Using the Cast template function

Unreal Engine is designed as a universal graphics development tool. It provides base classes that can be inherited for developing specific games. That means the standard functions can only return the base type results, and game developers are responsible for casting the results to the specific types defined in their games.

In Unreal, Cast is a safe conversion function used for casting data types. Here is the syntax:

ToType* Cast<ToType>(FromType* theObjectPointerOfFromType)

Let’s break the syntax down:

• ToType represents the target type that you want to get after the conversion
• FromType represents the original type that you want to convert from
• The angular brackets (< and >) are C++ template expressions
• The function returns nullptr if the casting operation failed

In C++, a function can be declared to be generic with a template expression, which means that the function can accept and process different...