I’m currently writing a book on Mastering the Blueprint system (At the very friendly price of approx £5-£10 / $8 - $15 as well as a cheaper E-Book). I was wondering if there’s anything people are dying to figure out how to do in Blueprints but are not sure and want me to touch on in the book.
As Unreal Engine 4 is a new engine, there’s a severe lack of documentation on how to do specific things and I hope to get the ball rolling to help everyone to master the Blueprint system!
At the moment there is so much that I’m trying to learn that I can’t really pin point anything. But I’d be very interested in purchasing a copy from you at at the end. Online learning is all good but I find nothing can beat a good reference book to thumb through.
Teach people that blueprint is same as c++ class (make some kind of analogies atleast to more known C# or UScript), teach them rules in way they work (inhirence etc.) and something makes them explore the APIs at least (at least make them look at Class Viewer), teach them to get access to existing objects (holding object instance in vabale after spawn, using get functions etc.). Lack of knolage in those areas is main problem that i see in anwser hub, lot of people jumping on blueprints without basic knowlage about class tree in unrealengine and class inherence ( that why they obsessivly use interfaces insted of casting), making some absurd things
Oh and other thing… learn people that Tick is not for looping (in other words learn them to properly loop and use timers), i think that this is biggest scorge of nonsence i see ; p
Thanks! I hope you enjoy it when it’s finished!
Some great advice there, I’ll be using a few Project Examples to help people who are not only from the C# / Uscript background, but also people who are new to coding (Seeing as Blueprints is such a DARN FINE and easy to use visual coder). Everything will be in plain English, much like the Unreal Engine tutorials are on Youtube.
My hope is that from the various projects within the book, the reader will follow along like “training wheels” until they feel comfortable they can ride into the sunset leaving the book as the crying parents watching their child leave for bigger and better things.
I’ll also give multiple ways of doing different things and explain the advantages / disadvantages of certain ways, such as reducing overhead .etc
Thanks for the advice, I’ll be sure to touch on all of this and more in the book!
I want a section on how to mix Blueprints and C++, and strategies for doing it. (Maybe suitable for an appendix.)
Nie that you like my suggestions 
i kind of thinking to make video tutorial about class tree and structures myself so i can direct people who don’t understand those things somewhere
I +1 that too if books whats to dive in to C++ too, it also good lesson to understand blueprints more too
Also don’ forget to send copy to epic… since this might be first book releted to unreal 4 
Maybe a section on when its best practice to use Blueprints and when to use C++?
Yes. One strategy seems to be prototyping in Blueprints and then having a good programmer redo it in C++. But to me that seems to be a waste of resources. I would like something on how to split the the work with complicated and performance sensitive stuff in C++, exposing it to Blueprints for quick iteration by a designer.
(The actual C++ coding stuff should probably be kept at a minimum.)
I go with this phylosophy
Base classes, systems like inventory, command system for RTS etc. in C++ and in blueprint elements, moduals, extensions for those sysems, for example items for that inventory system.
There also one exception if you need to do lot of tick oprations you do that in C++ and ofcorse if you need soem porion of APIs that is not expose to Blueprint
I won’t be touching on C++ too much; As it’s focused on teaching people who want to focus on Blueprints. But I will do a chapter or two at the end of foundations of the next step - Branching into C++, the advantages / disadvantages of doing so, and some examples to expose a custom node to blueprints.
The book is more focused to people who are scared by the thought of C++ or want to use 100% blueprints. It’s about teaching them how to do things and then at the end hopefully showing them some light C++ to improve their blueprint experience. But there’ll be hardly any C++ in the book as the original idea was to show that yes, you can create a game start to finish without touching C++. Maybe down the line there will be a book dedicated to C++ in Unreal Engine 4 and how to use it WITH blueprints, Who knows!
I’m about to subscribe to UE4 tomorrow for the first time, and I was looking through the threads to check out the community today and ran across this. All I can say is that as a programmer, books that teach us programming languages need a curriculum. We should feel as if we’re working on an ongoing sample project from the book’s beginning to end. I know this is probably a given, you have probably written books like this before, but it’s important. People learn best from experience.
Something also tells me I’ll be using blueprint myself unless I need to use C++, because from what I’ve read so far it’s basically a programming language itself done through visual interaction instead of typing code. So I guess if I have one suggestion it’s to make the book teach someone how to do as many things as a programmer could do in UE4 using Blueprint as they possibly can.
-Silver
Given how quickly the UE4 Blueprint API is currently changing, is it a good idea to actually write a book? By the time you’d have finished it, a significant quantity of the content would surely be quite out of date?
Vector Math in Blueprints
But the way the book is handling things is that it’s teaching you the mind-set of Blueprint as well as the knowledge to create your own Blueprints from within creating blueprints as set out in the book. This means it gives you the core knowledge to sit there and be like “I want to create a portal!” and thanks to the book you can just do it.
So the newer content wouldn’t really add a huge hindrance, After a number of changes have happened, I can issue a new revision of the book as well as free text and video tutorials online.
Well, my personal strategy is: Blueprints everywhere :o
For example, all my game logic is based on Blueprints, but I need to check data on Steam. There’s no Blueprints for Steam’s API.
So, after a battle to get Steam working on my project I began to create custom Blueprints exposing the Steam API to let me than create logic graphs around what is going on with player’s Steam acc.
But I am doing that on a blind, there are no docs about it and a book to cover the details making sure I’m not doing anything stupid would be great.
The thing is, I don’t even know C++. I’m doing work based on my experience with C#, Python, etc.
I don’t know, whole branches of functions have vanished in the space of three months and been replaced with entirely different ones (for instance GetCamera(player index) is currently entirely gone, taking with it a lot of of functionality), and I expect it’ll continue for a little while yet as things like the core blueprint game framework are still being actively worked on.
Networking and multiplayer. Replication and all that.
Networking, Multiplayer, Loading Screens, and a basic cover system. Not the type that auto put you into cover but one where you press a button then go against the cover.
Keep in mind most of nodes are binds from C++ API and most of them (atleast once that i deal with) didn’t change much since 4.0
Either way it’s about learning using blueprint regardless of APIs
Book #1 is out - HUD, Loading Screens, Transitioning between levels, Separate “Characters” with different powers and more! Here is the link: Kitatus' Free Books, Projects and Tutorials! - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums
Book #2 will deal with AI and Multiplayer.
Book #3 will all be about Blueprints, C++ and the ability to use both together.
Thanks for the support everyone!
Oh, did I mention all the books are free?! - Here’s that link again! Kitatus' Free Books, Projects and Tutorials! - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums
