the output in UE4

UE4's TArray<T>

An example that uses TArray<T>

Iterating a TArray

...