Do Unreal Ed skills transfer pretty much directly to the ark dev kit?
Does it make sense – from a rank beginners ( with coding experience ) perspective – to pick up one of packt essentials books, master the basics of unreal ed and blueprinting, then go on to Ark dev kit?
Or does this approach entail a vast “waste” of time?
Thanks for your perspectives!
learning is never a waste of time but the 2 programs, while similar, are still very different and the ark dev kit is very limited in comparison
Yes, learning how to do things in the base UE4 will likely help in the long run. While some of the latest features may not be implemented in the Ark dev kit, all the basics are the same and you will find far more information on UE then the Ark dev kit. Simply put most of the ark dev kit isn’t documented because it is the same as the normal Unreal Engine editor and most things you will learn are directly translatable to the ADK.
Well … plus and minus to it all …
The plus side of learning Ark as a “base line” point … its all setup for you. Its a very linear learning situation. They are using 4.5.1 with some 4.7 features (they used a source base for the editor and made some changes). Yes, the base is the same, but, really, your so far out of date by learning ADK that 90% of whats there, isnt there in newer versions of UE4. Its like saying “learning Windows 3.1 will help you learn Windows 10”. Sure, i mean, i suppose lol …
Learning UE4 as a base will be FAR more beneficial to you. The fall back, is, that what you learn, will no longer be used. For example: Cines and Global Reflections … they are not available in ADK. Never will be. Most of the nodes they use in ADK, not used in 4.10 and certainly not 4.13. Like i said, at this point, apples to oranges. Yes, same “brand” name, but, very different items.
I suggest learning ADK first. Get your hands dirty in BPs and the likes. It will give you a primitive work flow understanding. Move onto UE4 once you get annoyed enough with the broken ADK lol …
If u never done blueprinting its almost impossible to get your hands dirty in it in ark dev kit, I mean without complitely ruining your current project. I tried and I got nowwhere with it. And I havent even found any useful video tutorials about blueprinting, wich I could use in ark dev kit on a map for instance. What I did eventually I loaded up the Island project, and took pictures of the blueprints there, and than tried to make it in my project. Also theres a couple of things what I wanted to do on my ark map in ark dev kit, and watched a lot of Unreal engine videos about the same thing, and while it looked similar, I couldnt do it in dev kit. So the problem is with Ark dev kit, that there isnt enough tutorial for it, for example if u wanna make a map, there are some threads here, and there is two guys Brick and wookie who done some video tutorials, about how to make a landscape, how to start putting down trees and rocks, how to set up your weather and day and night cycle, but it all falls apart when u do that on your much bigger map than whats in the tutorials, day and night cycle wont just work, or your clouds gonna look dark all the time, you will have a lot of issues like dark shadows on the map, or falling to oblivion on spawn, or in ark dev kit u cant make normal land textures and snowy at the same time, cause dev kit is just dumb, and there are no video tutorials for this, just for the first babysteps, wich gets u excited, gets u work on your map for 1-2 months, and than u run into problems upon problems, and never find the answer. Not here on this forum, not anywhere. While in unreal engine theres ton of videos, tutorials, and even online courses, if u are that much into it. So to be honest, I would go with unreal for sure.
ROFL - all this is why i tossed ADK in the trash a year ago. Look at TheIsland map … and TheCenter map … buggy and trash. They look like poo and perform the same.
The “problem” is that ADK is made of 4.5.1 from source and has been edited and changed for Wildcard. Thats fine, it “works for them”. They have added in some features from 4.7 to get some updated feels to it, and, have added in some super unsupported stuff to it as well (and here is where all those wonderful bugs come pouring in). It works for Wildcard, and, what they needed from it. It does make a hot mess out of modding and such tho. Documentation? For what, really, whats the point? If you dont know blueprinting, dont bother. Your going to slam your face into so many walls. ADK isnt a “learning place”, but, it can be, i suppose, on a certain level … ADK /= ue4 core engine. They are not the same.
What i got out of ADK was:
so i mean … haha … if you want to get ****** enough to have a case of the “****italls” then start ADK …
if you want to learn UE stuff and come back here just for the lulz … dont start with ADK … lol … srsly … its that bad …
Supposedly the Scorched Earth ADK update we just got added a bunch of “powerfull blueprints.” I’m not experienced with blueprinting in ADK to know otherwise, but is it really as bad as you say? How much experience with actual programming and base UE4 do you have? I’m not trying to discount what you said I honestly want to know how bad it actually is. I’m learning C++ with the eventual intent of doing stuff with UE4 and was hoping some of it would carry over. Yes I’m aware blueprint and C++ are different things.
C++ = Blueprint in code. You can literally translate one form the other … mostly.
Yes, its as bad as i mentioned.
The changes from the ADK itself (compiled and edited source of UE4.5.1 with added 4.7 features) are going to be different from that in normal 4.10+. I was able to convert Ark to 4.10.4 fully, except a few things like the spawner BPs and such. Most of the nodes remained in tact for the conversion. It was nearly playable lol.
You will seriously want to throw your hands up when dealing with the ADK. Again, its not that its bad (it is, but …), its more like its built for Wildcard and what they are using it for. Great for them. Great for the modders for Ark … srsly bad for a UE4 learning tool.
“Powerful BPs” in the expansion is a matter of whos looking at them. Honestly, the expansion was a total ish-hole of the same recycled stuff. No end-game, nothing new. Felt like a modded version of Ark. Oh, and “Adobe” was the best building material because metal became an oven … do a drake would SLAUGHTER your houses. Total waste. New dinos?. I hope the devs realize that they have lost so many players over +more dinos over +more fixing. Anyways, review of any of the new BPs i have seen is super basic and overly noded. Its about as inefficient as you can get. But … yes there is a but … its how they HAVE to do it.
We look at Ark and we think “this thing is bad, low frames, bad connectivity … etc etc.” All true. Because they are using 4.5.1 with 4.7 features. They wrote their own network solution (nice work on that task, srsly, nice work) but they are using massively outdated engine foundations.
Example: Make a metal wall in game. Go to 1st person view. Look at your reflection. Zoom to 3rd person. Notice anything change? You should. Honestly, simple things that that are a laugh. Arks full of them. Not their fault, its a limitation to the engine they picked. Example 2 is to fly a bird in the middle of land. Level out so you can see the water line (500 miles away) … notice the reflections of the bird are happening on the water line in the distance? Its rendered in because “if its in camera view, it must be rendered”. This is due to NO global reflections (i think they added this in 4.12?). Again, not Wildcards fault, its, fault of the engine.
Honestly, Wildcard took a pile of doo-doo engine and made a multi million $$ game on it. Grats to them on that, srsly.
Ark is a “good place to start” because its all pre-built with all the assets.
Ark is a bad place to start because we are years ahead in the normal UE world (4.12+)
Should you really focus on UE4 if thats where you want to be in the long run? Yes.
Why would you use a super outdated and custom version of an engine when what you really want to do is learn the latest versions and progress from there?
Choice is yours. I started on UE a long time ago, but, came back to mod for Ark. It frustrated me to no end as mos the other modders. Take a look at the community base now, its tiny. Mods have turned down to a trickle. It is what it is … I moved to the latest and started DEV on my own stuff. Its up to you 