Introduction

I started developing a video game with UnrealEngine in my spare time and decided sharing with all of you my progress.

I am not going to show how I code! I am going to show I how think and come up with things, plus it is my first time making a video game using UnrealEngine so I will show my way of (especially through trial and error).

About me

My name is Omer Tal, I am from Israel and I am currently program and develop for 5 years now. I work as an instructor for programming. All my life I loved playing video games and wanted to make them. Now I have the knowledge to start combining my two passions: Gaming and coding.

Where to start?

The way I love learning something new is to go ahead and try it! So to learn how I can make games in UnrealEngine I will first make a project. But an idea is needed for a project... In the past few monthes I found myself go to alot of escape rooms and really loved doing so, that is why I decided my project will be making a 3d escape room themed game.

Planning

Well, when you start a new project in anything I would firstly suggest making a draft with you major planning. Start by asking yourself question and write them down:

• What is the goal?
• Who is the player?
• What obstacles does the player need to overcome?

When you finished thinking of questions, answer them! By now you should have a draft with the main idea of the game. That is very cool, but what about the game itself? So usually I am also planning the structor of my project but since it is my first time making a game in this engine, I need to learn. So I am not planning anything! I just make the first thing I think I should make and move on from there, exploring as I go.

How do I learn?

So by now you probably guessed that I don't know how to build a game in the UnrealEngine and the question that I guess every person will ask is: How do you learn from nothing? Well the answer can be different for each person, I will try and answer it for the most of you. Let's start with an example from the current project - escape room. The main thing about the game is, after the room itself - the doors. You are in a room and need to get out, but there is a door. So how do I make the door function the way I want it to? We will start with something simple, when I get near the door - it will open. I now have an idea! Yay! So I make a door and nothing happens when I get near it... Thats odd, but I really believed in my heart that it will work! So lets see how I really make things work and learn, what I do is the following:

Try a bunch of stuff
Try to write in your code things and see how the intellisense auto-completes you. For our example when I am trying to open the door, what actually am I doing? I what to trigger something when I do somthing (I want to open the door when I am next to it). So I write trigger and see what I can find. In our case a 'TriggerVolume'.
Search the docs
Go to the documentation of what you are currently writing in, let it be in the UnrealEngine or the Java language. In the docs you can search the things you think will relate to you. Most docs have an explanation and examples which are very useful.
Google it
Yes yes, I know you probably sit there and think 'Why shoulden't I just go search on google in the first place?' Well my answer to that is that in the previous methods you go through a process where your mind is thinking and getting stimulated, helping you learn. So by googling you will get your answer to what you are trying to do straight away and that is awesome! Except for the fact that you are definitely not learning here. What I do is not just copy the answer, but explore every aspect of it. Why does this function exist? How did they implement it? Make your mind think.

What I do is go through all those steps, but never stop if I find my answer. Let's say that I try something in my code and it worked! I will go to the docs and search the method I did and see what actually is happening. And after that I will search in google to see other solutions to the same thing I did.

Final words

I will post updates weekly about my progress and share with you how I think when doing what I do.
I hope you enjoyed reading this, and learned something new.