Benjamin Carnall - Unreal Engine 4.X By Example

Benjamin Carnall is an enthusiastic and dedicated programmer whose love for problem solving led him to the world of game development. He relishes opportunities to learn new and interesting ways to create gameplay experiences for others. Ben began his journey with Game Development in 2012, after he graduated from Media Design School with a diploma in interactive gaming. He then went on to graduate from the same university with a bachelors of software engineering in 2014. Since then, Ben has immersed himself in the Game Development community of New Zealandstarting out as a programming contractor and working on various titles around Auckland. He then began to work as a lecturer at Media Design School and taught Graphics programming for games, Physics programming for games, and Sony PlayStation development at the bachelors level. Most recently, Ben has been working as a programmer for the studio Aroura44, developing a title called Ashen.

I would like to thank so many people for supporting me during the authoring of this book. Thanks to the wonderful people around me, I remained fed and happy while endeavoring to put into words the jumble of information that knocks around in my head.

Thank you to my parents for making sure I stayed healthy and well fed. Thank you to my lovely Emily, for keeping my morals high and my smile wide. Thanks to the team at Epic for making such an awesome engine! Without them I would not be writing this now. Thanks to my editor, Parshva Sheth, for working through this with me, we made it! And finally, I'd like to thank you, the reader, for taking a chance with this book and for jumping into the world of game development!

Matt Matte is the founder of Full Metal Jacket Games, and he was recently featured on Unreal Engine's Spotlight Projects section with their Tron- inspired VR game. Matt is the official Seattle Unreal Engine Rep and the organizer of the largest Unreal Engine Meetup in the world, with over 800 members. He's published three games with Unreal Engine. The latest game released in August 2016 is Monkey Land 3D: Reaper Rush.

Matt has over 10 years of experience in Unreal Engine, starting with building mods in the Unreal Engine 3 editor and then moving on to UDK and UE4 to build completely original titles. He's an expert Unreal developer and technical artist that specializes in setting up characters, both controlled by a player and Artificial Intelligence, including rigging and creating animations, setting up physics with the PHAT editor, animation blueprints, and blending, AI behavior trees, and synchronized special effects. He's created games with Blueprints only and a hybrid of both C++ and Blueprints.

His primary focus is on virtual reality games. F.M.J. Games has won two Seattle VR Hackathons for best graphics and experience. They also won the Peoples Choice Award for NASA's 2015 Space Apps Challenge, all with UE4 and its powerful real-time rendering. They've been awarded new VR hardware by Epic, Oculus, and Valve for their accomplishments in VR design.

Matt has reviewed the blueprints and code in this book and tested that they work and are fully functional. Contact Matt through www.fmjgames.com for anything Unreal Engine game development related.

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Preface

Unreal Engine 4 is a cutting-edge game development engine that has revolutionized the way developers pay for engine licenses. Instead of forking out millions of dollars to access this first class engine, developers can use it completely free of charge, until they find themselves with a profitable product on their hands.

Unreal Engine 4 provides a rich AAA development toolset with cutting-edge technical features to anyone who is keen to develop great games. The engine has been developed in C++, and not only are we able to leverage the power of C++ for our projects, but we also have access to the entire engine source! This book will start you on your journey toward mastering UE4's toolset and becoming a proficient C++ UE4 developer!

What this book covers

, Introduction to Unreal Engine 4 , takes you through the installation of UE4, creating new UE4 projects, and an introductory overview of the main engine editor.

, Blueprints and Barrels Your First Game , introduces you to the world of Blueprint Visual Scripting. You will leverage the Blueprint system of UE4 to create your first UE4 game project, called Barrel Hopper.

, Advanced Blueprint, Animation, and Sound , covers some of the more advanced Blueprint concepts, and it also concludes the development of the Barrel Hopper project by showing you how to include animation and sound in your projects.