Blueprints in UE4 talking to each other
I have to admit I found unrealscript to be attractive, in terms of how classes inherited functions from each other, and how stuff could be looked up in one class for use in another. I didn't know how to write unrealscript, but I became proficient at reading through examples.
Now Blueprint, in UE4, looks like a visual version of unrealscript (with C++ overtones if you like). It's very important to transfer some concepts across from UDK to UE4.
In Kismet, you could do Remote Events within the level, and between levels loaded in the persistent level too. In UE4, custom events and functions established in a blueprint can be referenced in other blueprints. The trick - is to set a special object variable which specfically points to the target blueprint you want to get events or functions from.
For example, if I have a GameMode blueprint with a function called ScoreUpdate, and I want to tell a PrizeActor to look up stuff in the GameMode blueprint, I just need to add a new variable LookUpGameMode in PrizeActor and sort of set its scope (in the properties as GameMode_C which is found in a list after you compile everything). That's the first part anyway ... next, I just drag that variable into the eventgraph and drag a wire from it to pop up the contextual menu. In this case, since we dragged from the variable pointing to GameMode, we can see all the available parts of GameMode, such as the function ScoreUpdate which we can then call in PrizeActor.
It's conceptually easy enough, but I've noticed, especially using this with Custom Events and Event Dispatchers that the back and forth between tabbed open blueprints can be confusing. I've noticed, and my colleagues noticed too, that I feel a little overwhelmed. I think a good toolset should enable users to do stuff without having to really concentrate, and as yet I'm not sure if more experience using this new methodology will wash away the sticking points. Hopefully. Then again, when I have to teach this stuff, and students run into the same things, I can just imagine some of the frustrations that will arise. As soon as I get an example I'll be sure to make a mumbly video showing how things work as best I can.
