Unreal Engine 4 Scripting with C++ Cookbook

Begin by visiting https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs.aspx. Click on Download Community 2015. This downloads the ~200 KB loader/installer.

Launch the installer, and select the components of Visual Studio 2015 that you want to add to your PC. Keep in mind that the more features you select, the larger your installation will be.

The preceding screenshot shows a recommended minimum installation, with Common Tools for Visual C++ 2015, Git for Windows, and GitHub Extension for Visual Studio all checked. We will use the Git for Windows features in a later section in this chapter.

After you have selected the tools you'd like to add onto Visual Studio, click the Next button. The installer tool will download the required components, and continue setup. Installation should take 20-40 minutes, depending on your option selections and connection speed.

After you download and install Visual Studio 2015, launch it. You will be presented with a Sign in dialog box.

Open Visual Studio, and go to File | New | Project...

You will see a dialog as follows:

Select Win32 in the pane on the left-hand side. In the right-hand pane, hit Win32 Console Application. Name your project in the lower box, then hit OK.

In the next dialog box, we specify the properties of our console application. Read the first dialog box and simply click Next. Then, in the Application Settings dialog, choose the Console Application bullet, then under Additional options, choose Empty project. You can leave Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) checks unchecked.

Once the application wizard completes, you will have created your first project. Both a Solution and a Project are created. To see these, you need Solution Explorer. To ensure that Solution Explorer is showing, go to View | Solution Explorer (or press Ctrl + Alt + L). Solution Explorer is a window that usually appears docked on the left-hand side or right-hand side of the main editor window as shown in the following screenshot:

Solution Explorer also displays all the files that are part of the project. Using Solution Explorer, we will also add a code file into the editor. Right click on your Project FirstProject, and select Add | New Item…

In the next dialog, simply select C++ File (.cpp), and give the file any name you'd like. I called mine Main.cpp.

Once you have added the file, it will appear in Solution Explorer under your FirstProject's source file filter. As your Project grows, more and more files are going to be added to your project. You can compile and run your first C++ program using the following text:

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
  puts("Welcome to Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition!");
}

Press Ctrl + Shift + B to build the project, then Ctrl + F5 to run the project.

Your executable will be created, and you will see a small black window with the results of your program's run:

From within Visual Studio, go to Tools | Options…

Select Environment | Fonts and Colors from the dialog that appears. It will look like the following screenshot:

Play around with the font and font size of Text Editor/Plain Text. Click OK on the dialog, and see the results in the code-text editor.

Go to Tools | Extensions and Updates…

From the dialog that appears, choose Online in the panel on the left-hand side. Start typing Theme Editor into the search box at the right. The Visual Studio 2015 Color Theme Editor dialog will pop up in your search results.

Click the small Download button in the top right-hand corner of the entry. Click through the installation dialog prompts, allowing the plugin to install. After installation, Visual Studio will prompt you to restart.

Click Restart Now to ensure the plugin is loaded.

After restarting, go to Tools | Customize Colors to open the Color Themes editor page.

From the Color Themes dialog that appears, click on the little palette-shaped icon on the upper-right corner of the theme that you want to use as your base or starting theme (I've clicked on the palette for the Light theme here, as you can see in the following screenshot).

A copy of the theme will appear in the Custom Themes section in the lower part of the Color Themes window. Click on Edit Theme to modify the theme. When you are editing the theme, you can change everything from the font text color to the C++ keyword color.

The main area you are interested in is the C++ Text Editor section. To gain access to all the C++ Text Editor options, be sure to select the Show All Elements option at the top of the Theme Editor window, as shown in the following screenshot:

Note that, while most of the settings you are interested in will be under Text Editor | C/C++, some will not have that C++ subheading. For example, the setting for the main/plain text inside the editor window (for all languages) is under Text Editor | Plain Text (without the C++ subheading).

Select the theme to use from Tools | Options | Environment | General. Any new themes you have created will appear automatically in the drop-down menu.

Go to Tools | Options | Text Editor | C/C++. This dialog displays a window that allows you to toggle Automatic brace completion.

Automatic brace completion is the feature where, when you type { , a corresponding } is automatically typed for you. This feature may irk you if you don't like the text editor inserting characters for you unexpectedly.

You generally want Auto list members on, as that displays a nice dialog with the complete names of data members listed for you as soon as you start typing. This makes it easy to remember variable names, so you don't have to memorize them:

Some more autocomplete behavior options are located under Text Editor | C/C++ | Formatting:

Click on one page of the code, then click somewhere else, at least 10 lines of code away. Now press Ctrl + - [navigate backwards]. Navigation through different pages of source code (the last place you were at, and the place you are at now) is done by pressing Ctrl + - and Ctrl + Shift + - respectively.

