Actor (AActor)
An actor is basically the lifeblood of any game. Anything you can kind of spawn on demand in the world is essentially an AActor instance. You name it: a character, a chair, a sphere that players can't see but that has behavior of its own? that's an actor!
AActor derives from UObject, but I mean... everything basically worth its salt in this engine is a UObject. This is just one of the first meaningful deviations you'll run into when it comes to talking about Unreal nomenclature.
What You Should Know
- Actors are typically the "spawnable" things you place in the world or in the level.
- There are also actors that DON'T have a spawnable representation, like
APlayerStateandAGameMode AControlleris a unique case that doesn't technically have a visible presentation, but that needs to be spawned in the world and linked to a Local Player.
Spawning Actors
The UWorld instance of your game has the ability to spawn actors, there's SpawnActor and SpawnActorDeferred
Additional Notes
- More later, I guess.