So I jumped into all things UE4 a couple months ago and have been trying without any programming knowledge to learn as much as I can from a wide assortment of game related information. But what is constantly vexing me is a desire to have procedural blueprints to speed up production, but every time I get my hands on something (like the procedural learning project that was released a few weeks back) it seems to have too many holes in it to use and complexity for a novice to understand (especially if it contains any C++ elements).
This has me thinking I might just end up paying someone to build what I need. Yet I’ve never contracted this sort of work so I don’t know what I’d even be looking.
Can anyone give me some ideas on what these sort of things would cost?
That’s like saying: “Hey, How much is it to hire a chef for a day?” - Everyone has different rates It’s better to just post on the “Got Work? Looking for Talent” explaining what you need and how much you can spend. These forums are filled with people who won’t try and take you for every penny and they are quite honest (From what I’ve seen ;P) and would be more then happy to work something out
Sure but I wouldn’t know if I were being taken advantage of or seriously low balling since I have no frame of reference. That was why I was asking for one.
You haven’t given any idea of what you’re actually asking to buy. Without that, nobody can even begin to estimate anything.
But here’s my answer: Too much.
The existing solutions have ‘holes’ or are hard for novices to use because procedural generation is hard. Filling in those holes and making everything extremely easy to use is going to be very, very costly, which is why none of the solutions you found had done it.
In addition, custom solutions are much, much more expensive than solutions that are marketed to the public. This is because selling it to multiple people splits the labor costs between all of them, and labor is super expensive in IT.
It sounds like you’re trying to use Procedural Generation as a crutch that helps you fill out your level design quickly. And that’s a great use for it. But I feel like maybe you’re trying to rely on it a bit too much, and you’d be better off accepting the limitations of existing solutions, and then doing the rest of the stuff manually.
Probably hard to gauge because I don’t think you have a lot of procedural content people sitting around with nothing to do. And it also depends on exactly what kind of content you are going for.
My advice to you is to learn Blueprints. Its a awesome Visual Scripting System, designed with Procedural Content Generation (PCG) in mind. With Blueprints, the ability to programmatically define how to spawn actors and add components (meshes, etc) is PCG at the core. Spawning a cube into the level, is a simple form of PCG. The complexity of the PCG depends on how much work you want the CPU (automation) to do assembling the content. I’m using PCG for everything from spawning the Level Architecture using a DFS Maze Generation Algorithm, Collage Creature Construction, and Modular Melee Weapons w/ Morphing parts. I give away a most of my BPs for FREE, but, if you want to pay, I charge $500 for each system. lol
Learning blueprints might be easier than learning C++, but it still has been very difficult for me to pick up with the limited tutorial documentation Epic had concerning procedural content. Two months of working on blueprints and I still feel like I know nothing.
I saw this really nice system where a person was able to create blueprints of tiles defining doors, walls, hallways, etc. then have them randomly placed. I really like the idea of being able to spend my time producing environment sections then just having levels generated by putting them together. Was something that made me feel I could create a large amount of content even if it was just me working on everything. But I just haven’t been able to replicate a system like that.
post a job offering, describe what you want as best as you can, as clearly as you can. Post what you hope the project will be like and how the content will be used. Ask for bids to help you out. Pick your best option. Or start from the beginning, and try to learn PB… OR make those sections and just hand places them, which is what I would do.
Yeah. This was the best I found, but when I attempted to copy what he had going I couldn’t get it to work nor could I find anyone to tell me what I was doing wrong so I just abandoned it and tried to look elsewhere.
It’s better to just post on the “Got Work? Looking for Talent” explaining what you need and how much you can spend. These forums are filled with people who won’t try and take you for every penny and they are quite honest (From what I’ve seen ;P) and would be more then happy to work something out 
