I am a 3D Artist but I am really interested in learning game development but I have no idea where to start. I’ve been struggling with where to start learning since last year, been searching Udemy or Pluralsight but I couldn’t really know which is the course I should start with. I am pretty sure making a game is not easy, you have to start with a story, scripting writing, audio design, game mechanics, level design, game design, learn coding, or more. With these many things, I couldn’t know where I should really start with. Story first or game mechanic first? Any advice from the great developer here will be appreciated.
Do keep in mind that some of those - and actually a lot of stuff you buy on the marketplace - is far from professional.
In other words, just because project X does Y doesn’t mean that Y is the correct approach to follow.
That’s actually why (apparently, if you read the excuses they give) the wiki was closed out.
As far as the rest.
Do yourself a favor.
Make a pong game. (30 minutes, 3 hours top with AI enemy?)
Make an Arkanoid ( brick breaker ) game. (1 to 2 hours at most?)
Pak Man ( the pawn movement can be hard in unreal If done in 3d and trying to simulate exact original behavior)
Pinball. On this one use skeletal meshes.
shooter. 3rd or first. Just make a shooting gallery and get it to work.
From then on you should have a solid grasp of most of the engine and you can dive back into actually making a solid project.
Then come the optimization complications. And the fact you should probably not have learned just unreal.
But you can take the game replication approach to any coding language in order to learn it.
Learning How to pay others for quality work is an entirely different realm though.
Here my assumption is that OP and anyone else wants to learn how to use the engine properly via trial and error.
Hey I am also a 3d artist who started making games not too long ago.
Because the category of “games” is so diverse, it is really impossible to say, “this is how you should plan your project” or anything like that.
And so much will depend not just on your games goals but also you as an individual. I might organize my project one way, you could do a similar project but approach a totally different way.
So then the best thing to do is get experience under your belt. To that end, you’d want to make many small games. The intent is only to learn and gain experience so there is no stress or fear of failure. You can start out by following tutorials and once you feel ready to fly on your own you can remake classic, simple games, or rework/add onto the tutorial projects you’ve made… with enough experience like this you’ll be able to start envisioning how to tackle more unique and complex projects.
It is worthwhile to get a tutor as well. Someone available for a couple hours a week to help you troubleshoot problems and such. They don’t have to be a guru - just somebody with some experience developing games and that you communicate well with.
As far as project based tutorials go, I highly recommend gamedev.tv, and definitely exhaust everything in the unreal learn area. Their is really too much stuff available for free - you’ll start feeling ready to do your own work before you ever finish all the great and free/cheap learning content available.