Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

Table of Contents

Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewer

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Why subscribe?

Preface

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. Preparing for a Big Project

Overview of the game

Creating a C++ project

The project settings

The editor settings

Mapping the inputs

Migrating assets

Using MarketPlace assets

Retargeting animations

Summary

2. Setting Up Your Warrior

The code project

Creating the C++ class

Editing and adding code

The Gladiator header (.h) file

The Gladiator source (.cpp) file

The includes

The constructor

BeginPlay

SetupPlayerInputComponent

Jump

StopJumping

OnAttack

OnPostAttack

OnChangeWeapon

TurnAtRate

LookUpAtRate

OnSetPlayerController

OnChangeHealthByAmount

MoveForward

MoveRight

Compiling the code

Animation assets

Adding sockets to the skeleton

Creating the blend space

The animation blueprint

Building the blueprint

Adding the blueprint to the GameMode

Summary

3. Designing Your Playground

The art of level design

Placing assets into the world

Using brushes to enhance level design

Adding lights to the level

Building lightmaps for a level

Creating water surfaces

Player Start

The navigation mesh

Summary

4. The Road to Thinkable AI

The overall idea

The AI assets

Behavior Tree

BTTask

BTService

Blackboard

The animation blueprint

Building the C++ logic

EnemyAIController

EnemyAIController.h

EnemyAIController.cpp

Enemy

Enemy.h

Enemy.cpp

Building the behavior tree

Creating the blueprint

Adding notifies

What else?

Summary

5. Adding Collectables

The idea behind collectables

The base class

PickupBase.h

PickupBase.cpp

The coin class

CoinPickup.h

CoinPickup.cpp

Making it collectable

Building the blueprint

Going forward

Summary

6. The Magic of Particles

The particles editor

Toolbar

The viewport panel

The emitters panel

The details panel

Particle system

Thumbnail

LOD

Bounds

Delay

Macro UV

Occlusion

Materials

The particle emitter

Particle

Cascade

Particle modules

Cascade

Curve Editor

Interpolation modes

Organizing curves

Adding curves to the graph

Removing curves from the graph

Organizing the curve editor with tabs

Spawning particles

Changing parameters at runtime

Summary

7. Enhancing the Visual Quality

The lightmass

The Swarm Agent

The ambient occlusion

AO settings

Lightmass settings

World Settings

Importance volume settings

The post process project settings

The post process volume

The properties

The available effects

Reflection Capture

Reflection Capture actors

The fog effects

Atmospheric Fog

Adding it

Exponential Height Fog

Adding it

Summary

8. Cinematics and In-Game Cutscenes

Matinee actor (cinematic actor)

Matinee Editor

Groups

Tracks

Bellz cinematic

The animated fog

Color

Animating exponential height fog

Saving the cinematic as video

Summary

9. Implementing the Game UI

UMG as Unreal's UI system

The game UI widget

UMG Designer

The Toggle mode

Palette

The hierarchy

Animations

Canvas

The Details panel

Constructing the UI

Adding animations to the UI

Connecting the UI with the game logic

What else?

Summary

10. Save the Game Progress

Building the SaveGame class

Saving and loading game data in C++

The *.sav file

Saving and loading game data in blueprints

Summary

11. Controlling Gameplay via Data Tables

Data table sheets

Creating the data table asset

Creating a data structure

Blueprint data structure

C++ data structure

GameDataTables.h

GameDataTables.cpp

Reading from data tables

Reading data through C++

Reading through blueprints

Summary

12. Ear Candy

Importing audio files

Sound assets

Dialogue Voice

Dialogue Wave

Media sound wave

Reverb effect

Sound attenuation

Sound Class

Sound cue

Sound mixes

Sound cue editor

Audio volumes

Playing sound effects

Summary

13. Profiling the Game Performance

The blueprint debugger

The Collision Analyzer

The console

The FPS charts

The view modes and visualizers

The GPU visualizer

The Device Manager

Device Profiles

Summary

14. Packaging the Game

Preparing the project for building

Packaging settings

Maps & Modes settings

Description settings

Platform settings

Adding different screens

Packaging the game

Cooking the content

Project Launcher and DLCs

Packaging a release

Packaging a patch or DLC

Summary

Index

Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: June 2016

Production reference: 1240616

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78588-356-9

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Credits

Author

Muhammad A.Moniem

Reviewer

Moritz Wundke

Commissioning Editor

Amarabha Banerjee

Acquisition Editor

Larissa Pinto

Content Development Editor

Divij Kotian

Technical Editor

Mrunal M. Chavan

Anushree Arun Tendulkar

Copy Editor

Safis Editing

Project Coordinator

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Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

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Production Coordinator

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Cover Work

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About the Author

Muhammad A.Moniem started in the industry at a very early age. He taught himself everything related to the game development process even before he joined college. After becoming a software engineer, he started to teach himself the art of game design and game art techniques. As a self-taught person, he was able to find his way into the industry very easily, which led him to be hired for big, medium, and small companies, titles, and teams.

