How I learned Unreal Engine

You can find a lot of questions “how I can learn c++?“, “how I can learn game development?“, “how to create my first game?” and others similar in the depths of the Internet. I remember times when I was asking the same question.

I was a producer dreaming that some day I will be able to do what my team is capable of and of course I always wanted to create games not just managing production – which is basically boring.

So I started to invest lot of time to learn stuff:

When going to bed instead of watching new series I was watching UDK youtube tutorials – even the same couple of times to understand thing better. Basically understand things was most important for me but I think that I was understanding 5% of the stuff tops.

Try understand – watch and read things couple of times in a row (even if you already know how to do stuff! Watch it again to preserve knowledge! ) but if you can’t understand all of it – move one to another topic after couple of days.

Don’t think that you can learn create games quickly just by watching or reading stuff. You can’t. Time is clue here and you will need a lot of time. Don’t stop when you can’t learn something quickly. It will take time and you will see over time that you learned another piece of stuff.

I was trying to do small games using UDK – shooter based of course as Unreal Engine is feature complete for it. (and still is) Thanks to that I always have topic to learn. For example I needed to shoot a projectile – I was learning about projectile creation in general. Basically one topic was triggering another three. My topic list was always big. Thanks to that I always know what do learn next. When my motivation was falling I was changing project.

If you want to learn Unreal Engine you should have a “project” you are working on. Small one. Shooter based. Thanks to that you will always have big todo list to learn stuff. Don’t be afraid to change or modify your project if you stuck for days.

Basically I was doing A->B->A->B with loop for couple of years. I don’t think you can learn creating games in months. You need to invest more time.

Even now I’m watching every video that came from Epic Live Streams. Unreal Engine is growing up, game development is growing up – you need to be on time and learn stuff every day even if you think that you know your stuff already.

Don’t stop learning. Especially if you are senior.

Answer for these questions is simple but very hard to implement in your life – you need to invest your time to learn new stuff from online interactive platforms. But before doing so, you must first read the reviews, like the Codecademy review, for instance. Investment is needed and will take time. In the end you, will be happy that you are sitting (or standing 😉 ) and just making something by hand.

In the book I will be linking with reads and youtube resources. Hope I will be able to help you find a way.

Note about not posting book chapters: currently I'm learning C++. Creating weather plugin and learning replication to be sure that book will cover everything you need to create shooter game. I know you guys are waiting. First chapter is coming slowly. 

4 thoughts on “How I learned Unreal Engine

  1. i see my self in your post …. i have worked with two unfinished games the first one was an RPG in unity3d about 3 months but suddenly the programmer quit the project the second one is with a friend i meet in the net he was the programmer and iam the artist working on s top down spaceship game . we worked on UDK but after year and half of work he decided to quit because he had some problems …!!!
    after that day i decide to learn Unreal Engine 4 blueprint system and C++ programming and i will never want to
    contact with a programmer in the feature (( Do THE HARD CODE BY MY SELF )) … for now iam completing my top down game alone in UE4 and i will finished in this fall of 2017 … Good luck to all dedicated indie peoples

    • It is hard to tell – I’m focusing on UE4 C++ for a year now and have some understanding to customize editor, write own tools and hate Blueprints 😉 I’m getting back to the book.

  2. Your BP tutorial is amazing and it was tutorial which kicked me pretty much forwards, thanks to it as was able to “finish” small game and got so much experience with UE and programming overall. When someone asking for tutorial, i everytime recommend your tutorial. I hope your c++ book also cover some editor/engine code modifications 🙂 just some lookaround whats behind UE scenes. First i was afraid of c++, but if i want to make games seriously its neccessary, and it isnt so hard, imo learning c++ along with unreal is good way to learn c++.

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