Scientific Number Tools lessons

Scientific Number Tools practical guide

Using Scientific Number Tools in Blueprints: operations, formatting, purchases and saving. The main example is a wallet with a balance, income and purchase buttons, and a save file.

The guide assumes basic Blueprint knowledge: creating an Actor and connecting nodes. You will build the interface during the lessons. Project setup is covered in lesson 0.

Contents: setup, operations, errors, a wallet, formatting, costs, saving and DataTables. The final exercise combines these operations in a generator shop.

Extensions: return to Safe, contexts, arrays, numerical policy, networking, assistants and SIMD when your project needs them. Saving other number types is separate from saving your first wallet.

Component responsibilities

Part	Responsibility in this example
Values and operations	Scientific Number Tools represents and calculates numbers.
State and rules	Your Actor owns the balance and decides when a purchase is allowed.
Presentation and storage	The widget displays text; Unreal SaveGame writes the file.

By the end, you will have implemented a wallet that updates its balance, rejects purchases when funds are insufficient and preserves data between sessions.

Core path

The lessons follow this order and end with an integration exercise. Extensions can be consulted separately.

• 0. Prepare your project and a practice level — Prepare the workspace for a small economy.
• 1. Calculate and display a Scientific Number — Calculate a value and distinguish it from its display text.
• 2. Trigger an error and decide what the user will see — Recognize failure without silently replacing a balance with zero.
• 3. Create a wallet with income and purchase buttons — Build a wallet that responds to buttons.
• 4. Create a format in the editor and use it in your widget — Display the balance with a reusable formatter.
• 5. Calculate operations and purchase costs — Calculate a batch purchase cost before spending.
• 6. Save your wallet balance and restore it — save one actual balance and restore it in another session.
• 7. Store your economy data in your own DataTable — Separate economy configuration from game logic.
• 8. Final exercise: a generator shop — Integrate a balance, purchases, configuration and saving in a generator shop.

Optional extensions

• Replace the wallet with Safe and compare the work required — Use a Safe component with checked reads.
• Test context with your own variables — Understand why a value can belong to a context.
• Calculate totals and statistics for an array — Summarize several balances with the appropriate aggregation.
• Decide whether your project allows negative values — Choose the numerical policy required by your economy.
• Check events and networking from your own Actor — Distinguish a local event from a network update.
• Use AI to inspect and edit a specific asset — Ask an assistant to inspect a practice asset and review its work.
• Sum batches of values with SIMD from C++ (optional) — Call the C++ batch API and interpret each output position.
• Save other types: Packed, Safe and Context-Bound — Prepare and restore other types without confusing memory with storage.

Reference documentation

See the plugin documentation for each function’s parameters, results and limits.