Game Development Projects with Unreal Engine

Learn the tools and techniques of game design using a project-based approach with Unreal Engine 4 and C++

Key Features

• Kickstart your career or dive into a new hobby by exploring game design with UE4 and C++
• Learn the techniques needed to prototype and develop your own ideas
• Reinforce your skills with project-based learning by building a series of games from scratch

Book Description

Game development can be both a creatively fulfilling hobby and a full-time career path. It's also an exciting way to improve your C++ skills and apply them in engaging and challenging projects.

Game Development Projects with Unreal Engine starts with the basic skills you'll need to get started as a game developer. The fundamentals of game design will be explained clearly and demonstrated practically with realistic exercises. You'll then apply what you've learned with challenging activities.

The book starts with an introduction to the Unreal Editor and key concepts such as actors, blueprints, animations, inheritance, and player input. You'll then move on to the first of three projects: building a dodgeball game. In this project, you'll explore line traces, collisions, projectiles, user interface, and sound effects, combining these concepts to showcase your new skills.

You'll then move on to the second project; a side-scroller game, where you'll implement concepts including animation blending, enemy AI, spawning objects, and collectibles. The final project is an FPS game, where you will cover the key concepts behind creating a multiplayer environment.

By the end of this Unreal Engine 4 game development book, you'll have the confidence and knowledge to get started on your own creative UE4 projects and bring your ideas to life.

What you will learn

• Create a fully-functional third-person character and enemies
• Build navigation with keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and touch controls
• Program logic and game mechanics with collision and particle effects
• Explore AI for games with Blackboards and Behavior Trees
• Build character animations with Animation Blueprints and Montages
• Test your game for mobile devices using mobile preview
• Add polish to your game with visual and sound effects
• Master the fundamentals of game UI design using a heads-up display

Who this book is for

This book is suitable for anyone who wants to get started using UE4 for game development. It will also be useful for anyone who has used Unreal Engine before and wants to consolidate, improve and apply their skills. To grasp the concepts explained in this book better, you must have prior knowledge of the basics of C++ and understand variables, functions, classes, polymorphism, and pointers. For full compatibility with the IDE used in this book, a Windows system is recommended.

Table of Contents

1. Unreal Engine Introduction
2. Working with Unreal Engine
3. Character Class Components and Blueprint Setup
4. Player Input
5. Line Traces
6. Collision Objects
7. UE4 Utilities
8. User Interfaces
9. Audio-Visual Elements
10. Creating a SuperSideScroller Game
11. Blend Spaces 1D, Key Bindings, and State Machines
12. Animation Blending and Montages
13. Enemy Artificial Intelligence
14. Spawning the Player Projectile
15. Collectibles, Power-Ups, and Pickups
16. Multiplayer Basics
17. Remote Procedure Calls
18. Gameplay Framework Classes in Multiplayer