I just arrived here from the Unity debacle, will not stay there. With a few years Unity experience, but no C++ skills, where would be the best way to start learning? My goal is to scrap the two weeks of development of my new 2d game and try to make it here.
In all honesty, I hope they come to their senses.
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Just to add my bit to the discussionā¦ If at any point (hypotheticaly speaking) Epic decides to do this, can they legally do it, according to their current running licenses? Can any company retroactively affect developers like this?
I just made a lenghty post on reddit to list my personal favorite guides & tutorials. You will find great content creators in there. Iād recommend watching a few of those to get a feel for Unreal then look for a more specific thing.
if you have no intent on learning C++ you can learn blueprints, but if you want there is a great Udemy course for UE C++.
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Welcome, some thoughts for you as your start your journey:
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Unreal Engine is a beast, like a race car, where Unity is more like a family Sedan. It requires a lot more work to get going but once you do the results can be impressive.
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Donāt fight the engineā¦ thereās a lot of functionality available for you right out of the box. Learn as much as you can about the core classes and youāll find that you avoid reinventing the proverbial wheel. The documentation can be sparse but the engine source is there and you should invest time reading it.
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Blueprints are great for prototyping and iteration, but at some point youāll find the need to move the heavier logic into C++. Modern C++ has come a long way, and while intimidating for newcomers, you donāt really have to mess around with templates and pointers. Unreal provides special parameter specifiers ( UPARAM() ) and smart pointers which manage garbage collection (still practice good coding standards!)
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Going to be blunt with you and any other Unity 2D devsā¦ 2D is doable in Unreal, and with some work you can get great results but it seems like overkill. Godot has come a long way and has fast iteration times.
Best of luck!
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The unity pricing change has pushed me to finally try the switch also!
It will be interesting to see how long it will take me to recreate my current project (very early stages) in Unreal.
Good luck to everyone who this has pushed to ātry the other sideā 
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Godot for 2D for sure.
Godot for simpler 3D games too.
Unreal for everything else.
Hard to answer without knowing what works best for you. Doing: prototyping / experimentingā¦ Watching: youtube / vimeoā¦ Reading: docs / blogs. Start anyway by downloading all the free packs. Then try prototyping or making simple games and learn that way. Or watch lots of YouTube tutorials and go from there. Fair warning: YT tutorials are filled with bad habits!
You donāt need to learn UE C++ to make 2D games. You donāt even need to learn C++ for a lot of game types in Unreal (just as long as you donāt need to mod the engine and donāt need absolute cutting edge performance). But of course that means you have to be āokā with working with BP spaghetti. Or wait for Verseā¦ Or try some of the unofficial 3rd-party scripting plugins. 
Anyone still heavily invested in Unity needs to create an urgent exit plan. Unityās demise has been coming for years. Recent markers include the CEO publicly shaming its developers as āidiotsāā¦ Unity is just following the ages old tradition and wall street slave model of āa boot stamping on a human face - foreverā. 
So things are only going to get worse from here. 
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Tx great advise.
This. Very much this!
Even if you donāt program in C++, having the engine source, and running find-in-all-files across it to figure out how something is implemented, is very helpful.
Also, before rushing in and implementing something the first way that comes to mind, reading through the Lyra game source code to see how it works there, can be helpful. Sometimes, it turns out the engine already had that problem when supporting Unreal Tournament (which really was the driver for the engine architecture, before Fortnite came around) and thereās something built-in that you just wouldnāt know if you didnāt go looking for it.
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Another Unity refugee hereā¦
Thank you very much for the advice!
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Hello, another Unity dev. Switching to Unreal. Actually Iām a seasoned C++ dev so that wouldnāt be a problem. Itās just ā¦ sad times.
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I am a Unity refugee too. I think I will start here UE first hour
But later I am not sure should I stick with UE website learning content or the YT materials like this: UE5 Starter Course YT
Any advice on that?
I watched some tutorials, read the docs on unity developers coming to UE, I have been trying for 3 hours to create a canvas with a simple background for a 2D top down game, still havenāt figured it out, I drag the blueprint that has the image in it into the scene and nothing happens lol. This engine is very confusing to say the least. I am more than willing to learn though, since Unity has become so greedy, I donāt want to go back.
The Epic documentation is generally a good way to go. Just make sure that you have selected a recent engine version (5.2, or 5.3) in the top left popup menu; sometimes it sends you back to version 4.
If you run into something where it seems the Epic docs are talking about things you donāt know what they are, you might want to take a while for YouTube videos for an alternative point of view, and then come back.
In general, youāre going to have to spend some time learning a new big system like this, so dive in, try things, and be prepared to re-learn and throw away experiments for a few weeks before you get going for real
Thanks for the help and direction. I looked at some, well, all of the 2D tuts I could find and they all reference a side scroller template, however, I click on blank and all I can do is create that, I donāt have a window pop up like in the videos with templates. Is this normal? Im on newest UE5 on macOS if that helps.
It may be that the side scrolling template hasnāt been updated to the latest version of the engine.
Your option is to install an older version of the engine, or re-create the template yourself.
Worst case, you can install 4.27 and use the templates there. There have been some changes up to version 5.3, but most of the 4.27 broad strokes are still useful. (The biggest change is probably the new input system, but learning the old one, and then watching a youtube video for how to upgrade, is not that bad of a path.)
(Just checked 5.x templates, and, yes, they dropped the 2D templates in 5.x. 4.27 has it, though.)
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Hey just popping by. Have you checked out the Cobra Code videos on 2D games in unreal? Iād say thatās a good place to start for 2D as an unreal beginner myself.
That wonāt workā¦ I just watched thousands of videos on YouTube. Nobody trusts Unity anymore. Rest in peace.