Chapter 3. Understanding the Class Tree

Who is your daddy and what does he do?

In the last two chapters we've been using classes to write and test our code. But what is a class exactly? What is the importance of the class tree, why use one at all? In this chapter we're going to take a closer look at what it means when we say that UnrealScript is an object-oriented programming language.

In this chapter we will:

• Discuss the class tree and the principles of object-oriented programming

• Talk about inheritance and what it means to the class tree

• Use function overriding to change the behavior of our classes

• Talk about casting and how to use it on our classes

• Go over the different class properties that can be used

• Discuss the difference between Actors and Objects

Let's start by talking about classes, what they are and how to use them.