Question: Does Unreal Engine Use JavaScript?

Answer

Unreal Engine, developed by Epic Games, principally uses C++ as its core programming language for game development and scripting. However, it also supports a visual scripting system known as Blueprints, which allows developers to create complex behaviors without writing code.

While JavaScript itself is not natively supported in Unreal Engine for game logic, there are ways that developers can integrate JavaScript into their projects:

1. Web Browser Plugin: Unreal Engine comes with a Web Browser plugin that can be used to display web content within a game or application. Through this, you can run JavaScript within a webpage context.

2. Third-party Plugins: There have been third-party efforts to introduce JavaScript or TypeScript (a superset of JavaScript) as a scripting language in Unreal Engine. These plugins, like Unreal.js or Puerts, allow developers to write scripts using JavaScript/TypeScript.

   Example of using Unreal.js in an Unreal Engine project:

   // A simple actor manipulation script written in JavaScript through Unreal.js
   let actor = new Actor(GWorld);
   actor.SetActorLocation(new Vector(0, 0, 100));

3. HTML5 Packaging: Previously, Unreal Engine had support for exporting games to HTML5, which would allow the use of JavaScript in conjunction with the compiled UE4 project running in a browser. However, official support for HTML5 was deprecated after Unreal Engine version 4.24.

4. Custom Integration: Advanced users may choose to integrate JavaScript by creating custom plugins or extensions; however, this requires in-depth knowledge of both the engine's architecture and the ECMAScript language specification.

In conclusion, while Unreal Engine does not utilize JavaScript as a primary scripting language, it is possible to use JavaScript indirectly through various methods mentioned above. Nonetheless, these integrations are typically more experimental and may not offer the same performance or feature set as native C++ or Blueprint scripting.