In this article, we will look at what Unreal Engine is, how to set up Visual Studio for Unreal Engine, and how to get started with Visual Studio Unreal Engine. You will also learn the main benefits of using Visual Studio to develop Unreal projects.
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What are the benefits of using Visual Studio for software development?
Visual Studio is an integrated software development environment that allows you to create console and desktop applications, websites, and web services. Visual Studio for UE4 allows you to easily create beautiful and realistic 3D games.
Visual Studio is a modern and powerful IDE that includes a code editor, a built-in debugger, a form editor for creating an application’s graphical interface, and a web editor. Visual Studio Unreal Engine provides an advanced set of tools for creating modern games.
You can perform application testing, versioning, and deployment to the cloud using features provided by Visual Studio. If you want to extend its functionality you can install additional third-party plugins.
Visual Studio is one of the most used IDEs for C++ software development. Millions of developers from large and small organizations use it.
What is Unreal Engine, and what is it for?
Unreal Engine is a very powerful and popular engine for creating 3D graphics. It is a large system of tools and editors that allows you to create and manipulate 3D objects and scenes.
This modern engine allows you to create games for most modern operating systems and portable devices. It supports various rendering and audio playback systems, text-to-speech tools, speech recognition, modules for working with the network, and various input devices.
You can use Unreal Engine to develop games of various genres. Besides, you can use it for architectural and automotive visualization, linear film and television content creation, broadcast and live event production, training and simulation, and other real-time applications.
How to set up Visual Studio for Unreal Engine?
You can integrate Unreal Engine with Visual Studio, which allows you to easily and quickly make changes to the code and instantly see the results of its work after compilation.
To use Visual Studio together with UE4, first, you need to set up your Visual Studio. In the Visual Studio installer, select Game development with C++ in the Workloads tab. Also, you need to select these additional options: C++ profiling tools, C++ AddressSanitizer, Windows 10 SDK, and Unreal Engine installer. After that, install the selected tools.
Then you should use the Epic Games Launcher, which provides you the ability to install Unreal Engine if it is not already installed on your system.
How to work with Unreal projects in Visual Studio?
To create a new project, use the Unreal editor. You can use Blueprints or C++ code.
When you select C++ code, the Visual Studio solution is generated automatically.
With the Unreal editor, you can open the created project in Visual Studio. To do this, use the menu command File -> Open Visual Studio.
This command will open a Visual Studio solution with two projects. One project is for the Unreal Engine code. The other is your game project code, named the same as your Unreal project. After that, you can edit, build and debug your Unreal game using advanced features provided by Visual Studio.
What are the benefits of Unreal Engine developments in Visual Studio?
Visual Studio is widely used by C++ game developers. It is a proven and one of the most popular code editors. It is the recommended IDE for game development using Unreal Engine.
When developing games using Visual Studio, you can take advantage of the features provided by IntelliSense to significantly speed up the coding process.
Visual Studio also provides an excellent C++ debugger for Unreal Engine, similar to the one used to debug other C++ projects.
There is an UnrealVS extension for Visual Studio Unreal Engine that makes it easy to add launch options and create a lot of configurations at the same time. UnrealVS allows you to set up startup items, create bindable commands for compiling startup projects, set command line parameters, compile projects in batches, quickly compile the project menu, and much more.
Also, Visual Studio provides the ability to install additional C++ extensions to extend its functionality for game development using Unreal Engine. Visual Assist is one of these C++ extensions.
How Visual Assist for Unreal Engine supports developments in Visual Studio?
Visual Assist constantly releases updates and supports all new versions of Unreal Engine. This C++ extension offers advanced features for easier navigation, refactoring, code generation, and much more for your Unreal Engine projects.
Visual Assist provides features that increase developer productivity. You can rename resources with Core Redirect. This is an Unreal feature that keeps track of old and new names to keep code and blueprints that refer to the old name. Visual Assist can add this information when renaming. This feature allows you to rename without having to worry about the game crashing.
When you rename a class, file, method, variable, and any other type or object, all of its uses, including comments, lines, and headers are renamed automatically.
In addition, Visual Assist allows you to quickly type code using smart suggestions for U*Macro specifiers. For newly entered specifiers, Visual Assist quickly finds and displays suggestions.
Visual Assist automatically adds a superclass call to the template when extending the functionality of the engine. This reduces the number of steps you have to perform manually.
With Visual Assist, you can quickly and easily navigate through code and perform refactorings. To do this, use functions such as Goto, find links, rename, and change the signature. The ability to read U*Macro specifiers optimizes these functions.
Visual Assist allows you to speed up the process of studying documentation by displaying comments from base classes for Unreal Engine C++ and U*Macro specifiers in the code. With Visual Assist, you can easily and quickly learn Unreal Engine.
In this article, we looked at the main advantages of developing modern 3D games using the Visual Studio Unreal Engine. Install the Visual Assist C++ extension for Visual Studio with Unreal Engine support and develop exciting games faster and easier.
