First 6 Months Learning Unreal Engine (No Programming Experience)

six months ago i decided to learn unreal engine from scratch and make my first game here's what happened i tried learning unreal engine a couple of times in the past but quickly gave up due to its intense learning curve i'd been playing around with unity trying to teach myself programming and how to make my own video games but after many abandoned projects and failed experiments i wanted to commit and actually finish something as many of you can probably relate to i had grand visions of games i would want to make ranging from mmos mobas epic click and play adventure games to 2d platformers but one consistent piece of advice i had been reading all over the internet was start small i decided to make a simple physics based boxing game i'd recently started kickboxing in my spare time and was inspired by that experience unity was really great for learning but was missing many features that i would need to build myself in order to complete this project with my very limited programming experience that simply wasn't an option i knew unreal had all the features i could ever wish for to make my boxing game so about six months ago i downloaded unreal engine and i was determined to stick with it this time i started off my journey with the c-plus plus course from ben tristan on udemy it was uh hard i had an incredibly hard time to keep up with the c plus plus and it didn't make a whole lot of sense in the beginning i took it one day at a time committed to not give up this time i was following a piece of advice i had heard from david whaley creator of the first tree i tried to challenge myself never to have a zero percent day i was determined to do something every single day even if it was only for 20 minutes in time i had completed the whole course and had a couple of small games to show for i had finally broken through the barrier of unreal engine and i was even getting comfortable with c plus after watching some videos online i noticed that people were using this thing called blueprints which is unreal's visual scripting tool it basically allows you to make games without writing a single line of code wait what great so i had wasted one month of my life in 200 bucks awesome well since ben c plus plus course was so good i decided to get his course on blueprints as well i was not disappointed using blueprints made me realize just how much faster i could get a prototype running as opposed to using c plus the workflow felt natural it was fast no constant error messages this was a holy grail for me when it came to making my first game i was blasting through the second course and in a couple of weeks i had finished it and created some simple games using only blueprints wow i could pretty much build my entire game in blueprints and half the time it would take me to write the thing in c plus if not less armed with my new knowledge of blueprints and c plus plus i was ready to dive in and start making my first game so i decided to stick with my idea of making my little physics-based boxing game i knew even this was probably way too big for me but i was really excited about the idea and i really wanted to explore it further i started off by setting up something super simple and hooking up my xbox controller with the simple controls i quickly put together a dummy character made of spheres that could move around and lean in any direction my idea was that you would control the character movement with the left thumbstick and lean the upper body with the right stick so far so good making realistic models of humans and animations though would be way too time consuming so i decided to go with a more cartoony look for the game since i was making the game in 3d that meant i also had to learn blender i already had some experience working with autodesk maya so it didn't take me too long to get up and running with blender the reason i went with blender over maya was mainly due to the small price difference after some frustrating moments of figuring out how to properly export my character with regan animations from blender to unreal engine i finally had my character properly imported with animations and all it was pretty easy to get the character to move but i didn't know how to properly implement the leaning function it was easy with the simple spheres i had but with a fully read character it was a little bit trickier watching the animation tutorials on unreal engine's youtube channel gave me some good pointers on how to implement this feature i was able to get it working just as i had hoped for when it came to the punches i didn't want the player to have to memorize all these buttons for different attacks and then accidentally press the wrong one the idea was that you would have a single punch button for each hand and based on how you lean your character combined with your punch timing you would perform a different attack i was so excited about this eddie and i couldn't wait to dive deeper my indie game journey had finally begun but i had a few other things that i wanted to do before working further on the combat system the next big step for the game was to make your character physics based think human fall flat totally accurate battle simulator basically allowing physics to act on a character instead of just following a rigid animation thankfully unreal engine already has this feature implemented just click click and done or not it didn't quite work as i had hoped initially i was having quite a few issues with this and i couldn't really get it to behave in the way i wanted to again the awesome videos on unreal engine's youtube channel came to the