Best way to study the docs?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

My name is Adam, and I’m starting off with UE4. I know I want to focus on level designing so I’ve been reading the documentation, but I feel like I am just all over the place with the reading. My goal is to be ready to create a map for Playerunknown Battlegrounds when Bluehole decides to open that up to the community.

I guess my question here is how is the best way to study the documentation so I feel like I am accomplishing steps towards my goal, rather than being all over the place?

2

Try making or modding a level and only read the relevant documentation for what you are trying to do.

3

So should I try downloading one of the games in the modding section of the launcher and work with it even if I’m not trying to mod for that said game?

4

Definitely. Experience modding any game will carry over to other games, especially if they are using the same engine. I’d suggest the Robo Recall or Unreal Tournament in particular, there’s a decent amount of documentation specifically for those.

There’s also a lot of free content from Epic games in the market place if you want assets to work with, or want to work with an environment closer to Battlegrounds.

5

I will look into those. Thank you for the advice.

7

Not just level designing alone. Making a level is the first thing I want to do because I fell like it can be the easiest. I want to learn it all, I really do, but I don’t want to be all over the place with my studies.

I do well with structured learning and hands on practice, so I’ve been watching tutorials and following along with other guides. I know there’s a lot more to building a mod than just making a map, but how do you decide on what to focus on first.

Like when a teacher hands out a syllabus, you have some idea what you will learn and what the teacher is going to teach. You know what projects will be due on what dates and so on. That’s the type of structure I’m looking for. Unfortunately there are no schools around here that teach this stuff. There is Meetup where I have talked with other people in Cincinnati who do game development, but that stuff isn’t really for beginners like me. There is a Unreal Development group in Columbus, but that’s to far for me to meetup with them so its up to the docs. When I read the doc’s, albeit most of them are short, they tend to lead me away from what I originally started to read them for.

I hope I didnt confuse you guys. Just a newb looking for answers.