Basic Questions about UE4

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hey guys,
I would consider myself as someone in the “designer” class of people in game developement.
I love creating worlds/things etc.

I didn’t care much about that hobby for a few years now so I forogt most of it, that’s why I want to get some anwsers here.

If I look after “Unreal Engine 4 Physics” , there’s nothing as a result. Are there Physics in the engine? I don’t only mean basic physics like, dropping something will result in it falling down, I mean crushing a wall with a ball or something(as a metaphor).
The only things that show up are models made in 3D-editors and pre-renderd(wich looks quite difficult for me) and then loaded into the engine.

How does the subscription work? AFAIK it looks like I can order it for one month, cancel it and work with the current version as long as I want to, right? For updates I’d have to resubscribe, right?
What other cons does it give me?

What exactly can I do with the engine? Do I have to model all the objects and landcsape-things by myself(in 3DMAX or Blender for example), or is there a community-list for that? Same with textures, are there any open source textures that are free to use, or do I ahve to create my own textures (download them from an open source website)?

Is in-game-terra forming possible in (this) game engine(s)? I’m not looking forward to making a game where you can dig tunnels till infinity, but I want to know if it WOULD be possible without any knowledge of coding? I’ve read something about making a world mesh and substract other mashes from it (sorry if this is wrong, english is not my native language as you can tell).

I know all of these things are somewhat “googleable”, but I didn’t find out much about it.

Thanks a lot guys :)!

2

  1. There is many physics options in UE4, specifically the destruction physics is pretty up there. Look at the elemental demo for some idea of that.

  2. You are right about the subscription, you can pay once, cancel and keep what ever you have. You don’t have any other cons than that, you can still sell your game, you can still buy or download free things from the market and what not.

  3. You do have to make the models in a separate software such as Maya or Blender.
    There is a good thread here to tell you of all the free programs/websites you can use
    https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?57471-Free-Software-Tools-amp-Resources-List

  4. Not entirely sure what you mean by this, there are many ways to go about many things, using blueprint you do not need to know how to code, though it will teach you a lot of the basics albeit visually.

3

Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

But for the physics, that’s exactly what I mean, I looked up the elementals physics and the part where the rocks are dropping down, are prerendered particels from blender (or similar programs) and loaded into the engine.
So it’s not dynamic.

Basically like in the game “Red Faction”.

4

I found this video, so I guess you’Re right, there seem to be physics :).
https://youtube/watch
Is it possible to make a Wall destructable that way? Like, so that it won’t explode, but just break apart?

Pretty much 100% what I mean is showcased in this video-sequenze.

://youtu.be/FIPu9_OGFgc?t=8m35s

Is this possible to do in UE4? And if not, how can I make it work?

For the “Terra Forming - In Game”-thingie, to make it understandable, I mean like in MineCraft, where you can just dig down the ground or into a mountain etc.
Not in the MineCraft style tho… not blocks 'n ****.

EDIT:

Just found a video where the physics seem to be quite good. Not that good, but looks okay to start with.
v=efA0HsK92Tc
Is stuff like that possible in UE4 itself?

Like building a bridge, shooting the pillars of it to bring it down?

5

Okay after digging a bit deeper I found out that what I want to do is possible.

Question now is, how does stuff like this work?
v=f51dzGXyYIg
Is it via blueprint, do i have to code something, or is it just settings on the models?

6

You can do it in two ways:

  1. use the program physX -> download it from the nvidia page and then follow this tutorial: &list=PLXWXR2pLy_hWO6wruIyYVLnQ5-WMxw2hE (should work nearly the same in the UE4 -> in the video he uses UDK (UE3)
  2. use the destruction tool inside the UE4 -> :slight_smile:

You will have to do some basic blueprint work to get some special effects (e.g https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?8656-How-to-make-a-projectile-destroy-a-Destructible-Mesh), but the main stuff is made with the upper tools