Project settings

Next, we'll discuss the project settings under Edit | Project Settings:

The first section we'll talk about is Description. Here is where you will set your project/company name, any copyright and licensing notices, and window settings for the game (resizeable, borderless window, and so on). You can also manually set your project thumbnail here, which will show up in the Epic Games launcher in your project library.

Next up is Maps & Modes. Here, you can change the default GameMode class for your game (which can be overridden per level as previously discussed). You can also set which level is loaded when the editor starts up and which level is loaded when the actual game starts up (usually a title screen level).

There are also options for split-screen multiplayer if your game uses that.

The last option here is the GameInstance class, which can store data across level loads.

The next section is Movies, which allows you to set any startup movies, such as company logos, and lets you set whether or not these are skippable. And please, on behalf of gamers everywhere, make these skippable.

The next section is Packaging. Here is where you set your project to a development or shipping build and set options such as whether or not to do a full rebuild each time you run one. You can also set the Blueprint nativization method if desired, which converts them to C++ during the build process and will be discussed more in Chapter 8, Optimization, Testing, and Packaging.

After that comes Supported Hardware, which is self-explanatory, and then Target Hardware. When we were first setting up our project, we set it to Desktop / Console and Maximum Quality. If you needed to change it, here is where that is done.

One last section you'll want to explore on your own is the Engine section. A lot of the defaults are set here for things such as AI movement, animation compression, and audio classes.

Further down in the Engine section are the physics defaults, where you can set things such as gravity (which, as discussed, can be overridden per level), terminal velocity, and friction settings.

The last part of the engine settings I want to talk about is rendering. Here is where the major components of the graphics will be adjusted, such as ambient occlusion and motion blur. Depending on the scope of your project, some of these will not be needed, and they can be individually disabled here to increase your game's performance and fit your game's art style.