Hello everyone,

I began working on UE4 a couple of weeks back. And I have to say I am loving it. But I also feel at times that the amount of tutorials online sometimes overwhelm me.
So I decided to come up with the road map on how to proceed further. I woukd be happy if someone could recommend their own or suggest and add something to mine. And know I'll be working alone for an indefinete period of time because finding people to collaborate over here is really tough, near impossible. So I'll have to learn a bit of everything too.
I would like to work with a team or some individual or a larger team. I do not plan on being an idie dev, but wouldn't mind it if I have to be.

So to begin with.
1. Get the bare basics down. Moving around in the window. How to make foilage, landscape and meshes.

2. As I know I would feel impatient and would want to get on with making games, basic ones. So I thought lets get the basic games listed in UE4 tutorials down.

3. I didn't want to leave the basics totally, I'll then do the entire basics from Virtuos Learning Hub beginners playlist. Get the general idea of things.

4. Then get down to a bit more complex things, using Shooter Tutorials get the game up and running. Its a big project and will take time.

5. Then I will start to get into the depth of the other systems in UE4. Materials, UI, AI, physics, optimization and everything pretty. Using the the documentation and if something needed tk supplement it.

6. Now is when I start to lose my way. Either start making a game of my own using the free assets in the store, which no doubt is great. Or learn the 3D Asset Production Pipeline and get my own models and assets. But I believe I would have to learn a bit of the production pipeline, but the point being that is that a good time to start?

7. I love AI and gameplay. So I think now will be the time to get down and make some complex AI and nice gameplay elements. But shoukd I just make them as standalone project or incorporate into a game?

8. Depending on how 7th play out this will work. I would now want to make a full fledged game and incorporate everything that I have learned and use it.

9. Now I should iterate and keep on getting some more games out. Try to find some people to work along now!

10. Well I guess this is too much in the future to decide what will happen then.

So I believe this could be my way of how to get started and learn things and perfect my skills. I would be happy if someone could give their opinion. Also some references/tutorials on how get those would also be nice.

Thanks for reading the entire post
Cheers!

Moving to FB.

All of this looks more or less okay except that you seem to leave actually making games until step six. That's not really a good plan, you might think you're "learning" stuff before then by watching tutorials and tinkering on mostly-existing sample games, but there is no substitute for real practice doing real work. You're also expecting to "learn" a lot of stuff that might be totally unrelated to the first game you make. You don't need to know everything beforehand, in fact you don't need to know much at all.

Think of a (simple) game you want to make. A pong or breakout clone, for example. A simple maze shooter. Build that in Unreal. Learn the things you want to add to that game, but don't waste time learning all the ins and outs of the landscape and foliage system if you're just going to use prefabricated boxes to make a maze and not actually have any landscape.

Unreal makes it really, really easy to get started experimenting with real games. Use that.

Roadmap to professional

1) Start a new project that you will be able to do, be realistic

2) Write/create to the best of your ability and push that as far as you can.

3) Look at what you created, what mistakes were made and what could have been done better and learn from that.

3) Repeat

Some other tips that sit along that process

- While this is going on, be a knowledge sponge.

- If code is wrong do not be afraid to gut it out and replace it with a better solution

- Use source control, source control is your best friend when it comes to code!!!

:)

If you're going to try and create the standard "first game" of pong or breakout, don't use ue4 for it.

Ue4 is a great engine but is pretty 3D centric. You can use paper2d to develop 2D games in UE4 but it's like paying van gough a million dollars to draw a matchstick man. It's overkill and you'll learn lots you don't need to learn at the start.

That said, learning ue4 properly will stand you in good stead and there really isn't any need to go through all the "first code pong" steps if you are starting out with a complex engine.

Good luck!

I'm at the same point you are: just getting started. I've gone through two videos for Unity 3D and I'll likely also get UE4 on one of my days off this week, and while I have yet to make any games, I'll have to agree with the others who have posted here. Nothing reinforces learning quite like putting it to work. I've seen this put to work in the C++ class I've taken and found it to be more helpful than reading the book.

And feel free to PM me if you ever want to collaborate on something while we are both learning how to use these systems. :)