Say, for example, you're editing code in one place, and you want to go back to the place you've just been (or go back to the section in the code you came from). Simply press Ctrl + -, and that will warp you back to the location in the code you were at last. To warp forward to the location you were at before you pressed Ctrl + -, press Ctrl + Shift + -. To warp back, the previous location should be more than 10 lines away, or in a different file. These correspond to the Forward and Back menu buttons in the toolbar:

Press Ctrl + W to highlight a single word.

Press and hold Ctrl + Shift + right arrow (or left arrow) (not Shift + right arrow) just to move to the right and left of the cursor, selecting entire words.

Press Ctrl + C to copy text, Ctrl + X to cut text, and Ctrl + V to paste text.

Clipboard ring: The clipboard ring is a kind of a reference to the fact that Visual Studio maintains a stack of the last copy operations. By pressing Ctrl + C, you push the text that you are copying into an effective stack. Pressing Ctrl + C a second time on different text pushes that text into the Clipboard Stack. For example, in the following diagram, we pressed Ctrl + C on the word cyclic first, then Ctrl + C on the word paste afterwards.

As you know, pressing Ctrl + V pastes the top item in the stack. Pressing Ctrl + Shift + V accesses a very long history of all the items ever copied in that session, that is, items underneath the top item in the stack. After you exhaust the list of items, the list wraps back to the top item in the stack. This is an odd feature, but you may find it useful occasionally.

Ctrl + M, Ctrl + M collapses a code section.

Hold down the Ctrl key while clicking to select an entire word.

Hold down the Alt key to select a box of text (Alt + Left Click + Drag).

Visit unrealengine.com and download it. Sign up for an account if required.

Run the installer for the Epic Games Launcher Program by double-clicking the EpicGamesLauncherInstaller-x.x.x-xxx.msi installer. Install it in the default location.

Once the Epic Games Launcher program is installed, open it by double-clicking its icon on your desktop or in the Start menu.

Browse the start page and take a look around. Eventually, you will need to install an engine. Click on the large orange Install Engine button on the top-left side from the UE4 tab, as shown in the following image:

A pop-up dialog will show the components that can be installed. Select the components you'd like to install. The recommendation is to begin by installing the first three components (Core Components, Starter Content, and Templates and Feature Packs). You can leave out the Editor symbols for debugging component if you will not be using it.

After the engine has installed, the Install Engine button will change to a Launch Engine button.

From the Epic Games Launcher, click on the Launch Unreal Engine 4.11.2 button. Once you are inside the engine, an option to create a new project or load an existing one will presents itself.

Select the New Project tab.

Decide whether you will be using C++ to code your project, or Blueprints exclusively.

Take a look at the three icons that appear beneath the template listing. There are three options here to configure:

Select the drive and folder in which you will save your project. Keep in mind that each project is roughly 1 GB in size, and you will need at least that much space on the destination drive.

Name your project. Preferably name it something unique and specific to what you are planning on creating.

Hit Create. Both the UE4 Editor and Visual Studio 2015 windows should pop up, enabling you to edit your project.

The default level that gets set up when you start a new project will contain some default geometry and scenery. You don't need to start with this starter stuff, however. If you don't want to build from it, you can delete it, or create a new level.

To create a new level, click File | New Level… and select to create a level with a background sky (Default), or without a background sky (Empty Level).

If you loaded the Starter Content on your project's creation (or some other content), then you can use the Content Browser to pull content into your level. Simply drag and drop instances of your content from the Content Browser into the level, save, and launch them.

Add some geometry to your level using the Modes panel (Window | Modes). Be sure to click on the picture of a light bulb and cube to access the placeable geometry. You can also add lights via the Modes tab by clicking on the Lights subtab on the left-hand side of the Modes tab.

In your code, enter a line of code using the form:

UE_LOG(LogTemp, Warning, TEXT("Some warning message") );

Turn on the Output Log inside the UE4 editor to see your log messages printed in that window as your program is running.

Using FString::Printf():

Notice how the preceding code block uses the format specifiers precisely as the traditional printf function does. In the preceding example, we used %s to place a string in the formatted string, and %d to place an integer in the formatted string. Different format specifiers exist for different types of variables, and you should look them up on a site such as cppreference.com.

