Do you think watching tutorials and constantly asking for help on this answerhub to make your game makes the game yours? I have been using Ue4 for a while but I still barely know any of it. I would feel kind of guilty to complete a game and sell it if it was based on tutorials and questions that were answered. What do you think?
I know that this place is for asking for help when creating a game but I would like to hear your thoughts.
I think that the one thing that actually belongs to me is my assets. I never take peoples models or textures. I take my own textures or 3d model my own meshes. I dont even use the marketplace.
What do you do when you go to college to learn coding? I studied web development at one point and my industry veteran professors once said that there aren’t too many days when he isn’t still consulting a book for work. It’s not a bad thing to stay fresh or seek help when stuck.
Point is that people aren’t perfect. We all use references, whether they’re a book, tutorials, Answerhub, or asking a colleague. I wouldn’t feel bad about having to use these things to complete a game, or any piece of complex software for that matter.
It depends on what you mean. Legally, it certainly does make it yous, since it’s within your right to utilise tutorials to create a product. In regards to identity, you can make a fairly standout game, depending on what tutorials you follow and how well adjusted and incorporated they are into your project.
However, I wouldn’t suggest building your own Game around tutorials. For a couple of reasons:
As you suspected, some tutorials are very popular and very recognisable. It can, at times, really compromise the identity and what people think of your game, as well as how unique it is to play. People rarely make tutorials on niche things, people make tutorials for things that people think everyone will be looking for, so generic things, which will make your game feel generic, and you wont lose the game’s identity because you followed a tutorial, it’ll lose its identity to the fact it doesn’t have one, and is very generic. You want to make things that feel fresh, and you wont find that by following a tutorial.
Tutorials are great for learning the in’s and outs of the engine. But they are often flawed, specifically amateur ones, of which makes up the majority of tutorials. If you follow tutorials, you WILL pick up terrible habits that affect optimisation, be less fluid, overly complex, too simple, badly written, the list goes on. Also, most of the time, they will show you how to make it, but you wont understand how it works (which will make it hard to fix if it breaks, and hard to adjust and make unique), so it wont have made you a better designer, just a better copier. The only tutorials I’d ever suggest following while learning the engine are ones from Epic Games themselves, and absolutely look at the “WTF is…” and “HTF do i…” tutorials. They often don’t show you what to make, but show you the tools you need to make them. He teaches you how to make games, not how to copy ideas.
Lastly, Youtube videos wont provide you with a suitable concept for your own game. When wanting to make a game, don’t think of a mechanic and then look up a tutorial on that mechanic. You’ll probably end up with something not suited to your idea. There are 100 ways to do a single mechanic. For example: a grappling hook. If you want to make this mechanic, you should come up with your own way of implementing it. And to do that, you need to understand how the game engine works and how IT can work for your idea. Do you want something physics based, snappy, slow, restricted, or free flowing? You don’t get enough freedom with tutorials since it will inevitably end up a way that isn’t suited to your game.
You know you are doing games right when you ask yourself “How do I make this, and what nodes will help me here?” instead of “What tutorials might I be able to find on this?”. You will also find that you make things way faster when you use this method, since you will learn way quicker, and know how to make things off your own back. You also wont need tutorials for much stuff, since you’ll know in advance how to re-use methods you have used before. It’s a steep curve to start with. You’ll be hitting walls, stripping things down, and even starting all over, but it is worth it, since you’ll never have to worry about your game NOT being yours. It will, in every aspect, be unique to you, and you will have the skills to make things nobody else has made.
Learn to speak the language of the game engine. Pick ONE cool feature or node in the vast library and make a small thing with it. A mechanic, an interaction, or just something simple. You’ll learn lightning fast that way good luck!
Edit: I missed a part. YES! Absolutely ask for help when you need it. Always ask for help and try to look things up when they don’t work. But be specific, don’t ask people how to make a mechanic, be more technical.
If you want a snappy grapple hook mechanic like Lost Planet 2, don’t ask “How do I make a grapple hook mechanic”, ask “How to do linearly move a player from one Vector 3 to another Vector 3”. Have your idea, try it, and if it doesn’t work, look for help. It should be your creativity that drives the project, and the assistance of others that helps you. Not the other way around.
good luck!