8. Advanced AI and Unreal Rendering | Unreal Engine 4.X By Example

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Unreal Engine 4.X By Example

By : Carnall

3.2 (6)

Unreal Engine 4.X By Example

3.2 (6)

By: Carnall

Overview of this book

With Unreal Engine 4 being made free to use, for any keen game developer it is quickly becoming the most popular game engine in today’s development industry. The engine offers a rich feature set that can be customized and built upon through the use of C++. This book will cover how to work with Unreal Engine’s tool set all the way from the basics of the editor and the visual scripting system blueprint to the in-depth low-level creation of content using C++. This book will provide you with the skills you need to create feature-rich, captivating, and refined game titles with Unreal Engine 4. This book will take you through the creation of four unique game projects, designed so that you will be ready to apply the engine’s rich development capabilities. You will learn not only to take advantage of the visual tools of the engine, but also the vast and powerful programming feature set of Unreal Engine 4.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Introduction to Unreal Engine 4

1. Introduction to Unreal Engine 4

Navigating this book

Installing Unreal Engine 4

Creating your first project!

Navigating the Unreal Engine UI

Creating a basic actor

Pre-Built projects as a learning resource

Summary

2. Blueprints and Barrels – Your First Game

2. Blueprints and Barrels – Your First Game

Creating your first Blueprint

Modifying the Hello Sphere Blueprint

Creating the Barrel Hopper project!

Creating our Character

Game modes and how to make them

Creating and receiving input events

Building the level!

Getting our barrels rolling

Debugging our Blueprints

Masking our destruction with particles

Respawning the player

Summary

3. Advanced Blueprint, Animation, and Sound

3. Advanced Blueprint, Animation, and Sound

Cleaning up shop

Animation with UE4

Creating your first sound scape

Adding the finishing touches to Barrel Hopper

Summary

4. Unreal Engine, C++, and You

4. Unreal Engine, C++, and You

UE and C++

Hello World for C++

Extending C++ into Blueprint

Blueprint native events and you!

Summary

5. Upgrade Activated – Making Bounty Dash with C++

5. Upgrade Activated – Making Bounty Dash with C++

Creating a C++ character

Creating the Character

Creating the C++ world objects

Creating the interactions between the world objects

Summary

6. Power Ups for Your Character, Power Ups for the User

6. Power Ups for Your Character, Power Ups for the User

Cleaning up shop and object hierarchies

Creating a Plug-in with C++

Working with our first plugin module

Incorporating power-ups into Bounty Dash

Creating HUDs using C++

Completing the Bounty Dash game loop!

Finishing the wall of death and polishing the project

Summary

7. Boss Mode Activated – Unreal Robots

7. Boss Mode Activated – Unreal Robots

Setting up the project

The first-person character

Adding a custom HUD and drawing a cross hair

Creating the projectile

Unreal Robots

Creating a basic behavior tree and black-board!

Creating a custom task via blueprint

Creating a custom decorator using blueprint

Creating a custom service using C++

Advanced collision in UE4

Integrating the AI Character

Creating a custom object collision channel

Modifying the level to support AI

Placing the AI in the level and testing

Summary

8. Advanced AI and Unreal Rendering

8. Advanced AI and Unreal Rendering

Expanded AI and tracking projectiles

Tracking projectiles and you

Expanded AI

Rendering in UE4

UE4 Materials

Summary

9. Creating a Networked Shooter

9. Creating a Networked Shooter

Creating the project

Network multiplayer theory

UE4 Networking

Starting the networked First Person Shooter

Preparing the ANSCharacter blueprint

Spawn points and spawning the players

Game modes and servers

Preparing our game map

Drawing the HUD and preparing the lobby

Testing our Game

Summary

10. Goodbyes and Thank yous

10. Goodbyes and Thank yous

Packaging a project

Testing the NS package

Console commands

What we have learned so far

Summary

Index

Index

Customer Reviews

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Expanded AI

Ok, now it is time to retrofit the AI on our boss so that we update the behavior. We need the boss to exist in three states. The first will be the state we have already created for it, idle and tracking. The next will have the boss stop tracking the player and begin to act like a turret, looking at the FPCharacter the whole time while firing a salvo of tracking projectiles. The last state will have the boss randomly path around the player within the NavMesh area, also while firing projectiles.

To do this we are going to have to do the following:

Add Health to BMBossCharacter and explore UE4's damage system so the player projectiles do damage to the boss
Add an EBossState enum so that we may gauge what AI state the boss is in based on its current hit points
Modify the ABMAIController to include functionality for looking at the player and firing missiles at the player
Update the BossBT to support the three behaviors mentioned previously

Damage in UE4

Let's start by explaining the health...

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