I’m new to unreal and was looking to learn as much as I can about it. Right now I’m working my way through the youtube tutorials, and was looking to work with some other people on a project to learn soon. The thing is, I’m not sure if I have anything to offer - or, at least, I’m not sure how to articulate how my experiences translate to unreal. I want to know if any of this suggests I would be a valuable part of a team. Should I say I have experience with X,Y and Z instead of stating the following? What is relevant and what is not? What expience can I advertise, and what should only be mentioned if it comes up in conversation?
Halo Forging: Since forge was introduced into the Halo franchise, I have been playing around with it to some degree. My most active time in the forging world was between September 2009 and September 2011, especially the last 6 months. I was a part of a forging community that provided play testing, reviews, and feedback on various types of maps. I was even made a moderator on a site that hosted ~50 regulars. My maps caught the attention of community cartographers and was considered for matchmaking. Ultimately it did not make it in due to a performance issue present in split-screen, although all other requirements were met. Would this be Level Design experience? It has some elements that were similar to the blueprint system although you were limited in what you could do with it. It definitely had object similar to the static mesh placement.
League of Legends: I spend a ton of time on League. I even wanted to go pro at some point. I held mid Diamond placements for two years and was Diamond 3 when I walked away from it. That’s roughly the top ~1-.5% of ranked players two years. I once posted on the forums about making Hybrid champions a viable option. Not many people replied to it though since it was… a little long. Would this show that I take gaming serious? Would this be relevant to game design at all? Is this even worth mentioning?
MineCraft/Starmade: I had a few projects that I tackled with these games, mostly starmade though. There was a couple spaceship projects that I iterated on multiple times, as well as a space station and some logic blocks that I played around wtih to make an airlock.
D&D: Pen and Paper game. I am currently a DM that runs games for two groups on a weekly bases. I have created a world and populated it using the core books and some homebrewing(modding). D&D is a pen and paper RPG game with a turn based combat game. I have made some simple concept art and some 2D isometric maps for this.
That’s not going to be much help in developing a game. Sure it’s good to be a person who plays games, but the vast amount of work will be programming/asset creation which has nothing to do with that.
It seems like you have an enthusiasm to learn, which is good! If you’re a student I would take advantage of the popular software out there that may be available to you at a subsidised price or even free in some cases. And stick with the UE4 tutorials and invest some solid time in becoming familiar in as many areas of UE4 as you can (there are quite a few!).
So this post did make it through. I thought I misclicked or something since I couldn’t see it posted right away. Interesting, is there a delay or does a post have to approved by a moderator before it shows up? I’ll have to get rid of the other one as soon as it shows up if its the former. If its the latter, please delete this one instead of the other since I better explained myself in that one - Or could I have a copy of it? (its okay if its lost forever though)
In response to you Darth: I see what you are saying, and will most likely not mention League of Legends in the future. For the other games, I wasn’t mentioning the time I spend playing so much as I was mentioning the things I made for the games. Wouldn’t creating and playtesting maps in halo forge be a useful experience? I understand that programming and asset creation are the core of what makes a game, but isn’t being able to make something from premade scripts with adjustable values, and working with an art asset pool useful? If not, then I am sad D:
No Big deal though, I would just work on personal projects instead of working with others instead. Either ways, Thanks for the reply.
: I noticed how much unreal has to offer. There is so much I took for granted in content creation before. My eyes have been open! Currently, I am learning how to use unreal and have my eyes on Blender. What other software should I keep my eye on? I know maya and Unity are a couple others that I want to check out after spending some time on unreal.
The forum requires the first post to be approved to avoid spam, that’s why it didn’t show up right away.
The map editing tools that are built into games like Forge are dumbed down to make it as easy as possible to use. A lot of work was already done to make sure that the assets you have available are set up for you to use easily and it’s not really like what it is to actually build a game level in a real game editor where you have to start from scratch. Those things are more like games themselves than like an actual game creation tool.
Ah! Gotcha. Child’s play compared to the real deal, the more complex stuff. Makes sense. Thank you for the reply and clarification on that. I knew it wasn’t as much as making a game, but its good to know that the opinion of it is so low. I have some work to do to catch up then.
Knowing gamplay design and layout is definitely useful and important (otherwise you don’t know what’s fun), it’s just that there’s a lot more that you have to know and many technical things
So you’re saying is that Progamming/Art skill are the core that everyone needs, and that the experiences I have listed above are secondary, just a bonus, or even optional. By themselves, they aren’t enough to show I can contribute anything worth while. That makes sense. I think I’ll take on a personal project to prove I can do some stuff in programming and art before trying to jump into a group with other people. I’ll only mention my previous experiences but wont rely on them to sell my ability to contribute.
Thank you very much. You have helped me greatly in my self evaluation.
For certain positions you definitely don’t need to be a gamer–for example if you are a programmer and you are given a task to complete then it doesn’t matter what it’s really for, or if you’re a 3D artist you can make a character just fine. But say if you’re one of a few people working on a game and you’re doing 3D/programming along with coming up with gameplay ideas and designing levels then it would be very important that you have played game before. It just takes a lot less time to come up with an idea than it does to execute it.
Actually, D&D experience may be useful. You see, wizards of the coast allow use of some of their materials free of charge.
So, if you have DM experience and know mechanics, you have RPG creation kit in your hands, pretty much.
The catch is, if you wanna use material from system reference document, you’ll need to create your own world without using any of the famous D&D characters/locations/etc.
So I think you could probably try to start your own game. Not sure if you could get employed somewhere, though.
You need to decide if you’re looking for a job, or if you want to create something yourself.
Definitely a 3D sculpting tool such as ZBrush or Mudbox, a 2D content creator; a firm favourite is Photoshop. But I wouldn’t get too carried away as it’s easy to become overwhelmed, these tools have some real depth to them. Take it slow and steady, most importantly try to research and understand the many processes that go into making a game. Then you can choose the best tools for the job.
: I’ll have to keep that in mind. There are definitely a ton of great ways to use D&D to make something interesting. Right now, I just want to learn how the system works and play around with it while learning the ins and outs or it. I was hoping to work with a small group to make something simple and work our way up as we learn how to make increasingly complex games. I think right now I will finish the youtube tutorials, then go make Pong and a couple other simple games. I’m not looking to get hired right this second, I was more looking for a group of people that I could learn from to accelerate the learning process. I’ll just post any questions I have here on the forums. Eventually I will try to get hired, but learning is the goal right now.
: I think I’ll stick to Unreal, Blender, and Gimp then. Get my feet wet before I look at everything else. Thanks for the info. There are so many tools to play with.
(its okay if its lost forever though)