Learning C++ for Unreal Engine in my case

Development Programming & Scripting
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Hello everyone,

To settle a bit of the context :

. I learnt C++ end of 2023 but never used it a too much, I made a few little video games like Tetris, Pong, Snake by myself using SFML library a year ago that’s my “biggest achievements” with it, and I believe I learnt with a pretty solid tutorial, teaching programming concepts and good habits.

I started to use Unreal Engine 5 in the beginning of 2024, I made a full solo game that I shipped on Steam with it only using Blueprints, just to see the whole process as a solo dev, nothing fancy, the point was to learn what interest me : game designing

I’m practicing again on a personal project right now, though for some reasons I don’t have much time for it, 1 hour a day in the week and like 8 hours the whole weekend.

. In two months, I will be dedicating myself again full time ( 10 hours a day ) to this field, I actually have a new commercial project in my head aswell and thought of how to make it happen. though this game will be Multiplayer, like 20 persons on a server at a time, not a fast paced reactive kind of game neither very demanding performances, but with a store / economic system so I will have to deal with data bases and storing variables online at some point and that’s new to me.

. So my questions are :

  • Is C++ so important, that I should be practicing it for months before starting my project, knowing I will always be orienting my choices of games I develop at relatively small and not fancy ones ?
  • I’m kind of “scared”, I’d find myself stuck in an endless quest of learning and never really perform well at one thing if I start putting myself through C++ use in Unreal. Is giving the important C++ tasks to someone else an interesting choice for me, like in this particular case, the Multiplayer parts of my next project ?
  • I believe I’m very good at using ChatGPT to help me, maybe could I learn C++ in Unreal just by using it when needed and having the help of AI ? I mean, instead of following a course or a tutorial from A to Z

Thanks for reading :slight_smile:

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I gave that advice to other users on some older topics. And I’d still say that, unless you were planning to release your game. Paid or free, I think C++ should be used predominantly for a UE game that’s gonna end up on a store.

For clarity, you’d still use blueprints along with that.

Which parts you may ask?

There isn’t a rule of course, but me personally, I use blueprints for animation related tasks. I also use blueprints for certain tasks first and then implement them in C++, due to superior debugging process.

But you can still choose to use mostly blueprints and C++ for things you can’t do with blueprints, and it wouldn’t make any meaningful difference in the end product, especially considering the project won’t be a very complex one. Even if it was a very serious project, it wouldn’t be much of an issue… if you think optimization is not important.

I guess this also answers your question here:

:blush:

Yep, I wouldn’t recommend trying to learn by following a whole demo project tutorial series, since that way you’d simply be doing what’s told, and guess what! Obviously nothing will go wrong if you follow the steps exactly. Whenever you come across an obstacle, you can just search it up and implement things you learn to fit in your use case. This way you’d actually be learning since that’d require you to grasp the concept.

Based on your previous explanations, sounds like you’ve only used AI to implement basic things with C++. You can try but from my experience, it currently is insufficient for more specific tasks.

I don’t think that’s a question for the forum. If you find yourself struggling, really want your project done and have the budget for it, sure you can hire someone I guess.

If you’re interested, you can take a look at here to start with C++:

Hope these help :innocent: