Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine

The faster way to build games using UE4 Blueprints, 2nd Edition

Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789348422
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in C++
• Index: Computer Science

Publisher's note: This edition from 2019 is based on Unreal Engine 4 and does not make use of the most recent Unreal Engine features. A new third edition, updated for Unreal Engine 5 blueprints including new topics, such as implementing procedural generation and creating a product configurator, has now been published.

Key Features

• Design a fully functional game in UE4 without writing a single line of code
• Implement visual scripting to develop gameplay mechanics, UI, visual effects, VR and artificial intelligence
• Deploy your game on multiple platforms and share it with the world

Book Description

Blueprints is the visual scripting system in Unreal Engine that enables programmers to create baseline systems and can be extended by designers.

This book helps you explore all the features of the Blueprint Editor and guides you through using Variables, Macros, and Functions. You'll also learn about object-oriented programming (OOP) and discover the Gameplay Framework. In addition to this, you'll learn how Blueprint Communication allows one Blueprint to access information from another Blueprint. Later chapters will focus on building a fully functional game using a step-by-step approach. 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 skills you will develop using Blueprints can also be employed in other gaming genres. In the concluding chapters, the book demonstrates how to use arrays, maps, enums, and vector operations. Finally, you'll learn how to build a basic VR game.

By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to build a fully functional game and will have the skills required to develop an entertaining experience for your audience.

What you will learn

• Understand programming concepts in Blueprints
• Create prototypes and iterate new game mechanics rapidly
• Build user interface elements and interactive menus
• Use advanced Blueprint nodes to manage the complexity of a game
• Explore all the features of the Blueprint editor, such as the Components tab, Viewport, and Event Graph
• Get to grips with object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts and explore the Gameplay Framework
• Learn Virtual Reality development with UE Blueprint

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who is interested in developing games or applications with UE4. Although basic knowledge of Windows OS is required, experience in programming or UE4 is not necessary.

Section 1: Blueprint Fundamentals

This section will explore the basic building blocks of Blueprints. You will gain a solid understanding of how Blueprints work and will be able to start creating your own games.

This section includes the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Exploring the Blueprint Editor
• Chapter 2, Programming with Blueprints
• Chapter 3, Actors and the Gameplay Framework
• Chapter 4, Understanding Blueprint Communication

Exploring the Blueprint Editor

Welcome to the amazing world of game development with Unreal Engine 4. In this book, we will learn about how to develop games in Unreal Engine using the Blueprints Visual Scripting language, which was created by Epic Games for Unreal Engine 4.

The first step that is needed before we can learn about Blueprints is to prepare our development environment. Unreal Engine is free to download. We will learn about how to install Unreal Engine 4 and create a new project. After that, we will learn about some of the basic concepts of Blueprints and explore each panel of the Blueprint Editor.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Installing Unreal Engine
• New projects and templates
• Blueprints Visual Scripting
• The Blueprint Editor interface
• Adding Components to a Blueprint

Installing Unreal Engine

To use Unreal Engine, you must first install Epic Games Launcher:

1. Access the website (https://www.unrealengine.com)
2. Register and download Epic Games Launcher
3. Install and start the launcher
4. Click the Unreal Engine tab on the left-hand side
5. Click on the Library tab that appears at the top of the screen
   
6. Click the + button next to ENGINE VERSIONS to add a version of Unreal Engine to the launcher

7. Click the Install button
8. Click the Launch button to start an already installed version:

It is possible to keep multiple versions of Unreal Engine. This book uses version 4.20.3, but the examples were tested in version 4.22.0 and worked well. Blueprint is already a stable technology. The examples created in this book should work without problems in later versions.

Creating new projects and using templates

After starting up Unreal Engine Editor, a two-tab window will appear. The Projects tab is used to open existing projects and the New Project tab is used to create a new project, as shown in the following screenshot. The New Project tab has templates that can be used for the creation of a project. There are templates made with Blueprint and templates made with the C++ programming language. In this book, we will only use Blueprint templates:

At the bottom of the preceding screenshot, there are three boxes with project configuration options. These options can be modified later in the project, and they are as follows:

• Target hardware: Desktop / Console or mobile/tablet
• Graphical level: Maximum Quality or scalable 3D/2D
• Starter content: With or without Starter Content

The starter content is a content pack with simple meshes, materials, and particle effects. The examples in this book assume that the starter content is being used.

The following are brief descriptions of each template:

• First Person: For games with a first-person perspective
• Flying: Contains a simple spaceship controlled by the player
• Handheld AR: For augmented reality applications
• nDisplay: For multi-display projects such as caves
• Puzzle: For puzzle games using a mouse or touchscreen
• Rolling: Contains a physics-based rolling ball controlled by the player
• Side Scroller: For 3D side-scroller games
• 2D Side Scroller: For side-scroller games with 2D sprites
• Third Person: Contains a playable character with a camera that follows it
• Top Down: Contains a character controlled by a mouse with a camera at a great distance above it
• Twin Stick Shooter: Shows how to map the input to control movement and firing independently
• Vehicle: Contains a simp...