Download

Better Explained Video Tutorials?

Unreal Engine Feedback for Unreal Engine team
#1

hey,

I watched a couple of the tutorials from the YouTube page for unreal engine (mostly blueprints) and I just wanted to mention that its really hard to keep up and actually understand whats going on.

You see, the tutor explains how to solve that certain problem but doesn’t actually explain why it works or what exactly he is doing -at least not in a way that I understand it. I end up just copying what he does and “memorize it as a solution” instead of actually knowing the concept behind it.

A couple of suggestions include:
-explaining his plan before actually starting.
-explaining at least briefly how the functions work and how they are useful to solving the problem
-links in description to parts of documentation which might help.

Anyway this is all just in my point of view, i might be the only one who faces this problem in that case I think i should start studying the whole documentation XD

#2

It would be helpful to know which videos you are talking about since we have quite a few available and there are several different instructors. I can see links to other resources being useful, assuming those resources exist for the topic of the video. Sometimes the videos come online before the written documentation so it isn’t always possible to have links.

#3

I haven’t watched all that many videos, only a handful, but the problems I’m facing are in blueprints since cause there’s all those events and functions and variables.

Hope you don’t plan to beat that instructor up or anything like that :wink:
Hahahahahahaha

#4

Learning BP is just like learning a programming language API.
It’s impossible to explain what every single node and operation does, otherwise, a 10 min vid would become 2 or 3 hours long.
The tutorials always assume that you have some background knowledge, like basic 3d math and physics.
You should follow the tuts, research, experiment and experiment and experiment.

#5

You have a valid point, and i don’t expect the instructor to go through everything, but I do expect him to have me understand what the concept is and how he is doing it, cause you know how every engine has it’s own way of doing things.

Again it might only just be me, it might be that I don’t have enough knowledge about the engine…but aren’t the tutorials supposed to help me in that part? Understanding the engine through problem solving?

#6

Can’t really agree here…Most tutorials are elaborate enough for what they try to convey and do explain the basic mechanisms involved. Some of Zak’s tutorials even include theory parts. These tutorials are there to give you a head start and push you in the right direction, from there you can delve deeper into a topic by checking out the docs, the API, the Wiki or tutorials done by the community…

#7

Can’t agree either, this tuts are pretty useful, simple and entertaining at the same time.
Almost every video series have introduction video with theory and concepts.
I recommend you to play with ContentExample rooms before video to understand some basic UE4 concepts, then learn from videos and stick to this**Manual **](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/index.html) and this one Programming Guide](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/index.html) if you want to understand what under the hood

#8

[/QUOTE]
Can’t really agree here…Most tutorials are elaborate enough for what they try to convey and do explain the basic mechanisms involved. Some of Zak’s tutorials even include theory parts. These tutorials are there to give you a head start and push you in the right direction, from there you can delve deeper into a topic by checking out the docs, the API, the Wiki or tutorials done by the community…
[/QUOTE]

Oh well I did say that it might just be me.

The thing is that I expect the tutorials to be a replacement for at least part of the documentation, I mean if I were to watch a YouTube tutorial on programming I don’t expect myself to read c++ documentation after I finish.

One of the videos which I didn’t understand was the keyboard and mouse movement, I mean from the beginning I didn’t know how he was planning to do it so I was clueless from the start, he just started placing nodes, then he started getting co ordinate a for the pawn which is to move and zeroing out the roll and pitch and then wired it into the other node without explaining why he did that.

Some questions that I had after I was finished:
Why did you just have up and right events and not anything else for keyboard? Couldn’t he have explained how that still works?
What’s the difference between all this and just having a translate node which just applies movement by certain amount?

Anyway it might just be cause I have little knowledge about the engine…(but that’s why I watched the tutorial!!!)

#9

Its ok, I see that you are new too the programming language and game development in general. The tutorials are mostly in game/engine theory not general programming theory. If you read the very basics of any programming language they will show you the newbie way of what does what, once you understand the principles of code you then will own blueprint!

#10

I think that shows where the problem is. You have to think about game development differently. It isn’t a passive learning thing at all, you have to actively seek it out. If you watch a youtube tutorial on programming, the one thing you SHOULD be thinking about is looking for additional material. Reading a book, asking a friend, taking a class etc. It isn’t a thing you can learn in the abstract either, you have to go out and try things, not be put off by them breaking etc.

I’ve taught game dev for the last decade or so to undergrads and the one thing that sets the successes apart from the failures is the ability for them to self motivate in their learning. What anyone who instructs is trying to do, is to guide you towards your own learning path, not spoon feed you exactly what you want to know. I encourage you to go beyond just unreal engine knowledge and learn about game development and programming for other engines (and even beyond games). The videos that Epic produces are actually pretty good for people who are their core audience for this toolset (i.e. the kinds of people who might be using Unity already). What they do in those videos is take a reasonably easily understood concept, like turning on a light, and then explain how to achieve that specifically using the tools in Unreal. They imply that you know 1) what a light in a game tends to offer 2) That there is a typical way of doing things to objects in a game 3) That you understand core concepts like variables and events.

My point being that if you find the material not good for you right now, then you need to supplement it with other material. As you can probably tell by the other answers to this thread, most people don’t have a problem with the material, so it suggests that you need to learn more and then come back to it. But never give up that idea that you can go out and learn more and come back. Don’t ever stop learning, or seeking new ways to learn, because that is the difference between a guy who works at Epic and one who doesn’t. You can be **** sure that each and every one of the guys doing the tutorials had the same kind of issues as you are having, but had the tenacity to overcome any problems.

Sorry, turned out to be a bit of a rant, but I see it in my own students sometimes, the idea that someone should spoon feed knowledge to you.