Now that we've got a design to work from, we can begin to develop the game.
Before we can do that, however, we'll be exploring the variety of ways in which we can work with game code and game data in the Unreal game engine.
This chapter will walk you through the steps necessary to get Unreal and Visual Studio installed, and to create a new Unreal Engine project. Additionally, you will learn how to create new C++ game code, work with Blueprints and Blueprint graphs, and work with custom data for your game. In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Downloading Unreal
- Setting up Visual Studio for use with Unreal
- Setting up a new Unreal project
- Creating new C++ classes
- Creating Blueprints and Blueprint graphs
- Using Data Tables to import spreadsheet data
Before getting started, make sure that you have at least 18 GB of free disk space on your computer. You will need this disk space to hold the development environments for Unreal and also your project files.
We will now need to download Unreal. To do this, go to https://www.unrealengine.com and click on the GET UNREAL button.
Before you can download Unreal, you'll need to make an Epic Games account. The GET UNREAL button will redirect you to an account creation form, so fill it out and submit it.
After you've signed in, you'll see the Download button. This will download the installer for the Epic Games Launcher (from this launcher, you can download Unreal version 4.12).