UNREAL FAST TRACK | WORKSHOP TWO

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UNREAL FAST TRACK

WORKSHOP TWO
 UNREAL FAST TRACK | WORKSHOP TWO

Workshop Two: Diving into Blueprints, Powerups,

and Obstacles

Learning Points

Test Drive (75 minutes)

• Deeper Blueprint learning

• Creating Blueprints
• Understanding the different kinds of Blueprints
• Blueprint casting

Grand Prix (1 hour)

• Making powerups and obstacles

• Using event dispatchers in Blueprints
• Creating multiple types of variables

Off-Roading and Discussion (75 minutes)

• Creating Blueprints from scratch

• Modifying existing content

Test Drive
For the second week, we are going to learn more about Blueprints and how they work. The Unreal Online Learning course
for this week is called “Blueprints—Essential Concepts.” The course can be found at https://www.unrealengine.com/
en-US/onlinelearning-courses/blueprints---essential-concepts. Blueprint is a visual C++ scripting system within Unreal
Engine and it is an extremely important tool to know how to use. No prior coding experience is required for learning
Blueprints. Note that once you begin the course, you will be prompted to download an Unreal Engine project to work with
as you follow alongside the instructor.

In this document, we’ve included tips and changes that have been created for some of the videos since the course first
came out. If needed, the tips and changes for each video are timestamped so you know when they are relevant. If there
is no timestamp, you can wait until the end to read them.

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3: What Is Blueprint?
2:57: The Level he is editing is in the StartAssets folder found here: Content ➝ Fundamentals ➝ Blueprints ➝
EssentialConcepts ➝ StartAssets. The Level is called “EssentialConcepts_Start”.

13: Additional Resources

Be sure to click on Additional Resources after the quiz to complete the course and obtain the badge!

Grand Prix

For this week, we’re going to add powerups and fire to your third-person platformer. This will give you the opportunity to
change Levels as the player becomes more powerful and has more obstacles to avoid.

First, we’ll be adding powerups.

1. Select the following Blueprints in the FundamentalsClasses project you downloaded for this course. You can
find them in the Blueprints folder found here: Content ➝ Fundamentals ➝ Blueprints ➝ EssentialConcepts ➝
FinishedAssets ➝ Blueprints.
a. BP_Pickup_Parent
b. BP_Pickup_Child_Coin
c. BP_Pickup_Child_Cupcake
d. BP_Pickup_Child_Health
2. Right-click on Assets after selecting them and choose “Asset Actions ➝ Migrate”.
3. All the assets referenced by the Blueprints will automatically be collected in the Asset Report. Click Ok.
4. Navigate to the Content folder for the third-person platformer you made and click Select Folder.
5. Check to make sure the pickups migrated successfully and close the FundamentalsClasses project. We won’t
be needing that project anymore at this point.
6. Add the three child Blueprints to your scene and test them to make sure they work. Run into them and see that
they get smaller, go into your character, and pass a message in the upper-left corner of the screen.
7. After you see that the Blueprints work, delete them from your scene. They were placed temporarily just to
ensure that everything migrated correctly.

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8. Open the BP_Pickup_Child_Cupcake Blueprint.

9. In the Event Graph, delete the Destroy Actor node, and break the link between the Pickup Grabbed node
and the Print String node. Using Alt + Left-click on a pin will break the connection between two nodes.
10. Place a Get Player Character node.
11. Drag a wire from the Get Player Character node’s Return Value pin and place a Get Character Movement node.
12. Drag a wire from the Character Movement pin and place a Set Jump Z Velocity node. Connect the Pickup
Grabbed node to the Set Jump Z Velocity node. Then connect the Set Jump Z Velocity node to the Print
String node.
13. The default setting of Jump Z Velocity is “600”. Assuming you didn’t change it in the last exploration, set
Jump Z Velocity to “1200”. If you did change it, set Jump Z Velocity to double the value of what you changed
it to.

14. Compile the Blueprint and drag and drop the cupcake pickup into your scene. Test it! Your jump height should
have doubled.
15. Drag a wire from a Get Player Character node’s Return Value pin and type “character movement” in the search
box to look at the list of variables you can set to change the movement of your character. Play around with other
variables and see what kinds of powerups you can create.

