In the previous chapter, we went through the basics of the Epic Games Launcher, along with Unreal Editor fundamentals. We saw how to work with Objects and what Blueprints are on a basic level, in addition to exploring the First Person Template. In this chapter, we'll be building upon those fundamentals by exploring the Third Person Template and working with Input and Animations.

Game development can be done in a wide variety of languages, such as C, C++, Java, C#, and even Python. While each language has pros and cons, we will be using C++ throughout this book as it is the primary programming language used within the Unreal Engine.

In this chapter, we will get you up to speed on how to create a C++ project and basic level debugging in UE4. It is very important to be able to debug code as it helps the developer while dealing with bugs. The tools provided come in very handy and are essential for any Unreal Engine developer.

Following this, we will get up close and personal with the core classes involved in creating games and experiences in Unreal Engine. You will explore Game Mode and the relevant class concepts, followed by an exercise to gain a hands-on understanding of this.

The final section in this chapter is all about animations. Almost every single game features animations, some to a very basic extent, but some to a very high level that includes captivating details which are key to the gameplaying experience. Unreal Engine offers several tools you can use to create and deal with animations, including the Animation Blueprint, which has complex graphs and a State Machine.

At the start of every project, you might want to start with any of the templates provided by Epic (which contain ready-to-execute basic code) and build on top of that. Most/some of the time, you might need to set up a blank or an empty project that you can mold and sculpt to your requirements. We'll learn how to do that in the following exercise.

Exercise 2.01: Creating an Empty C++ Project

In this exercise, you will learn how to create an empty C++ project from the template provided by Epic. This will serve as the foundation for many of your future C++ projects.

The following steps will help you complete this exercise:

1. Launch Unreal Engine 4.24 from the Epic Games Launcher.
2. Click on the Games section and click Next.
3. Make sure the Blank project template is selected and click Next.
4. Click the Blueprint section dropdown and select C++.

   Note

   Make sure the project folder and project name are specified with an appropriate directory and name, respectively.

   When everything is set up, click on the Create Project button. In this case, our project directory is inside a folder called UnrealProjects, which is inside the E drive. The project name is set to MyBlankProj (it is recommended that you follow these names and project directories, but you can use your own if you wish to do so).

   Note

   The project name cannot have any spaces in it. It is preferable to have an Unreal directory as close to the root of a drive as possible (to avoid running into issues such as the 256-character path limit when creating or importing assets into your project's working directory; for small projects, it may be fine, but for more large-scale projects, where the folder hierarchy may become too complex, this step is important).

   You will notice that after it's done generating code and creating the project files, the project will be opened, along with its Visual Studio solution (.sln) file.

   Note

   Make sure the Visual Studio solution configuration is set to Development Editor and that the solution platform is set to Win64 for Desktop development:

   

Figure 2.1: Visual Studio deployment settings

By completing this exercise, we now know how to create an empty C++ project on UE4, along with its considerations.

In the next section, we'll be talking a bit about the folder structure, along with the most basic and most used folder structure format that's used by Unreal developers.

In your project directory (E:/UnrealProjects/MyBlankProj in our case), you will observe a Content folder. This is the primary folder that your project uses for different types of assets and project-relevant data (including Blueprints). The C++ code goes into the Source folder in your project. Please note that the best practice is to create new C++ code files directly through the Unreal Editor as this simplifies the process and results in fewer errors.

There are many different strategies you can use to organize the data inside your Content folder. The most basic and easy-to-understand is using folder names to depict the type of content inside. Therefore, a Content folder directory structure may resemble the example at https://packt.live/3lCVFkR. In this example, you can see that each file is categorically placed under the name of the folder representing its type on the first level, with the following levels further grouping it into meaningful folders.

Note

All blueprints should prefix BP in their name (to differentiate them from the default blueprints used by Unreal Engine). The rest of the prefixes are optional (however, it is best practice to format them with the prefixes shown earlier).

In the next section, we will be looking at the Visual Studio solution.