Hello everyone,
I am just getting into working with the unreal engine and I have an amazing idea for a wilderness survival game unlike any other, which incorporates real landscapes and semi-biographical content. Where do you all think the best place to learn about Unreal is. I would be interested in taking classes online or IRL as I work only during the summer months and have large spans of free time in the fall and winter. I am dreaming of a large open world game in which the landscape is derived from GIS data so as to mimic the area exactly. I also have many hours of storyboards and content planned out. I was originally thinking about making this experience a novel but the ability to tell the story in an interactive way is far too appealing. My ideas definitely outpace my abilities at the moment but I am certain if my vision ever comes to fruition it would be extremely popular. I have a bit of venture capital to throw at the project and could probably raise more as the systems come together and the product becomes more tangible. Should I try to make the game solo over the next few years? Should I make it a mod of an existing game? Should I build a business plan and take it to major publishers? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your time,
Making such big game can took many years.
You have 2 choices:
- Put a lot of money into other developers (1M+ $)
- Learn something(c++ or blueprints + 3d art) and make polished prototype.
When you will have your prototype finished, show it to publisher or other people who will have interest in your game and compose together some indie gamedev team.
Well, you really need a game plan because computer scientist aren’t cheap. Just have a plan b for whatever you do.
There are two realities you’ll need to face up to before getting anywhere in game development;
A) Your idea has little-to-no-value until demonstrated by implementation - there is no such thing as a ‘billion dollar idea’, only a ‘billion dollar implementation’.
B) Experience is expensive - if you want to do anything well, you’ll need experience to do it. Hiring a freelancer with 4-5 years experience will cost you upwards of $250 per day (and for a game of scale, you’ll need people across multiple disciplines). You can also gain experience yourself by starting right at the bottom and working up - expect to spend years mastering any given discipline to a moderate level of ability.
IMHO, the reality that all newbies will need to face when entering games is that you need to start at the beginning and work on very small things. It’s hard to appreciate what it takes to build a large scale game without having made something like a small arcade game first.
Singleplayer and multiplayer are different beasts. Large open worlds in singleplayer are (subjectively) easy to do in UE4.