Wikis / Unreal Wiki / User:Rejecht/Getting Started UE4

Unreal Engine 4

Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop

Setting Up Visual Studio for UE4

Protocol

Coding Standard

Naming Conventions * Methods * Style * Organization

Development Setup

Replication

Game types and replicated values?

1. Declare the UPROPERTY as replicated in C++
2. Initialize the state of the variable in the game type constructor
3. Declare the type of replication in the game type GetLifetimeReplicatedProps function

Low Level

Structure

Explains the basic client only {Camera, HUD}, client and server {Pawn, Character, PlayerState, GameState}, and server-only {Controller} junction points.

Unreal Architecture

Objects

Unreal Object Handling UObject Instance Creation

Pointers

When referring to something you use may shared pointers (pointer + reference count), shared references, or weak pointers.

The shared pointer types are optimal for higher level or lower frequency access.

Unreal Smart Pointer Library

.IsValid() is used on shared pointers to check if they are NULL.

Usage Patterns

• Caching a pointer to something using a weak pointer does not touch reference counting thus requires a check against NULL before access (and it gets set to NULL automatically when the instance it points to gets destroyed).
• The shared pointer itself requires a check against IsValid before access.
• Custom C++ classes may want to implement FSerializableObject to handle reference counting when they refer to other UObject classes.
• Assigning NULL to a smart pointer may force a deletion of the object.

Actors

Components

Destruction

IsPendingKillPending

API Overview

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/API/index.html