For this chapter, you will need the following components:
- Visual Studio 2015 or 2017 (any edition)
- Unreal Engine 4.18.3 or higher built from source code
Some quick notes on platforms and installations: the aforementioned components assume that you will be using a Windows 10 PC, but there is no reason that a Mac running a current version of Xcode cannot benefit from and perform all the same work explored in this book. As the work presented will be from VS and reference some of its features, this is the recommended working environment as we progress through the chapters, but it is not specifically required. Samples will be tested from time to time and built on Mac mainly for iOS purposes in later chapters, but this book will not focus on IDE specifics other than giving steps (typically in Visual Studio terms) and tips. Code samples may reflect formatting that comes from wholeTomato.com's Visual Assist tool, which I highly recommend for Visual Studio users, but their tool does not affect building or results.
You can find all the sources referenced in all of this book's chapters at https://github.com/mattedmonds404/Mastering, with revision history for the work presented in each chapter.
For this chapter and its work, be sure to select the branch named Chapter1, the branch's dropdown on the top left of GitHub's web interface, or use the direct link for this chapter's branch at https://github.com/mattedmonds404/Mastering/tree/Chapter1.
Two notes on using the project directly from GitHub: You still need to have the engine installed from source locally so you can right-click the project (Mastering/Mastering.uproject) and click Select Unreal Engine Version, and you will need to choose your installation file, which will also build the proper project files. Upon launching the Mastering.sln file in VS, please go through the following steps:
- Right-click the Mastering game project in the solution explorer and select Set as Startup Project so when running from VS, you launch directly into the editor for this project.
- Set the configuration to Development Editor, with the platform set as Win64.
- It may be necessary to right-click directly on the UE4 Project in the solution explorer and click Build. Sometimes, when building a game project, it will not pick up the full dependencies needed for building the engine, if this was not already done separately.
The engine version that we will be using is 4.19.0.