At this point, some of you might notice a problem. When the player falls and respawns, our powerups don’t respawn! If
those powerups are needed to finish the Level, they need to respawn every time the player falls. To make that happen,
we are going to use a new type of node: an event dispatcher. Event dispatchers can be found below the Variables
section of a Blueprint Event Graph. Event dispatchers are a way for a Blueprint to listen for events that happen on
other Blueprints. We actually used a special event dispatcher in the first Grand Prix—we bound the player respawning
to an event dispatcher of the player being destroyed. When the player is destroyed, the event dispatcher On Destroyed
sends out a message to all of the other Blueprints who are listening; because we bound the On Destroyed event in the
Game Mode Blueprint, it listens when the player is destroyed and spawns a new player. We’ll be building another event
dispatcher here.

1. In the ThirdPersonGameMode Blueprint, find the My Blueprint panel on the bottom-left side of the window.
Click the plus sign next to Event Dispatchers.
2. Name the event dispatcher “Player Fell”.
3. In between the OnDestroyed_Event_0 and the Delay nodes, add a node called “Call Player Fell”. You’ll notice
this node has an envelope in the top-right corner. This indicates that it is sending out an event dispatcher.
Don’t forget to reattach the input execution pins.
4. Compile the Blueprint.
5. Open the BP_Pickup_Parent Blueprint. Look at the Event Graph and find the two animations: Floating, an
animation for bobbing and rotating, and Pickup, an animation for when the player overlaps with the trigger.
We need to reset these animations when the player dies.
6. In the bottom-left corner, in the My Blueprint panel, find the Variables section and click on the triangle to the
left of Components to see a drop-down of all the components. Drag and drop Floating from that list and
select “Get”. This creates a reference to the Timeline animation.
7. Find the Add Custom Event node. Select it and name the event “PowerupRespawn”.
8. Drag a wire from the Floating pin and add a Play from Start node. Connect the Play from Start node to the
PowerupRespawn event you just created.

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9. Next, add a Set Relative Scale 3D node and connect it to the Play from Start node. Set the X, Y, and Z values
of New Scale 3D to “1, 1, 1”. From the Components panel, drag and drop the Pickup Mesh into the Events Graph
and connect it as the target.
10. Finally, we need to change the collision. Find the Delete Component node that’s part of the On Component
Begin Overlap event. Delete that node and replace it with a Set Collision Enabled node. Reattach the
Pickup Trigger mesh and make sure New Type is set to “No Collision”. Now the collision component won’t be
deleted but instead will just not register collision again unless it is re-enabled.

11. Add a Set Collision Enabled node to the end of the custom event you created. New Type should be set to
“Query Only”.

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12. We’re almost there. Now we just need to bind the event. Off the Set Playback Position node, which is
connected to the Event BeginPlay node, place a Cast To ThirdPersonGameMode node. Drag a wire from
the Cast To ThirdPersonGameMode node’s Object pin and place a Get Game Mode node. Off the Cast To
ThirdPersonGameMode node, place an Assign Player Fell node. Connect the Bind Event to Player Fell
node’s Target pin to the Cast To ThirdPersonGameMode node’s As Third Person Game Mode pin.
13. Finally, off the PlayerFell_Event_0 node, place a Powerup Respawn node. Compile the Blueprint.

Now, whenever the player falls, the event dispatcher goes off and the parent pickup Blueprint hears it and runs the
custom event PowerupRespawn.

With all of the new powerups you added, you now need more obstacles to avoid! Let’s add fire to your game. Search the
StarterContent folder for “P_Fire”. The “P” here stands for “particle effect.”

