Fin Rovers
Game Mechanics & Narrative designer
Description
Unreal Engine is an immensely popular game engine that is not only powerful, but also free to use. Since high-profile games are continuously being made using Unreal, there is no denying that the engine is an industry standard and important to many developers. As Unreal has such a powerful toolbox to work with and many possibilities for both beginners as experts, I've decided to take the plunge and familiarize myself with the engine so that I may eventually make my own games or contribute to my team.
This page is dedicated towards documenting my journey in learning Unreal Engine. I'll keep this page updated as I go along and learn new things, as well as the projects that I'll keep myself busy with overtime.
The landscape I made to get myself more familiar with the engine
Landscape
The first steps I took into Unreal was to get more familiarity with the different options and tools packaged into the engine. Bearing Unity experience already, I could see similarities in the layout and UI of Unity and Unreal. All the different tools that Unreal presents are a different beast however and will take some time learning and getting used to.
To start off, I decided to follow a lengthy tutorial where most of the basics of Unreal are shown and presented to me in such a fashion that I could easily follow along while getting to know the engine a bit better, with the final task of creating a landscape using multiple tools such as the landscaping and foliage tool, creating different scenes and playing around with the lighting.
This tutorial created a nice starting point for me where I have gotten more acquainted with the engine to start playing with it on my own. The next step:
Blueprints.
First Steps: Learning Blueprints
Creating the landscape was a nice introduction into the functionalities and possibilities of Unreal, which gave me enough room to familiarize myself with the basics.
Having learned the basics of the Engine, it was time for me to start looking at Blueprints, the node-based scripting language integrated into Unreal that allows games to be made without writing code. This is one of the most important parts regarding Unreal Engine, as Blueprints can allow me to create my own prototypes and game concepts.
It will take some time to really learn how to use Blueprints effectively, as learning a whole scripting language takes a lot of patience, time and repetition.
For me to truly learn the ropes, I've decided to start with a lengthy learning course of Unreal 4 and Blueprints that will guide me towards creating my first few games.
In the video to the right, I've tried to script player movement, pickups with a score system, hazards and some small interactions with buttons. The level is more of a demo to get some of the basics under my belt. Taking all of these elements and converting them into a small but playable game is going to be the next step.
This is the first 'level' I made that is dedicated to allowing player control and movement, pickups with sound and a score system, as well as hazards and win/lose conditions.
