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You're reading from  Game Development Patterns with Unreal Engine 5

Product typeBook
Published inJan 2024
Reading LevelBeginner
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803243252
Edition1st Edition
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Authors (2):
Stuart Butler
Stuart Butler
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Stuart Butler

Stuart Butler is an Unreal Engine Expert with over 13 years of experience in teaching Games Development in Higher Education. Stuart has published projects in a multitude of disciplines including Technical Design, Art, and Animation. Stuart is the Course Director for Games Technology at Staffordshire University, responsible for the programming team within the UK's largest Games Education Department. Stuart is also an Unreal Authorised Instructor and Educational Content Creator who works with Epic Games on developing learning materials for Unreal Engine 5. Stuart holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Games Design and a PgC in Higher and Professional Education.
Read more about Stuart Butler

Tom Oliver
Tom Oliver
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Tom Oliver

Tom Oliver is a game programmer with over 10 years of experience in working with game engines both commercially and in an educational capacity. He has used Unreal Engine for contract work both in and out of the games industry, creating systems for games to mixed reality training simulations. Tom is the Course Leader for the BSc (Hons) Computer Games Design and Programming program at Staffordshire University, responsible for maintaining the award winning structure and teaching of the course in the UK's largest Games Education Department. Tom holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Games Design and Programming and a PGc in Higher and Professional Education. Tom specialises in researching gameplay systems driven through mathematical phenomena.
Read more about Tom Oliver

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Event driven systems

A software engineer’s job is to solve problems. Most of the time, this means special treatment in certain cases to make sure eventualities are handled. Sometimes, perfection is found, and the problem is not solved but erased from existence. In our current system, we want to solve the problem of needing to trace a sphere through our world for the player in every frame.

The question is not, how do we make this more efficient? Instead, we should be asking, why sphere trace? There isn’t really a clear answer to this. Yes, it allows us to check the volume of space for a player, but so do colliders. Yes, we can check all the space between the light mesh and the floor, but in our game, the player cannot jump. Yes, we can tell whether there are objects blocking a view of the player, but so can a cheaper line trace on the frames when we are not sure.

From these three answers, we can form a new solution. In principle, we will attach a sphere collider...

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Game Development Patterns with Unreal Engine 5
Published in: Jan 2024Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803243252

Authors (2)

author image
Stuart Butler

Stuart Butler is an Unreal Engine Expert with over 13 years of experience in teaching Games Development in Higher Education. Stuart has published projects in a multitude of disciplines including Technical Design, Art, and Animation. Stuart is the Course Director for Games Technology at Staffordshire University, responsible for the programming team within the UK's largest Games Education Department. Stuart is also an Unreal Authorised Instructor and Educational Content Creator who works with Epic Games on developing learning materials for Unreal Engine 5. Stuart holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Games Design and a PgC in Higher and Professional Education.
Read more about Stuart Butler

author image
Tom Oliver

Tom Oliver is a game programmer with over 10 years of experience in working with game engines both commercially and in an educational capacity. He has used Unreal Engine for contract work both in and out of the games industry, creating systems for games to mixed reality training simulations. Tom is the Course Leader for the BSc (Hons) Computer Games Design and Programming program at Staffordshire University, responsible for maintaining the award winning structure and teaching of the course in the UK's largest Games Education Department. Tom holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Games Design and Programming and a PGc in Higher and Professional Education. Tom specialises in researching gameplay systems driven through mathematical phenomena.
Read more about Tom Oliver