1. Create a Blueprint and name it “BP_Fire”. Open it up and add a Particle System component.
2. In the Details panel, under “Particles”, set Template to “P_Fire”.
3. Add a Sphere Collision component to the Blueprint and set its position and size to encompass the fire.
4. Compile the Blueprint.
5. Drag the Blueprint onto the map to see it burn!
6. Open the ThirdPersonCharacter Blueprint.
7. Select the Capsule component in the Components panel, and then add an On Component Begin Overlap
(CapsuleComponent) node to the Event Graph.
8. We want to check that the Capsule component is overlapping with the fire. Drag a wire from our newly created
event and create a Cast To BP_Fire node, and then attach the Overlap event’s Other Actor pin to the Cast
node’s Object pin.
9. We’re going to add a variable. In the My Blueprint panel, find the Variables section and click the plus sign. Name
the variable “InFire”.
10. In the Details panel, set Variable Type to “Boolean”. There are many different variable types available for us to
use, but we just need a Boolean now. Compile the Blueprint.
11. Off the Cast node, we’re going to set the InFire Boolean variable. Select “InFire” from the Variables list and
drag and drop it into the Event Graph. Choose “Set” and check the box next to InFire so we are setting
the variable to “true”.
12. Create a Boolean variable called “OnFire”. Don’t forget to compile the Blueprint after creating the variable.
13. Off the Set InFire node, place a Branch node. A branch is the same as an IF statement. Drag and drop the
OnFire variable into the Event Graph and select “Get”. Attach the OnFire pin to the Branch node’s Condition pin.

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14. Drag a wire from the Branch node’s False pin and add a Spawn Emitter Attached node.
15. Select and drag the Mesh from the Components panel into the Event Graph and attach the Mesh pin to the
Spawn Emitter Attached node’s Attach to Component pin.
16. Below the Attach to Component pin is the Attach Point Name pin. Instead of attaching a pin to it, click “None”
and type in “spine_03”. That is the socket on the skeleton where the fire will attach.
17. Set Location Type to “Snap to Target, Keep World Scale” and check Auto Destroy and Auto Activate.
18. Drag a wire from the Spawn Emitter Attached node and create a Set OnFire node. Check the box.

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19. Now let’s set up what happens when the player exits the fire. Select the Capsule component in the Components
panel again, and this time add an On Component End Overlap (CapsuleComponent) node to the Event Graph.
20. Create a Cast To BP_Fire node and attach it in just the same way as you did with the On Component Begin
Overlap node above. Then create a Set InFire node, but don’t check the box this time. Now we are setting InFire
to “false”.
21. Off the Set InFire node, place a Retriggerable Delay node and set Duration to “4”.
22. Place a Branch node off the Retriggerable Delay node, and then connect the Branch node’s
Condition pin to a Get InFire node.
23. Create a Set OnFire node off the Branch node’s False pin and set OnFire to “false” by not checking the box.
24. Finally, drag a wire from the Spawn Emitter Attached node’s Return Value pin and place a Deactivate node.
Connect the Deactivate node to the Set OnFire node. Compile the Blueprint.

25. Place some fire in your Level and test what happens by running into it.
26. Add the powerups and fire to your Level, changing the design to suit the new powers and obstacles the player
now has. In the next workshop, we will make sure that fire does some damage.

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Off-Roading and Discussion

In the Content Browser, search for the Level called “Indoor”. In it, you will find a blank demo room, with the stands and
nothing else. Applying what you’ve learned and with a bit of exploration, try making your own Blueprint demos. Explore
using different nodes and components in the EssentialConcepts_Start Level, and even poke around at the other
Levels within the project. Don’t be afraid to copy and paste node networks between Blueprints, try things, break things,
and put things back together. You can find most of the Blueprints you have seen in the course in the folder found here:
Content ➝ Fundamentals ➝ Blueprints ➝ EssentialConcepts ➝ FinishedAssets ➝ Blueprints. You can find some
more Blueprints in the folder at Content ➝ DemoRoom ➝ BluePrint. The point here is not to create a stunning perfect
masterpiece, but to explore the system.

Once you’ve created a variety of Blueprints in your demo room, show them to your teammates and discuss what you
made. As usual, use the three D’s to drive the discussion.

• Difficulties: What was the most difficult or confusing part of this week’s workshop?
• Discoveries: What were some interesting, fascinating, or exciting things you discovered while making your
demo Blueprints?
• Dreams: What ideas for mechanics and systems have popped into your mind while doing this week’s workshop?
Discuss how you might be able to create those with your current knowledge.

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CONGRATULATIONS!

You’ve finished Workshop

Two of the Fast Track!

Dauntless | Phoenix Labs

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