Hello everyone!
I’ve been trying out unreal engine for a time and it feels awesome (well, duh)!
but from all tutorials I’ve seen I’ve been only learning how to MAKE games with UE, not how to DESIGN games with UE (with only skills of UE you have at the moment).
So if anyone knows resources on the topic please let me know
And to not look stupid: I did my homework.
Found extra credits, gamasutra and blogs of some game designers which are great but don’t fundamentally answer my question.
To repeat myself: how to design games with skills you already learned and bring them in life with UE ASAP?
I know I may be missing something on gamasutra but don’t know what.
Thanks in advance.
I think you’re getting confused on what exactly the role of a “Game Designer” is.
You can’t find youtube tutorials on the subject.
Extra Credits is a great resource to help you understand concepts and will get you to think outside the box on subjects and ideas that you should be somewhat familiar with.
Gamasutra is basically Eurogamer for Designers. It’s a great place for news and some information, but ultimately Extra Credits is better anyway.
“To repeat myself: how to design games with skills you already learned and bring them in life with UE ASAP?”
Simply put: You can’t.
That’s not what game design is at the point you’re at.
Game Design is the actual process of put a game from your mind onto paper.
It’s pre-production, production, and post-production.
It’s about understanding the core principles as writing, and gameplay to create something that is worth people’s time.
Let me ask you this: Do you have an idea for your game already?
I have many Ideas. I am more than sure that most will fail. I am sure that under right conditions some will blow gaming world apart.
But that’s not what I’m asking.
I want to fail faster. Make small games, analyze what I did wrong, fix that, learn from that. repeat to hone my skills.
I don’t want to “just make game”. I want to be game designer.
ps: and yes, I may be confusing term. Not sure if that’s related since never used term and asked about something else.
Failing faster isn’t a good thing though, neither is predicting failure.
You should instead go in ready to accept failure, but not encourage it.
That’s not how you learn.
Put it this way, if you go in thinking “this game is going to fail, but that’s ok; that’s good, I want this to fail so I can eventually get to the game that doesn’t fail”…
You won’t gain anything from failing. No new knowledge is going to be given to you that way.
However, if you go in and try your hardest, but find the game to not be what you wanted it to be…you’ll find that you’ll realize why. You’ll understand something new.
Saying that I’m going to fail 9/10 of my tests won’t do anything for me.
Saying I’ll pass 9/10 of my test, resulting in me failing some will push me to do better.
I hope I’m saying something sensible and understandable.
“I don’t want to “just make game”. I want to be game designer.”
Being a game designer is making a game.
It’s about taking your idea and fleshing it out; building upon it.
Honestly, if you really want to be a game designer you should just start being a game designer.
Get a notebook and start writing stuff down, elaborate on your ideas and give them depth.
Just don’t go in with the attitude of wanting to fail so you can eventually get to the good stuff.
You won’t hone skills that way…you can’t rush the learning process or you won’t learn a thing.
I see that my explanaition is bad. Thanks for all answers. Maybe it’s just me who doesn’t get it, so I can’t even explain it properly.
I wanted, maybe, tutorial where instead of “to do camera at this angle we do this, and then this” they go “camera can be like that or like that. for fps it’s okay to do this, but we do that because this and this”. Or something like that. Since almost all how-to’s are step-by-step instructions.
ps: and nope, I want to succed, I just want to make game faster, find a flaw before it’s too late and correct it while I can. That’s fail faster I’m talking about.
Andrew, thanks for link. Not exactly, but as Jason pointed out, there probably isn’t much to teach yet.
But I still think there must be something… Well, thank you all for your answers!
Just keep doing your games, you are mixing here experience with learned knowledge. You get experience by doing things, by failing and learning from own mistakes.
You cannot get experience from watching tutorials, because then you do not grasp all aspects of problem, there will be plenty of tiny details skipped by any tutorials (or books), and its most often that details put together make difference between good or just mediocre game.
