Book description
A step-by-step guide that paves the way for developing fantastic games with Unreal Engine 4
About This Book
- Learn about game development and the building blocks that go into creating a game
- A simple tutorial for beginners to get acquainted with the Unreal Engine architecture
- Learn about the features and functionalities of Unreal Engine 4 and how to use them to create your own games
Who This Book Is For
If you are new to game development and want to learn how games are created using Unreal Engine 4, this book is the right choice for you. You do not need prior game development experience, but it is expected that you have played games before. Knowledge of C++ would prove to be useful.
What You Will Learn
- Learn what a game engine is, the history of Unreal Engine, and how game studios create games
- Explore the Unreal Engine 4 editor controls and learn how to use the editor to create a room in a game level
- Understand the basic structures of objects in a game, such as the differences between BSP and static meshes
- Make objects interactive using level blueprints
- Learn more about computer graphics rendering; how materials and light are rendered in your game
- Get acquainted with the Material Editor to create materials and use different types of lights in the game levels
- Utilize the various editors, tools, and features such as UI, the particle system, audio, terrain manipulation, and cinematics in Unreal Engine 4 to create game levels
In Detail
Unreal Engine 4 is a powerful game development engine that provides rich functionalities to create 2D and 3D games across multiple platforms. Many people know what a game is and they play games every day, but how many of them know how to create a game? Unreal Engine technology powers hundreds of games, and thousands of individuals have built careers and companies around skills developed using this engine.
Learning Unreal Engine 4 Game Development starts with small, simple game ideas and playable projects that you can actually finish. The book first teaches you the basics of using Unreal Engine to create a simple game level. Then, you'll learn how to add details such as actors, animation, effects, and so on to the game. The complexity will increase over the chapters and the examples chosen will help you learn a wide variety of game development techniques. This book aims to equip you with the confidence and skills to design and build your own games using Unreal Engine 4. By the end of this book, you'll have learnt about the entire Unreal suite and know how to successfully create fun, simple games.
Style and approach
This book explains in detail what goes into the development of a game, provides hands-on examples that you can follow to create the different components of a game, and provides sufficient background/theory to equip you with a solid foundation for creating your own games.
Table of contents
-
Learning Unreal Engine Game Development
- Table of Contents
- Learning Unreal Engine Game Development
- Credits
- About the Author
- About the Reviewers
- www.PacktPub.com
- Preface
- 1. An Overview of Unreal Engine
-
2. Creating Your First Level
- Exploring preconfigured levels
- Creating a new project
- Navigating the viewport
- Creating a level from a new blank map
- Creating the ground using the BSP Box brush
- Adding light to a level
- Adding the sky to a level
- Adding Player Start
- Viewing a level that's been created
- Saving a level
- Configuring a map as a start level
- Adding material to the ground
- Adding a wall
- Duplicating a wall
- Creating an opening for a door
- Adding materials to the walls
- Sealing a room
- Adding props or a static mesh to the room
- Adding Lightmass Importance Volume
- Applying finishing touches to a room
- Summary
- 3. Game Objects – More and Move
-
4. Material and Light
- Materials
- The Material Editor
- Rendering pipeline
- Shaders
- APIs – DirectX and OpenGL
-
Lights
- Configuring a Point Light with more settings
- Adding and configuring a Spot Light
- Using the IES Profile
- Adding and configuring a Directional Light
- Static, stationary, or movable lights
- Exercise – extending your game level (optional)
- Summary
-
5. Animation and AI
- What is animation?
- Understanding how to animate a 3D model
- What Unreal Engine 4 offers for animation in games
-
Artificial intelligence
- Understanding a Behavior Tree
- Exercise – designing the logic of a Behavior Tree
- Example – creating a simple Behavior Tree
- How to implement a Behavior Tree in Unreal Engine 4
- Navigation Mesh
-
Tutorial – setting up AI logic
- Creating the Blueprint AIController
- Creating the Blueprint character
- Adding and configuring Mesh to a Character Blueprint
- Linking AIController to the Character Blueprint
- Adding basic animation
- Configuring AIController
- Adjusting movement speed
- Creating the BlackBoardData
- Creating a Behavior Tree
- Creating a simple BT using a Wait task
- Using the Behavior Tree
- Creating a custom task for the Behavior Tree
- Using the PickTargetLocation custom task in BT
- Replacing the Wait task with Move To
- Implementing AI in games
- Summary
-
6. A Particle System and Sound
- What is a particle system?
- Exploring an existing particle system
- The main components of a particle system
- The design principles of a particle system
- Example – creating a fireplace particle system
- Sound and music
- How do we produce sound and music for games?
- Audio quality
- How are sounds recorded?
- The Unreal audio system
- Getting audio into Unreal
- Unreal sound formats and terminologies
- The Sound Cue Editor
- Exercise – importing a sound into the Unreal Editor
- Exercise – adding custom sounds to a level
- Configuring the Sound Cue Editor
- Summary
- 7. Terrain and Cinematics
- Index
Product information
- Title: Learning Unreal Engine Game Development
- Author(s):
- Release date: February 2016
- Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
- ISBN: 9781784398156
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