helios banner

Simple Data Integration in UE4 by Helios

Diagram

About

Integrating external data sources (i.e Twitter's API, data from an AWS server) into Unreal Engine 4 can be a real hassle for even the most experienced of developers. And for developers who primarily use Blueprints visual-scripting to build applications, this hassle becomes a near impossibility. More often than not, developers well-versed in handling web requests via simple AJAX calls must write vanilla C++ in UE4 to replicate the same functionality. Yuck!

Enter the Helios Simple Data Integration (SDI) Plugin.

The Helios SDI Plugin allows you to integrate external data into your UE4 client by interfacing directly with a web server using auto-generated Blueprints nodes (no more ugly C++ code!). With it, you can do things like:

Control an in-game experience via an internet-connected device (e.g. changing lighting, weather, etc.) such as an iPad
Send data to a server, to be consumed by a separate client (e.g. web app showing heat-maps of kill locations, live match-tracking tickers, etc.)
Communicate with third-party APIs such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. from inside your UE4 client

Facilitating the server-client interaction between a web server and UE4 Blueprints is critical for developers who want to enrich their in-game experience by pulling in (or pushing out) data sources external to UE4. The Helios SDI Plugin allows you to do this without ever writing a line of C++!

Let's say, for example, you wanted to change the color of a gun in your game from your friend’s iPad--as we did in our demo. You would setup your server and specify a DecalColor variable that you could control on an iPad connected to the internet. Then, to get the value of DecalColor in Blueprints, you'd simply...

Search for the variable you’d like to get the value of:

nodes_right_click

And drop the auto-generated node into your project!

get_decal

Usage Notes

See the plugin usage article for more examples and for information on how to use the nodes.

Installation Notes

First, follow the server setup article.
Then, follow the plugin setup article.

Technical Details

To create such simple Blueprint nodes, we had to do a bunch of non-intuitive work behind the scenes. If you want to learn how the plugin works and/or help contribute to this open source project, check out our technical details article! We learned a lot while building this plugin, so we've also shared some of the questions we had and roadblocks we ran into in case they're of any help to you.

The Team


Derin Dutz	Dennis Xu	Ash Ngu	Ryan Davies