Throughout his career, he has been able to contribute as a full-time or part-time employee or freelancer on games for a wide range of platforms, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, PS4, Xbox One, and OUYA. He has also worked with technologies such as VR, AR, and Kinect. Muhammad started using Unreal Engine 3 in 2007, moved to Unreal Engine 4 when it became available to the public in 2014, and has used UDK for some indie games.

Eventually, he was able to establish his own one-person game company/team as a part-time independent developer. A lot of his indie games have received recognition or have been finalists at international indie game events, such as IGF, Indie Showcase, IGC, and Tokyo Game Show. You can get in touch via twitter @_mamoniem

He has also worked on Learning Unreal® Engine iOS Game Development, Packt Publishing, which is available at https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/learning-unreal-engine-ios-game-development, and Unreal Engine Lighting and Rendering Essentials, which is available at https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/unreal-engine-lighting-and-rendering-essentials.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all those people who helped me get this book to your hands. A special mention for all the team members at Epic Games for their hard work on Unreal Engine and for the great decision of making the engine for everyone with the source code for free.

I would like to thank all the people at Packt Publishing who worked on this book. They helped me a lot and were patient when I missed the schedule because of my personal obligations. Thanks for helping me and teaching me once again about how to write a book.

I want to express my pleasure of having a lovely wife and wonderful kids in my life. You are my gift. You are a very supportive family, thanks Loly for giving me the best environment to write one more book, and thanks for believing in all my personal projects since you came to my life. You always working too hard for this family! Thanks Joe, Mary, and Oni for being noisy, sweet, and lovely kids all the way. You are a delight to my eyes!!

Yunus, thanks for being the new hope, this book for you…Only for you buddy!

Father and mother, thanks for raising me the way you did and teaching me how to self-learn, it helped me a lot to learn and pass the knowledge to others.

Last but not least, all my friends and the good people I met around the world, you definitely helped me somehow, at least with your trust and belief. Even if you were an online friend, I'm sure I still owe you something…Thank you everyone.

Dear God, thanks for being Muhammad, I like being this person. And thanks for everything I've achieved, please keep those wonderful people around me

Alhamdulillah...It's the last line to write…!

About the Reviewer

Moritz Wundke, also known as Moss, started programming at the age of 12 and he always knew that he would write games for a living. After finishing his Bachelor in computer science at the University at the Balearic Islands in 2007 he started working with the Unreal Engine 3 at Tragnarion Studios. He left the studio in 2014 and joined the Spanish social game developer PlaySpace working on over then titles and shipping their games to more than 23 million players. In his career he has been able to work with nearly all major platforms, such as the NDS, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Android, iOS, Windows and Mac. Apart from his day job, Moritz is an official community moderator of the Unreal Engine community, Engine Contributor and freelance Unreal Engine consultant. He has worked for companies such as Deep Silver on Dead Island 2 and Red Goddess: Inner World for Yanim Studios.

I would like to thank my wife Cecilia for being so patient while I worked late nights and not throwing away my rig and even myself with it.

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Preface

This book is an in-depth guide through the process of creating a high quality game from scratch, starting from importing and implementing assets and ending up with packaging the game for release and making patches, with all the steps in-between. The main aim of this book is to make a game that looks awesome, and cover advanced stuff using C++ extensively to build the logic for the game.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Preparing for a Big Project, shows how to create a new project, set it up, edit its settings and making it ready to rock. Also, the advanced assets pipeline will be discussed so that readers can bring in their models into Unreal Engine.

Chapter 2, Setting Up Your Warrior, explains how to make the game's hero! We will be building a character controller mapped to the keyboard and mouse using C++. You will learn how to create the logic for the character, switch weapons, attack, and move with C++. The class will be converted to blueprints. You will learn how to add in animations and physics to make it move using C++.

Chapter 3, Designing Your Playground, shows how to build the game world! We will be using the editor tools and brushes to build a level, apply lighting and materials to it, and make it ready for the first round of testing the game's logic.

Chapter 4, The Road to Thinkable AI, shows how to build the game's creatures AI, which are going to detect the player and attack them based on distance, sight, and/or the noise made by the player. All scripting will be done in C++. Animations will be taken care of by the editor and some other cool options.

Chapter 5, Adding Collectables, spices things up with some collectables! We will learn about some of the triggering and overlapping events, more about adding new classes, and adding some physics to the collectable items.

Chapter 6, The Magic of Particles, shows how to add in some particles to complete the coolness! We use cascade to build particles for the enemies, weapons, and collectables, and learn to tie these to the game logic.

Chapter 7, Enhancing the Visual Quality, shows how to make the game better looking by focusing on the most important rendering features of the engine, to make things pretty. You will learn to bake light maps.

Chapter 8, Cinematics and In-Game Cutscenes, covers the tools required to build an in-game cut-scene for a better gameplay experience and story direction.

Chapter 9, Implementing the Game UI, shows how to add a solid UI to the game is what will get the players going Hell Yeah! Make use of Unreal Motion Graphics (UMG) to tinker with different screen sizes and build a superb looking UI for your game.

