Beginner with a dream ...

Hello everyone,
I’m a normal guy age 28 from the middle east, currently I work as a hardware tester/integrator for a medical company and everything sounds cool.
My first encounter with “unreal” was in a very well-known and successful iOs game known as infinity blade. At that time I did not know anything about game engines, what they are or what they do …
That being said, I was always a fan of action RPG games, I dont consider myself a gamer though cause I don’t check regularly about new future games or read any articles/game magazines or any of that sort, however, some few games have largely captured my heart and imagination and I really feel that, just as art and imagination and good story telling is very important to the film industry, it is as important as well to the gaming industry.

These few games I was talking about are blizzard’s big hit games: Warcraft3, WoW, and Diablo 3. I also was a big fan of heroes might and magic 3, and 6, and dedicated lots of my time to them.
I guess the reason I liked those games (blizzard’s), was the good ol’ school lore of orcs and humans and specifically the orcs ending story have made such huge impact on me that I felt the need to follow the story up and check regularly for any news, and most importantly made me buy WoW and since then I’m hooked to it.

Anyways, I won’t take any longer as is not the right time or forum section to talk a lot about myself, just thought it is important to introduce myself along with my interests in gaming and my influences.

I have few questions for the devs or experienced people in the community:

I have no experience what so ever with gaming or game engines, I know some programming (we did few back when i studied electronics), but nothing worth mentioning. I would like to ask, what are my chances, If I ofcourse bought the unreal engine 4, read all documentations, watched tutorial videos, to make a game such as diablo 3 for iOs or android ? and could I do it alone or do I need a team for such project? I have a friend who is finishing studies in computer science in germany, he could be my partner.

Also, would I need more than unreal engine 4 to make the game of my dreams? like, maybe unity3d, or some c++ programming, or anything else …

Diablo3-like game would probably be the first project in my mind, but I also have other ideas in my mind that I’m so excited about.

Thanks for reading and hope everyone is enjoying unreal engine 4!

Welcome in the UE4 community! :smiley:

You will also need a 3d program (e.g 3ds , maya, blender,…), something for textures (photoshop, gimp), for programming (visual studio express,…) and when you have a team also something to organise tasks

You can do everything with the UE4! You just need plenty of time. :slight_smile: A team is always good, because you can split up the tasks and everbody can concentrate onto one part

Hello there, and welcome :slight_smile:

For someone just starting out I highly recommend going through Epic’s video tutorials, they show you everything you need to know to make your own game. Programming is not necessary, you can use Blueprints, which are a Node-based visual scripting system that works by chaining together multiple nodes to perform certain functions. If you feel more comfortable with C++, then you can use it as well, whichever you like best.

When you create a new project with the editor for the first time, you will notice that there are ready made templates that have the basic game setup for you (for example, FPS has camera, arms, and weapon equipped, top-down has a character to move around the screen, etc) so that you can instantly hit play once it loads, and it will play as expected. So creating a Diablo like game is easily possible, and even has a template for you to start with.

For learning the engine I would start with the official UnrealEngine youtube page showing all of the various playlists. To get familiar with the engine, I would watch all of the playlists with names starting as “Getting Started…” or “Introduction to…”, and then moving on to some of the more in depth topics as you progress.

From there, if you ever want to know more about how something works (or why it won’t work! :p) head on over to the Documentation here, you can search for a topic or just browse the content.

And last but far from least, ask questions here on the forums! The forums are very welcoming here, we have a great community of designers & developers that will help you achieve your dream, so if you are ever stuck just create a thread about it and we will help you fix it! :slight_smile:

EDIT: as mentioned you will need a couple of programs to get the most out of the engine. If you are on a budget, both Blender (creating 3d models/animation) & GIMP (photo editing app similar to photoshop) are free to use.

If you already own, or have some cash to burn, there is 3dsMax or Maya for 3d Models and Animation, and then Adobe Photoshop for creating textures. Beyond that there are many other programs that could help, but while starting out I would limit it to a 3d Modeling/Animating tool and a Photo editing tool.

Re

Thanks for the quick and helpful replies!
I forgot to mention, there is a college in here that teaches game design, and in their curriculum they focus a lot of time on unreal engine 3 (maybe they’re upgrading to 4 now …) and Maya, along with other stuff … in the course of 3 years study. My question is, since those colleges usually charge for a lot … and unjustly a lot … I was wondering if it is worthy the time and money invested or I could just do it alone as you mentioned here with videos and tutorials, and learn Maya alone at home. Thanks!

In my experience, game design is not something you should learn in a college, if you have a solid idea of a game you want to make, and you play/played several different kind of games to have a solid context, just learn the tools required to make it happen, don’t waste time going to college.

Of course, it depends on what your goal is, if you want to work in a game company, then going to college would be useful, if you just want to make a game, I wouldn’t.

My 2 cents.

There’s a lot of useless training programs out there, you need to look at the curriculum and look at the quality of work produced by the students to see if it’s any good. There’s a ton of learning material online (and free) so it’s only worth taking a class if you find a good program.

As far as other stuff, it’s possible to do on your own, however, realize that starting from nothing means you have a really long time that it will take to learn what you need and be able to produce the game, years. Any of those things can take up your time in learning (programming, 3D modeling/animation, game design) and learning them all is a huge number of things. Even for someone who knows what they’re doing it would take a lot of work just to make the game–that is assuming you want to make a game like it but not as complex.

I personally think you can reach the same level of quality by learning game dev. by your own :slight_smile: -> there are plenty of tutorials , helpful communities, articles, videos,…

game dev. schools ( guy has many useful videos on his channel) :wink:
?v=nmdGZk-fF98

sweet, after all the helpful replies and links been given to me here, I decided to start alone or with a small team that I will assemble from scratch and see where that leads us. I’m so excited about and hopefuly I could some day make the game(s) of my dreams and be creative. :slight_smile: Thanks all

For 2D graphics, you could also use Krita. Krita is a free painting software. If you pair with a graphic tablet (Waccom like), it would be easier for you to texture/paint your 3D assets.

**I’m sure you can make a game and I wish you the best of luck on you way to doing so it’s a long and hard road going from scratch but your chances of success rest entirely on your resilience and ability to bounce back even when you run into a obstacle. I would personally recommend you learn a little C++/Programming even if you don’t use it to make your game it’s good to understand the basics of programming for anyone who wants to make games. I too have started on wanting to make a game just by my love of video games, it’s another way of story telling. **

that is exactly what it is. another way of story telling. thats my passion for gaming along with the ability to inspire and indulgence in imagination and fantasy of your own. :slight_smile:

i’m thinking since i have a friend with computer science degree from germany, i will study unreal engine by heart, and find a 3rd person with great maya capabilities and establish a team. would combination be enough to pull it off? ofcourse given that we give our all to it …

Maya is not even in the same league as cheap. If you intend to take the project commercial you may want to look into Maya LT which will run you around $30 a month. If you want to learn Maya then the student version is free to learn on. Blender is also free and worth looking into.

For pixel art images Aseprite has done me well ://www.aseprite.org/

**Absolutely that sounds do-able. Maya has some great 3D programs, but they are going subscription based payments 3ds is like $2000/year now so it’s not easy for anyone working on independent game developers to afford it which is sad. Also I don’t know if you have watched Indie Game the Movie but if you haven’t I really think you should watch it, it gives you an idea of indie game development is like. Best of luck man! **