‫In this lecture, we're going to look at what is blueprint.
‫You may have heard of it.
‫Let's demystify that.
‫We're going to look at Blueprint versus C++ and which one you should choose, for what purposes, how
‫they can work together and how this course is going to go about teaching them.
‫So let's dive in.
‫What is Blueprint?
‫Well, Blueprint is a visual programming language.
‫It's this one over here on the left, as opposed to C++, which is textual blueprint is written specifically
‫for Unreal.
‫So you can program it directly in the editor, whereas C++ is an industry standard language and you
‫need separate editors to program it.
‫So Blueprint has some particular strengths due to its makeup.
‫It is quick to change.
‫If you make a change to blueprint, you can play your game almost instantly.
‫It is beginner friendly because you don't have to remember complicated wordings.
‫In a programmer we speak you.
‫It's easy to discover because there is tools built right in for you to right click and search for any
‫functionality you might be looking for and see whether it already exists within Unreal.
‫And it's tailor made for Unreal, which means that it just fits like a good tailored suit.
‫It it doesn't have any kind of concepts that don't match because it's been made specifically and it
‫is designer or artist friendly.
‫This is particularly useful in bigger teams where you might be working with different disciplines.
‫Artists and designers may prefer to dip in to blueprint and help you out with some functionality or
‫gameplay design.
‫Now C++ obviously has its own set of strength, otherwise we wouldn't be teaching it.
‫It can be much more concise to read than blueprint.
‫It is an industry standard language, which means that it's got so many people who understand the language
‫already, as well as lots of tools and all of the support that goes along with it.
‫And you can take your knowledge from learning it here to other disciplines.
‫It is very, very high speed.
‫It's notoriously good at making fast applications.
‫It has access to all areas and all functionality within Unreal, whereas Blueprint has limits to what
‫it can do and it is good for bigger projects.
‫It's much more easy to write a big game in C++ than it is to do so.
‫In Blueprint, you often get tripped up with Blueprint for various reasons.
‫Now, Blueprint in C++ can and should work together most of the functionality.
‫The Unreal libraries are written in C++, but that doesn't mean you can't access them from blueprints.
‫In fact, you can pretty much access anything that you make available to blueprints, and you can also
‫add your own C++ functionality that then your blueprints can use as well.
‫So this can create a system that of cooperating blueprints and C++ that allows you to make the best
‫of both worlds.
‫Now in this course, we are planning on in the next section, teaching you the fundamentals of unreal,
‫the unreal concepts and game development concepts you need.
‫We're also going to teach you the fundamental programming concepts you need to understand we're going
‫to do this in Blueprint because it doesn't matter what programming language we use.
‫These concepts are applicable to all programming languages, and then after that we are going to install
‫the compilers, the editors that we need for C++, and we're going to learn the C++ syntax, which is
‫the way that we type C++ to express the programming concepts we learnt in the previous section.
‫So if you are feeling like you just want to skip ahead and learn the C++.
‫Hold your horses.
‫Let's see if you can.
‫So in the next section, we're going to be learning programming basics with blueprints.
‫That's variables.
‫If statements of functions, basic maths concepts such as vectors, transforms and rotations, unreal
‫core concepts such as actors, components, pawns and maps and asset management such as the marketplace,
‫importing your assets, BSP, modeling and adding materials.
‫If all of that sounds like Yep, I've got that, Sam, I can totally do all of that.
‫Then feel free to skip the next section.
‫You can dive right in to learning C++.
‫If you're a bit unsure and would like to know a bit more about these concepts, then please follow along
‫and I will see you in the next section.