Preface

Welcome, and thank you for choosing to pick up the Unreal Engine 5 Game Development with C++ Scripting book! This comprehensive book is designed to assist game developers and students in advancing their professional skills in C++ programming for Unreal Engine game development.

Unreal Engine is a powerful and versatile game engine widely used in both the gaming and movie-making industries. Possessing advanced and professional Unreal Engine development skills enables individuals to adapt more effectively to the demands of a career in game development, opening a multitude of opportunities for them.

When developing with Unreal Engine, you have the option to use either one or both of two available programming tools:

• Blueprint provides a user-friendly interface suitable for non-programmer developers
• C++ is predominantly employed by software engineers, providing a more robust and flexible approach to game development

As an Unreal Engine developer, you may have a genuine interest in understanding C++ and how it integrates with the engine, even if you don’t identify as a software engineer or aspire to become one.

This book is designed to assist you in expanding your knowledge and skills by guiding you through the necessary steps to create a fully fledged game, covering essential aspects of game development. It aims to smoothen the learning curve, allowing for a more seamless and efficient grasp of the concepts presented. The carefully organized topics eliminate the need for random searching and prevent wasted time on unrelated readings, enabling you to focus on the relevant information. Moreover, this book serves as a valuable reference manual, offering a comprehensive resource that can be revisited and utilized for further study.

Who this book is for

It is important to note that this book does not serve as a beginner’s guide to using Unreal Engine. Prior to exploring its contents, you should already possess a basic understanding of, and practical experience with, Unreal Engine and Blueprint. This prerequisite ensures that you have a solid foundation of knowledge to fully leverage the material covered in this book, maximizing your learning experience.

This book caters to a diverse range of readers:

• Non-engineer game developers, such as game designers and artists who aspire to learn and comprehend C++ in the context of Unreal Engine development
• Software engineers who may lack prior experience in Unreal Engine C++ programming but wish to quickly acquire the necessary skills for their next project or job
• Students who are interested in learning and digging into Unreal C++ programming for their study or personal projects
• Individuals with a keen interest in game development using Unreal Engine will benefit from the comprehensive knowledge presented within these pages

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Creating Your First Unreal C++ Game, guides you quickly through creating a new C++ game project based on the Shooter template in Unreal. This chapter also introduces how to convert an existing Blueprint game project into a C++ game project.

Chapter 2, Editing C++ Code in Visual Studio, provides basic information on how to use the powerful integrated development environment Microsoft Visual Studio to edit C++ code. This chapter not only presents the editing skills needed but also demonstrates how to create a calculator application in C++.

Chapter 3, Learning C++ and Object-Oriented Programming, goes deeper into C++ programming based on the previous chapter’s calculator project. This chapter covers the fundamental C++ syntax, data types, flow control, and so on. C++ object-oriented programming is also introduced in this chapter.

Chapter 4, Investigating the Shooter Game’s Generated Project and C++ Code, explores the details of the generated shooter game project, including the project files’ structure and the source files. In this chapter, the C++ code lines are briefly explained, so that you gain an overall understanding of how C++ code works.

Chapter 5, Learning How to Use the UE Gameplay Framework Base Classes, instructs you on how to create our new top-down game project, Pangaea. You will be guided on how to create the game actors, DefenseTower, for instance, and the game character, PlayerAvatar classes, for instance, as well as defining actor properties and functions in C++.

Chapter 6, Creating Game Actors, provides steps to write code and set up the main character for the Pangaea game. It includes setting up the character, creating the animation instance, defining the state machine, and synchronizing the animations.

Chapter 7, Controlling Characters, provides methods of controlling game characters. This includes configuring the input map, handling player input, and effectively processing the reactions of the player character. Additionally, you will be introduced to the AI controller and the navigation system for controlling non-player characters.

Chapter 8, Handling Collisions, discusses the engine’s collision system and its configurations for game interactions. To handle collision events – attack hits and projectile hits, for example – you will learn how to configure actor colliders and triggers. Using ray casts to check whether a projectile hits the target is also introduced in this chapter.

Chapter 9, Improving C++ Code Quality, presents how to employ software engineering practices during code refactoring and refinement. This chapter implements class generalization, caching, and pooling methods to improve the game code’s quality and performance.

Chapter 10, Making Pangaea a Network Multiplayer Game, starts by introducing the fundamental concepts related to multiplayer games, including servers, clients, and multiplayer modes. You will be guided step by step through converting the single-player Pangaea game into a multiplayer game.

Chapter 11, Controlling the Game Flow, intends to make Pangaea a complete multiplayer game, which has a main menu as the lobby, so that players can decide whether they want to start a host or join a game session. C++ and Blueprint scripting skills for user interface operations are also revealed in this chapter.

Chapter 12, Polishing and Packaging the Game, provides resources, methods, and suggestions on how to polish games from both visual experience and product quality aspects. This chapter also provides steps for configuring and packaging the Pangaea project to be an executable standalone game for distribution.

To get the most out of this book

You will need to have knowledge and experience in using Unreal Engine. Basic Blueprint scripting knowledge is also required prior to reading this book.

If you conduct experiments with the samples on systems other than Microsoft Windows, such as macOS, please keep in mind that there may be user interface and configuration differences that may not be addressed in this book.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Unreal-Engine-5-Game-Development-with-C-Scripting. If there’s an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "The AProjectile class can be...