Space Exploration Game with Unreal Engine 5: Using Procedural Generation and Ue5’s New Features with C++

Dive into the heart of game development with Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), the latest revolution in creating immersive and visually stunning game worlds. Crafted to encourage your imaginative and inventive skills, Volume 1 of this two-part guide stands as a crucial tool in your journey towards developing incredible video games with UE5 and serves as a transition into the programming dimensions of game creation with C++ featured in Volume 2.

Blending artistic mastery with technical prowess, you’ll journey from the basics of UE5’s environment to creating expansive landscapes with procedural content generation and combining materials for lifelike terrains. Discover the power of Quixel Bridge and Megascans to bring realistic textures and models into your projects, and master Nanite for rendering complex scenes with cinematic fidelity.

You’ll also learn to create dynamic lighting and shadow effects with Lumen, enrich your game’s atmosphere with sophisticated particle systems using Niagara. Then integrate characters and adversaries into our worlds, making them come alive with interactive elements. From designing large open landscapes to implementing advanced visual effects, Game Development with UE 5, Volume 1 is your gateway to elevating the visual appeal and interactive experience of your game.

What You Will Learn

• Sculpt vast, open worlds with UE5’s advanced landscape tools and Heightmaps.
• Construct highly detailed environments with Nanite, achieving unparalleled visual quality without sacrificing performance.
• Introduce dynamic global illumination with Lumen, crafting stunning lighting and shadow effects that respond to changes in the game world in real-time.
• Implement Real-Time Virtual Textures to significantly enhance texture streaming efficiency in large-scale environments.
• Use Procedural Content Graph to populate your game worlds with dynamic, lifelike vegetation that adds depth and realism to your landscapes.
• Explore Niagara’s powerful visual effects system to create complex and captivating effects that elevate the aesthetic appeal of your game.

Who This Book Is For

Game developers who want to learn how to use Unreal Engine 5 would benefit from this book.

Dr. Tiow Wee Tan holds the position of Associate Professor at The Game School, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (INN), Norway. Additionally, he serves as the course coordinator for the Augmented and Virtual Reality Add-On Program at the Game School.

His interests revolve around the development of Extended Reality (XR) for cross-disciplinary enterprise applications. He has actively participated in projects involving Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for gaming. Some of his notable works encompass:

• The utilization of AR and VR technologies within game engines like Unity3D and Unreal Engine
• Creation of hybrid AR and VR research applications for fields such as healthcare, art, and tourism
• Implementation of Deep Learning algorithms for predicting micro-facial expressions, which are subsequently used in simulations and games
• Exploration of cognitive aspects in human-computer interaction environments, integrated into neural network systems