Today, Chris Murphy has organised a demo session where he gave us a tutorial on how to start in Unreal Engine. Even though, I have used Unreal for quite a while but I feel like attending the session might expose me to new content that I never knew before.
To my surprise, he did taught some things that I didn't know it existed before. Those stuff are procedural generated spline meshes, the Math Hall, "Call In Editor" feature.
Procedural Generated Splines Meshes
Firstly, he made a blueprint with the a root and a spline component. In the construction script of the spline component, he did his code with these generated rule of thumb:
Add spline mesh for each spline point added minusing the start point and the end point
Attach the end of the previous spline mesh to the start of the next spline mesh
After he set up the blueprint, he can freely add, minus and manuever the spline mesh, and the spline mesh would mold and follow based on his inputs.
Example of the implementation by Playful Synapse:
The Math Hall
He said that the Unreal Engine 4 Content Examples contains a level known as "The Math Hall". It shows the basic mathematics and functions need to create games. Only by his presentation, I have learned some of the concepts and implementations because all of the examples are visual examples and also very interactive.
However, I believe that this level could also assist primary and secondary school students to grasp the concepts of mathematics.
"Call In Editor" feature
If the feature is enabled, it will create a button in the editor for developers to click and execute the function.
Chris demostrated this by creating a random trees spawner. The random trees spawner have a feature to change individual trees colours. The button enabled him to re-randomise the random trees' colours to his liking. In conclusion, this feature is very convenient developer tool, allowing developers to execute the function whenever he/she feels like it.
After his talk, we asked him for a playtest session of our game Cyberstryke and he agreed. So, stay tuned for the next update.