Chapter 10, Save the Game Progress, shows how to write a save and load function in order to save the progress in order to be able to resume the game later.

Chapter 11, Controlling Gameplay via Data Tables, shows how to use data tables to drive the gameplay values for the enemies and so on (it is widely used in tons of game genres, such as Tower Defense, RPG, Roguelike, RTS and so on)

Chapter 12, Ear Candy, shows how to add audio experience to the gameplay. You will learn how to cue the audio and use the clips in the scenes.

Chapter 13, Profiling the Game Performance, masters the various editor debugging and profiling tools to define the performance issues.

Chapter 14, Packaging the Game, you will learn how to make an executable of the game for release. We also add a splash screen to show you're the boss, cook the game, and then use the project launcher to release it.

What you need for this book

In order to be able to follow along with this book, you need to have a good foundation of C++, as the book mostly focuses on building an Unreal game using C++. You also need to have Unreal Engine installed and Visual Studio, and both be available for free.

If you are on a Mac or Linux, you'll definitely need another IDE to use with Unreal Engine, as Visual Studio is not supported on those platforms, but you'll still be able to go with the book smoothly.

Good game design and level design skills are great and will help, but they are not essential!

Who this book is for

This book is for game developers who have basic knowledge of Unreal Engine and also have basic C++ scripting knowledge. This is ideal for those who want to take the leap from a casual game developer to a full-fledged professional game developer with Unreal Engine 4.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: The game we are going to create during the course of this book is called Bellz.

A block of code is set as follows:

UCLASS(config = Game)

class AGladiator : public ACharacter

{

  GENERATED_BODY()

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: Otherwise inside the launcher, just hit the Launch button of the editor version you want.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Chapter 1. Preparing for a Big Project

When you are about to create a C++ game using Unreal Engine, it means that you are going to create a big project. The two specific reasons for such a choice are: you are a core programmer and not familiar with the blueprints concept, or you want the game to run faster. Either way, you are about to get the right start here.

It's been said several times that C++-based games are quite a bit faster (10 times faster) than games made with blueprints. Although that was hearsay on the Unreal forums, the fact is that it is partly true. All games made with Unreal are equal in performance to those relying on the same technology and engine code base. However, when things get complex, it gets a little slower, and that speed difference is not as noticeable; it is something measured in milliseconds.

Starting a C++ project with Unreal is quite different, as it is not something that can be done inside the editor anymore. You'll need all the help of the IDE and, based on your platform, the setup will be different. My setup currently while writing this book is Windows 10, Unreal 4.10 and Visual Studio 2015. Apart from Google Documents, that's all that I need to create my data tables, and that's all that is needed!

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

Start a new Unreal Engine C++ project from scratch

Set the project and editor settings to match your needs

Map any input device to match your game design

Import and export assets in and out of the Unreal Editor

Migrate assets between the different Unreal projects

Retarget animations between the different skeletons

Add the required modules and header files to the project code

Overview of the game

The game we are going to create during the course of this book is called Bellz; it's definitely a word without a meaning. Its name came from the Hell Bells, as we are planning to put some unique bells around the maps!

The game is built with C++. While it is a C++ project, about 5% consists of necessary blueprints and other different graphs!

Bellz is a third-person RPG, where you have a mission loaded from Excel tables, weapons to use with different attributes, and evil enemies to escape from or to hunt. It looks simple, and the fact is, it is, but it holds all the needed elements to create a visually appealing AAA game. So that we stay on the same page, this game will take you step by step through the processes of:

Starting a C++ project based on a blank template.

Creating a player controller.

Building enemies, behavior trees, and blackboards.

Creating animation graphs and retargeting different animations.

Loading game-required data from the design data tables.

Adding camera animations and cut scenes to the game.

Adding audio effects and visual effects to the game.

Creating and building appealing maps.

Optimizing the game as much as possible.

Debugging the game performance.

Packaging the game to players.

The following is a screenshot of the final game:

Creating a C++ project

With the goals set, let's get started by launching the Unreal launcher. If you already have an Unreal Editor instance running, that is not a problem; just choose to make a new project from within the File menu and that will launch the proper screen of the launcher. Otherwise inside the launcher, just hit the Launch button of the editor version you want. After a few seconds of loading, the editor project selection window will appear. Do the following:

Switch to the New Project tab.

Under New Project, switch to the C++ subtab.

Choose a Basic Code project type.

Set the target to Desktop/Console as that's our target!

Set the quality to Maximum Quality.

Remove the starter content, it will not be useful at all.

Give your project a name, but make sure to remember that name, as a lot of the code will be using it. Mine is called Bellz. I would say go ahead and name your project with the same name so you can easily follow along with the tutorial without any confusion or naming conflicts.

Finally hit Create Project!

If that was your first time creating a code project (which I guess is the case for the book's target audience), the project will take quite a time, it is not going to appear within a second like the other blueprint-based projects.

A C++-based project needs to copy some header files, build a Visual Studio solution/project (or Xcode if you are running on