I’ve followed a bunch of tutorials and while they’ve been helpful in getting specific things done quickly i want to understand enough to make things on my own.
I know blueprints are really just a more visual way of programming so i guess im asking how do you understand it in a more general how it works sort of way?
I’ve always found certain things to be taught rather poorly. You get a mix of ideas and bits of knowledge here and there but rarely a proper overview and understanding of what things are and how they interact etc. The best example i can give is electricity and circuits. Something that can be very complex but is actually pretty simple to understand at a basic level. It’s all just components switching on/off and shaping electrical signals.
Are there any good videos that give an overview of blueprints or programming?
Also is it possible to see what data is being passed along these connections in blueprints as i think it would go a long way to understanding what’s going on and why something may not be working. Thanks.
If I were you I would start to know the basics of an object oriented programming language before I jump into blueprints. If you get to know what are variables, how to pass values in them, retrieve them, make functions you can call on your main block code, etc then blueprints will really start to make sense to you.
Take a look at the official Unreal youtube page. They have great tutorial videos that go into great depth explaining what is happening in the background when you are setting up blueprints.
Yep Epic’s tutorial videos on their page are great to start out with. Some of the things may be a little bit outdated but they redid a lot of the tutorials back when 4.7 came out with some design changes.
The hardest part is grasping the overall architecture of the game engine itself. Blueprints for Actors and Pawns are one thing and easy enough to make, but how do you accept key presses, or spawn new objects, or how do you move the camera and have it change it’s target. How do you do anything at all like changing a level? And it’s not really the specific answers but where those answers lead you to.