Review: Unreal Engine Blueprints Visual Scripting Projects by Lauren S. Ferro

I really like what Lauren S. Ferro has done here with Unreal Engine Blueprints Visual Scripting Projects. The book is clear and to the point, covering many features of the Unreal Engine all using Blueprints. The example projects are very functional and the author shows all the steps to build a simple demo as the book progresses. Please note, I just read the text, I did not attempt to recreate the examples myself, so I don’t know if there were any mistakes, but it all seemed to make sense.

In the book we see a brief intro into what UE4 is and how to download the engine. Then we move to looking into Blueprints (class and level), how to make a simple trigger box, programming interfaces, UI elements, and inventory system, quest dialog, simple AI, audio, and some more advanced topics at the end (like analytics and testing).

Overall I found the book to be enlightening, even though I have read several Unreal books already. I especially liked the AI chapters, I have not seen this covered in this depth before. I also enjoyed some of the more advanced chapters on analytics and testing. Really quite a powerful set of chapters in a book that clocks in just over 500 pages. I read on my Android tablet and the book was formatted perfectly, with full color images and everything. Definitely worth picking up if you want to get into Unreal Engine development.