rescue here how you took your based off of after many hours of tweaking testing and watching tutorials i ended up with a result that i felt quite happy with adding physics really added a new layer to the game and it made it feel so much more alive i was super excited to get the physics working this added an unpredictable nature to the game and is something the player needs to get used to and learn to work in their advantage while unreal it was still confusing at times and i had to spend a lot of time watching videos and reading the documentation i was finally starting to get the hang of it and my confidence was growing i worked a bit further on the visuals for the game i created a boxing ring a pair of shorts and i designed the first draft of a logo for the game i spent some time studying the material editor of unreal engine and quickly realized just how powerful this actually is again watching videos was helpful but also exploring the example scene unreal engine provides where you can look at examples of different materials and how they were built working on the cosmetics for the game was fun but i knew i had bigger fish to fry a proper combat system for the game was needed i wanted to implement more attack so i created some animations in blender i started off with a straight punch hook and an uppercut implementing these attacks were tricky and something i had been dreading since the beginning of the project i spent a bit of time thinking about how to do this but in the end i went with a simple approach whenever you lean to one side you load a hook for that arm if you lean back from the state the uppercut will be loaded so when you press the attack button whatever attack is loaded will fire i'm pretty happy with the system it's feeling pretty natural but i'll need to get some other people to try it as well just to make sure that it's not just me you know because i made it i was really happy with how the game was coming along i also played around with implementing some slow-mo in the game maybe when you land a huge hit or a final blow or something it just looks so cool i really want to include it in the game somehow many people wanted me to implement particles in the game i hadn't even opened unreal's vertical editor but it seemed like a cool idea to explore further so after some experiments and tinkering i think i got the hang of it what is going on sort of i created some trails for the gloves i also tried adding a shockwave effect which looked super cool in slow motion i also tried some lighting effects and many of you had also suggested to add some sort of comic book text bubble effect i do think it looks really cool but i'm still not sure where to take this some of these effects don't really mix very well with one another anyways it was really fun to learn and play around with the particles and i definitely want to figure out a way to implement these effects in the game i then moved over to working on what i had feared since the beginning of this project how to calculate damage i suck at math so this part was really worrying me as i knew it would take some math skills i was thinking a lot about this and after working for days on a system i finally had something working that i think is going to be good i'm super happy with it and i'm able to send damage numbers through to the opponent and yeah it looks like it's going to work i'm now about four months into the project and it's been around six months since i started learning unreal engine seriously staying on track has definitely been challenging especially while also having a full-time job a wife a dog and somewhat of a life at least there's obviously a lot left to do but it's been such an amazing journey so far and i can't wait to continue making this game if you want to learn unreal engine i can highly recommend checking out ben's courses on udemy i'll leave links in the description they really helped me out a lot and i don't think i would be where i am today if it wasn't for those courses they're also really fun to follow along with if you like this video then chances are that you love my devlogs i put my heart and soul into those videos to make them entertaining informative and super binge-worthy so if you're looking for some inspiration to get motivated with your own projects definitely check them out so yeah i hope you want to come along on this journey with me if you want to support me and the development of this game then please subscribe to this channel and leave me some comments with your ideas we also have a growing discord community where people can ask questions leave suggestions fan art and much much more for the game and yeah that's it for me and thank you for watching this video and yeah see you in the next upload bye bye

Channel: Pontypants

Views: 800,658

Keywords: Learning Unreal Engine, Learning Game Development, Unreal Engine, Gamedev, indie gamedev, How To Make Games, How To Make A Game, Unreal Engine Progress, 6 months learning unreal engine, UE4, Unreal Engine Progress 6 months, Unreal Engine Progress And Result, How To Make A Video Game, Gamdev journey, Unreal Engine 6 months, How To Learn Unreal Engine, Making Video Games, Make Games In Unreal Engine, Making my first game in Unreal Engine, physics game, indie game, game dev

Id: w2xKPrThHuE

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/wrongsidedcircle]

You never cease to amaze me with the sheer quality of your game. Keep up the good work!

[u/ElChozi]

Mate, your game is awesome. Keep up the good work

[u/Trey_Carey]

Ayyy, Never thought i'd see you here! Been following your Youtube Devlogs! I submit my humble request to be put on the wall.