Summer is almost over, and I am cranking through a bunch of projects I had wanted to complete. One of them was to spend as much time as possible learning how to make video games.
I don’t have any delusions of grandeur; however, I do have a fantasy of being able to combine game making with electronics and making in order to design a game that interacts with the physical world. In order to do that, I need a way for the game to communicate with the physical world.
In a previous post, I highlighted some of the things I learned during my first 100 hours with the Unreal Engine. That was enough time (with the right tutorials) to build a simple game called Chicken in the Lab where your a Chicken, in a lab, collecting elements. The trick is that you have to collect them in order of atomic number, so it can be a bit of a challenge.
With some general knowledge on game design using the Unreal Engine, I wanted to learn how a game could interact with the world outside of the game. There’s a plugin called VaREST which allows the game to communicate via REST API calls; however, the documentation on the plugin is virtually nonexistent. I decided to demonstrate how I got it working primarily to have all of this information in one place when I need it again, but perhaps it will be of use to someone.
There were three sources on the web that were quite helpful in navigating the process. I suggest looking here for some context.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzPKg93T7q4
- https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/varest-plugin/questions
- https://openweathermap.org/current
Lastly, here’s the Unreal Engine Blueprint, hopefully in high-enough resolution to be of use. (Try this link if it is not.)