Using FString::Format(). Write code in the following form:

FString name = "Tim";
int32 mana = 450;
TArray< FStringFormatArg > args;
args.Add( FStringFormatArg( name ) );
args.Add( FStringFormatArg( mana ) );
FString string = FString::Format( TEXT( "Name = {0} Mana = {1}" ), args );
UE_LOG( LogTemp, Warning, TEXT( "Your string: %s" ), *string );

With FString::Format(), instead of using correct format specifiers, we use simple integers and a TArray of FStringFormatArg instead. The FstringFormatArg helps FString::Format() deduce the type of variable to put in the string.

Sign up for a GitHub account at https://github.com. Sign into your GitHub account using the Team Explorer menu (View | Team Explorer).

Once you have the Team Explorer open, you can sign into your GitHub account using the button that appears in the Team Explorer window.

After you've signed in, you should gain the capability to Clone and Create repositories. These options will appear right underneath the GitHub menu in the Team Explorer.

From here, we want to create our first repository. Hit the Create button, and name your repository in the window that comes up.

Now you have a repository! The repository is initialized on GitHub. We just have to put some code into it.

Open up the Epic Games Launcher, and create a project to put into the repository.

Open the C++ project in Visual Studio 2015, and right-click on Solution. Select Add Solution to Source Control from the context menu that appears. The dialog that appears will ask whether you want to use Git or TFVC.

After you add Git Source Control to the project, take a look at Team Explorer again. From that window, you should enter a brief message, then click on the Commit button.

To add an issue to your Issue Tracker, first select the repository that you'd like to edit by going to the front page of GitHub and selecting the Repositories tab:

From your repository's homepage, select the Issues tab under your repository. To add an issue to track, click the New Issue button in the lower-right corner of the screen, as seen in the following screenshot:

When adding your issue, it is good practice to detail it as much as possible. Including screenshots and diagrams in the features or bugs you post is highly recommended, as it documents the issue much better, and parks important information and a good description into your Issue Tracker. Dragging and dropping images into the text editor window automatically uploads a copy of the image to GitHub's own cloud server, and the image will appear inline in the issue, as shown in the following screenshot:

The box into which you enter the description of your bug or feature supports Markdown. Markdown is a simplified HTML-like markup language that lets you quickly write HTML-like syntax with ease. Examples of some markdown syntax are as follows:

# headings
## sub-headings
### sub-sub-headings
_italics_, __bold__, ___bold-italics___
[hyperlinks](http://towebsites.com/)

code (indented by 4 spaces), preceded by a blank line

* bulleted
* lists
  - sub bullets
    - sub sub bullets

>quotations

You can further mark the issue as either a bug, enhancement (feature), or any other label you like. Customizing labels is possible via the Issues | Labels link:

From there, you can edit, change the color of, or delete your labels. I deleted all the stock labels, and replaced the word enhancement with feature, as seen in the following two screenshots:

Once you've fully customized your labels, your GitHub Issue Tracker is much easier to navigate. Prioritize issues by tagging with the appropriate labels.

To create your own project Workboard, go to your account at Visualstudio.com. Log in, and then select the Overview tab. Under Recent projects & teams title, select the New link.

Add a Project name and Description to your project. After you've named your project (I've named mine Workboards), click on Create project. You will wait a second or two for project creation to complete, then hit the Navigate to project button in the next dialog.

The next screen that is shown allows you to navigate to the Workboards area. Click on Manage Work.

The Manage Work screen is a Kanban styled (read: prioritized) task queue of things to do in your project. You can hit the New item button to add new items to your list of things to do.

From the VisualStudio.com Team Services landing page, navigate to the project into which you want to enter some new work to be done. All of your Projects can be found if you click on Browse under the Recent projects & teams heading.

Select the project that you want to work with and hit Navigate.

Tasks inside Visualstudio.com take place inside of one of the three categories of super task:

There are now four navigation steps to perform before you can enter your first task (User Story) into the Backlog:

From the panel on the right-hand side, hit New item, and fill in the text for your new User Story item.

Click on the text of the User Story card, and fill in the fields for Assignee, the Iteration that it's a part of, Description, tags, and any other fields of the Details tab that you want to explore.

Next we break down the overall User Story into a series of achievable tasks. Hover over your new User Story item until the ellipsis (three dots…) appears. Click on the ellipsis, and select + Add Task.

List the details of completing the User Story in the series of Tasks.

Assign each Task to:

Continue adding Tasks to the project as the project develops features to complete and bugs to fix.