Preface
2Chapter 4 , Crafting Pickups, tells us that artificial intelligence can cover a variety of things in
UDK, so we won't delve too far down that path, at least not in this chapter. Here, we'll briefly
cover it, and how the AI interacts with pickups throughout the game, specifically what attracts
them to certain pickups. Furthermore, we'll dive into creating our own pickups and how they
interact with our pawn's inventory.
Chapter 5 , AI and Navigation, shows us that the Unreal Engine has two ways of handling path
finding. They both have their pros and cons, despite being somewhat similar. They can simply
be broken down into waypoints and navigation meshes. Each offer their own sets of perks
and pitfalls, so we'll explore the pros and cons of both.
Chapter 6 , Weapons, walks you through the weapons in UDK that are inventory items, which
can be handled by the player, and are generally used to fire a projectile. On the surface, the
default weapon system found in Unreal Engine 3 may appear to be catered to creating various
types of guns as is common in most FPS games; but it's actually pretty easy to create various
sorts of weapons and usable inventory items, which may be found in other types of games
such as healing projectiles, bombs, landmines, or flashlights, as in the case with Alan Wake.
Chapter 7 , HUD, shows us that heads-up display, or HUD, in addition to a user interface (UI),
offers a means for providing information to a player to allow them to interact with the game
world. UDK offers two methods for creating a HUD. The first, and far more simple method
that we'll be covering here is the canvas. The other method, which requires knowledge of the
flash language and some fancy art skills, allows UDK to make use of a third-party tool called
ScaleForm to draw the HUD.
Chapter 8 , Miscellaneous Recipes, walks you through the recipes that are going to cover
things which may not necessarily fit in one particular chapter, but are still very valuable in
a number of applications. We'll go over a new scheme for aiming our weapons and drawing
a crosshair, as well as allowing our pawn to flash continuously as its health depreciates,
among other useful items.
What you need for this book
For this book you will need the following items to get started:
f The latest build of the Unreal Development Kit, which can be found at
http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/downloads/
f An integrated development environment
f A solid understanding of object oriented programming basics