Ok so I think it’s pretty clear I’m incredibly new to all things game design but please hear me out. I have had a passion for games and game design for a while and mainly play fps games. Maybe a week ago I saw that unreal engine was free so I downloaded it. I selected fps template and hit ‘play’ to see what I was starting out with. To my surprise it seemed like it seemed like a functional game already with gun animations and even physics for objects hit by your projectile. It seems like you don’t actually code things and simply use templates to create a game using other people’s work. I cant really see why anyone would get paid for using it to make games as it seems to hold your hand. Keep in mind this is after an hour of using ue4 so im a noob at this whole thing. Am I doing it wrong and their is coding involved or was my assumption of what game design looked like incorrect?
Yes it’s a complete engine, it’s not a simple gimmick at all, those templates are just for example. You can start from scratch of course. It’s a fully featured engine, it can do pretty much anything you need it to. Many many commercial games use Unreal, the very first version made its debut in the late 90s, with a game called Unreal which is its namesake, I played it heaps as a kid. Anyway, you can program with C++ or for a lot of task use “blueprints”, which is their visual scripting system. A lot of indy studios use it so it’s worth learning if you want to delve into game development.
I do not know c++ or any language for that matter. I ought to look into that I suppose. How do you access the bit where you can use those languages?
If you create a template project and select the C++ tab it’ll create a project assembled using C++, you can then pick apart how they’ve put it together. It’d probably be a good idea to look at Epic’s or someone else’s tutorials on where to get started. There’s a lot to the engine, I can’t really tell you much about the programming because I’ve focused mostly on the visual side. C++ will need to be edited in a seperate program/compiler like Microsoft Visual Studio or Apple’s Xcode.
Here’s Epic’s video tutorial page
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Videos/
They have quite a few videos on where to get started by creating simple projects, it’s great place to learn how things work.
No this is not consider gimmick, shearing engine was common practice way before indie scene exploded, development of engine require extra investment which lot of developers skips by buying of engine from other companies (you also pay for using UE4 by paying revenue from your product). In the past lot of shooter developers been using Quake/Doom engines, specialy Quake 3 engine (now called ID Tech 3, which is actully that that easy engine to use compered to UE4 or even UE1) and no body minded that. In fact gamers usally like if good engine is reused by other entities and it actually can advertise your product more.
What gamers consider gimmick is too frequint reuse of ready assets (if they find out it was ready asset), it is sometimes considered lazyness. I think most know example is from famous Mass Effect 3, where stack photo was used to revile face of Tali, it was like salt on a wound for them. Use of RPG Maker is also considered gimmick sometimes, because those look the same, but if it’s used it’s own assets and customized enouth for people to not notance it’s RPG Maker , they don’t mind it, Undertale is good example of that.
So as more you customize the game that it not look like something cut from UE4 templates people don’t mind it… actully people won’t notice, that the trick. I know some people might not agree to me as it is subjective matter, but for me personally when i see in UE4 product that somebody sell, a lot of text components with default font, don’t change default lighting and biggest offence of them which is not turn down a bloom effect that overpowers the screen when there bright light sources (you imidietly know game runs on UE4 if you see this), it feel for me as cheap made product that could get some more effort to make it better.