How do you actually get good at game development using Blueprints only?
The documentation for Blueprints is outdated and poor, and YouTube videos rarely go in-depth. Most of them just show solutions, which forces new developers to follow along instead of truly understanding what they’re doing.
Paid courses have a similar problem—they make it feel like you’re learning as you build a project, but in reality, you’re often just copying the instructor.
So what is the most straightforward, no-nonsense way to truly learn game development from scratch in Unreal Engine game dev
Reverse engineering. “Hear me now and understand me later.” Take any free tutorials and templates, and figure out where and how you have to modify them based on your specific needs.
Over time, you will learn (like a spoken language) finite pieces of the engine; then put those pieces together.
Quick it isn’t, but if you’re learning to do instead of learning to learn, the desire to complete your project will keep you motivated.
Think–learning a language just because, versus because you’ve met someone.
How you learn to speak as a baby? Copying what others are saying without knowing the meaning.
I’d suggest making the same thing from 3 different sources. For example:
Make a door interaction happen. A tutorial is about a button opening a door using ray trace+input. Another is the player stepping on a platform using collision to move the door. Then a guide is to shoot a gun and break the door open.
Do this on multiple topics and you will eventually get good at blueprints. Game development it self is full of nonsense. Always different ways to solve the same issue.
This is great advice when you are a beginner, i am more of an amateur than a complete beginner. I have a good grasp of basic concepts like making simple collision and animation logic or shoot projectiles, but in terms of creating a full-fledged game system and completing a game loop i can’t figure out. For example, Clair obscur how do they approach learning blueprints in Unreal to making a AAA-level game in 5 years?
From personal experience, I would say just head directly for the first thing you think you can just about handle, then move onto the next, and so on…
Somewhere in the beginning of year 2, you will probably bin and re-code most of the things you’ve made, simply because your knowledge has grown so much. Somehow, you get to understand things by a sort of osmosis.
I’ve never seen a good explanation of vector math / material coding / interfaces / inheritance / modularity etc, for example, but you have to go through the motions yourself, because it’s almost impossible to explain why things are the way they are to a beginner.