In the previous chapter, we went through the basics of the Epic Games Launcher, along with Unreal Editor fundamentals. We saw how to work with Objects and what Blueprints are on a basic level, in addition to exploring the First Person Template. In this chapter, we'll be building upon those fundamentals by exploring the Third Person Template and working with Input and Animations.

Game development can be done in a wide variety of languages, such as C, C++, Java, C#, and even Python. While each language has pros and cons, we will be using C++ throughout this book as it is the primary programming language used within the Unreal Engine.

In this chapter, we will get you up to speed on how to create a C++ project and basic level debugging in UE4. It is very important to be able to debug code as it helps the developer while dealing with bugs. The tools provided come in very handy and are essential for any Unreal Engine developer.

Following this, we will get up close...

At the start of every project, you might want to start with any of the templates provided by Epic (which contain ready-to-execute basic code) and build on top of that. Most/some of the time, you might need to set up a blank or an empty project that you can mold and sculpt to your requirements. We'll learn how to do that in the following exercise.

Exercise 2.01: Creating an Empty C++ Project

In this exercise, you will learn how to create an empty C++ project from the template provided by Epic. This will serve as the foundation for many of your future C++ projects.

The following steps will help you complete this exercise:

1. Launch Unreal Engine 4.24 from the Epic Games Launcher.
2. Click on the Games section and click Next.
3. Make sure the Blank project template is selected and click Next.
4. Click the Blueprint section dropdown and select C++.

   Note

   Make sure the project folder and project name are specified...

In your project directory (E:/UnrealProjects/MyBlankProj in our case), you will observe a Content folder. This is the primary folder that your project uses for different types of assets and project-relevant data (including Blueprints). The C++ code goes into the Source folder in your project. Please note that the best practice is to create new C++ code files directly through the Unreal Editor as this simplifies the process and results in fewer errors.

There are many different strategies you can use to organize the data inside your Content folder. The most basic and easy-to-understand is using folder names to depict the type of content inside. Therefore, a Content folder directory structure may resemble the example at https://packt.live/3lCVFkR. In this example, you can see that each file is categorically placed under the name of the folder representing its type on the first level, with the following levels further grouping it into meaningful...

Every C++ project in Unreal Engine has a Visual Studio solution. This, in turn, drives all the code and provides developers with the ability to set up execution logic and debug code in its running state.

Solution Analysis

The Visual Studio solution (.sln) file that's produced inside the project directory contains the entire project and any associated code that's been added to it.

Let's have a look at the files present in Visual Studio. Double-click the .sln file to open it within Visual Studio.

In Solution Explorer, you will see two projects called Engine and Games.

The Engine Project

At the base level, Unreal Engine itself is a Visual Studio project and has its own solution file. This contains all the code and third-party integrations that work together in Unreal Engine. All the code within this project is called the "source" code.

The Engine project consists of the external dependencies, configurations...

Unreal Engine gives users the ability to import a wide range of file types for users to customize their projects. There are several import options that developers can tweak and play around with to match their required settings.

Some common file types that game developers often import are FBX for scenes, meshes, animations (exported from Maya and other similar software), movie files, images (mostly for the user interface), textures, sounds, data in CSV files, and fonts. These files may be obtained from the Epic Marketplace or any other means (such as the internet) and used within the project.

Assets can be imported by dragging and dropping them into the Content folder, or by clicking the Import button in the Content Browser.

Now let's tackle an exercise where we'll learn how to import FBX files and see how this is done.

Exercise 2.03: Importing a Character FBX File

This exercise will focus on importing a 3D model from an FBX file...

Consider a situation where you want to be able to pause your game. All the logic and implementation required to be able to pause the game will be placed inside a single class. This class will be responsible for handling the game flow when a player enters the game. The game flow can be any action or a set of actions occurring in the game. For example, game pause, play, and restart are considered simple game flow actions. Similarly, in the case of a multiplayer game, we require all the network-related gameplay logic to be placed together. This is exactly what the Game Mode class is there for. 

Game Mode is a class that drives the game logic and imposes game-related rules on players. It essentially contains information about the current game being played, including gameplay variables and events, which are mentioned later on in this chapter. Game Mode can hold all the managers of the gameplay objects, it's a singleton class, and is directly accessible...

Levels, in gaming, are a section or a part of a game. Since many games are quite large, they are broken down into different levels. A level of interest is loaded into the game for the player to play, and then when they are done with that, another level may be loaded in (while the current one will be loaded out) so that the player can proceed. To complete a game, a player usually needs to complete a set of specific tasks to move on to the next level, eventually completing the game.

A Game Mode can be directly applied to the level. The level, upon loading, will use the assigned Game Mode class to handle all logic and gameplay for that particular level and override the game mode of the project for this level. This can be applied using the World Settings tab after opening a level.

A Level Blueprint is a blueprint that runs with the level, but cannot be accessed outside the scope of the level. Game Mode can be accessed in any blueprint (including the level blueprint) by...

Animation is essential for adding life and richness to a game. Superb animations are one of the major factors that differentiate average games from the good and the great from the best. Visual fidelity is what keeps gamers excited and immersed in games, and hence animations are a core part of all games and experiences created in Unreal Engine.

Note

This chapter seeks to cover animation basics. A more in-depth approach to animation will be taken in Chapter 13, Blend Spaces 1D, Key Bindings, and State Machines.

Animation Blueprints

An Animation Blueprint is a specific kind of blueprint that allows you to control the animation of a Skeletal Mesh. It provides users with a graph specifically for animation-related tasks. Here, you can define the logic for computing the poses of a skeleton.

Note

A Skeletal Mesh is a skeleton-based mesh that has bones, all of which come together to give form to the mesh, whereas a Static Mesh (as the name suggests) is an un-animatable...

To summarize this chapter, we first learned how to create an empty project. Then, we learned about the folder structure and how to organize files in the project directory. After that, we looked at template-based projects. We also learned how to set breakpoints in code so that we can watch variable values and debug entire objects while the game is running, which would help us find and eradicate bugs in our code.

Thereafter, we saw how Game Mode, Player Pawn, and Player Controller are relevant classes used in Unreal Engine for setting up game flows (the execution order of code), as well as how they are set up inside a project.

Finally, we transitioned toward animation basics and worked with State Machines, Blend Spaces 1D, and Animation Blueprints to make our character animate (walk/run and jump) within the game according to the keyboard input.

Throughout this chapter, we became more familiar with the powerful tools in Unreal Engine that are essential to game development...