This page has any samples discussed in class, links to useful documents, exam preparation material, tutorials or any other demonstration-type class materials.

UE4

WARNING! A state-of-the-art game development tool like Unreal Engine is always being improved, which means there will often be differences, large and small, between the latest available official documentation (not to mention information you find in user forums) and the current release you are using (e.g., UE4.15). Navigating such issues is an unavoidable part of professional game development. Use the online class forum at InstructAssist to get help and share relevant information with your classmates, TA's and faculty.

A short collision tutorial showing three different ways to create a collision in Blender, brining it in to UE4, and then within the UE4 editor.

Exposing Gameplay Elements to Blueprints - a "cheatsheet" for all the macros for variables and functions to access them in blueprints.

Draw Text/HUD Blueprint - a very fast tutorial of how to create HUDs in game (only 6 minutes long).

A useful debug technique includes printing to the log. Don't forget to #include "Engine.h" to print debug messages to the screen (this wiki doesn't tell you that). Also, helpful UE4 String Conversions may be helpful for debug messages.

It's helpful to know the differences between AActor types (most importantly, APawn, ACharacter, and AController). AScreenCapture is used for splitscreen, minimaps, etc.

The Collisions Responses document is helpful for understanding how collisions work in UE4.

A quick tutorial on nav meshes for basic AI navigation. Note, this only covers the blueprints aspects of it.

If you are familiar with Unity, you might try the Unity3D Developer's Guide to UE4.

A guide showing how to line trace in UE4 in C++.

The UE4 directory structure. The most important directories to focus on are the Content and Source directories. Content holds all art assets relevant to your game. Source holds all source files.

Events used for editing of objects properties within the UE4 editor. PostEditChangeProperty triggers when an actor's properties (details panel) are changed and PostEditMove triggers when an actor is moved in the world. These allow the UE4 Level Editor to communicate with C++ code. Function signatures are in the UE4 Documentation linked.

The Coding Standard for UE. It helps understand some of the code samples you might see. Although not required, you might use the same standard for your code. From the guide:

• The first letter of each word in a name is capitalized, and there is usually no underscore between words. For example, Health and UPrimitiveComponent, but not lastMouseCoordinates or delta_coordinates.
• Type names are prefixed with an additional upper-case letter to distinguish them from variable names. For example, FSkin is a type name, and Skin is an instance of a FSkin.
  • Template classes are prefixed by T.
  • Classes that inherit from UObject are prefixed by U.
  • Classes that inherit from AActor are prefixed by A.
  • Classes that inherit from SWidget are prefixed by S.
  • Classes that are abstract interfaces are prefixed by I.
  • Most other classes are prefixed by F, though some subsystems use other letters.
• Type and variable names are nouns.
• Method names are verbs that describe the method's effect, or describe the return value of a method that has no effect.

UE4 comes with 3D Drawing features that are enabled in debug mode to help visualize/debug your program. See: Draw 3D Debug Points, Lines, and Spheres: Visualize Your Algorithm in Action. Includes many different shapes, but points and lines may be the most useful.

Game Development Stack Exchange had a nice question and answer on Decision Trees vs. Behavior Trees.

The FBX content pipeline to get FBX (e.g, Maya, 3ds) content into UE4. Relevant is a tutorial video to set up project and download the required FBX files from the Unreal Engine wiki site. With assets to download.

Some other coding tips:

  #if WITH_EDITOR
  // code here
  #endif

  PrimaryActorTick.bCanEverTick = true;

  PrimaryActorTick.bStartWithTickEnabled = true;

  DrawDebugLine(this->GetWorld(), StartTrace, Hit.TraceEnd, FColor::Black, true, 1000.f, 10.f);