What's a good book or books to get for learning the Unreal Engine?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
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here’s what I’m looking at right now https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_6?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=unreal+engine&sprefix=unreal%2Caps%2C198&crid=23FV0AUEJ6NPZ I know they’re not totally up to date, but that shouldn’t make much of a difference unless the Blueprint system gets a complete overhaul each time right?

I want to mainly do 2D/2.5D in the way of mario, streets of rage, river city ransom, megaman, metroid, stuff like that, really just be able to make a simple character who can mimic some of their moves and attacks on just a single platform with one simple enemy, nothing more than that, I’m fine with having to use other sources to get the rest, but I at least want to make something playable that I can build off of, and then try making other games after that, both different genres and also into 3D. I know there isn’t one good book that teaches all of it, but that’s just to give you an idea of what I’m looking for. At the end of today, I’m going to buy a book. Don’t try to convince me not to buy a book. I will possibly save your other suggestions ONLY if they are COMPLETE step-by-step tutorials for making at least one of these games from start to finish, to use on the side, but I WILL be buying a book.

I already ordered this one because I always wanted a good book on C++, and it has amazing reviews for teaching C++ in general. What I would really like now is something that puts a lot of focus on at least making most of some kind of simple game using Blueprint mostly, or C++ if there’s a good book available.

I will only take non-book suggestions if they go step-by-step, start to finish, making at least one totally playable level of a mario or simple megaman clone or something similar. I’ve saved dozens of Youtube playlists, I found some of the live sessions I’m going to try to use to make that ****** megaman clone it seems that guy was able to make, but seriously, I’m mainly making this topic to get a good book suggestion.

So please, understand what I’m looking for and what I’m not looking for in this topic.

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If you are looking for complete step-by-step tutorials outside of books, you are not setting yourself up to learn, and are holding yourself back more than anything.

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That is setting myself up to learn. How am I supposed to get down the basic logic for building a game, without something that can guide me through the whole process of making a game first?

Is that not how we learned math when we were kids? A teacher would go through all the steps, all the way through, and then we’d copy, and repeat many times until the logic stuck in our heads.

I want to learn how to create a full game using blueprints. I could google individual blueprints for things like “Get your 2D character in the game, get him to walk, get him to jump” etc, but then I don’t even know what else I’m supposed to search for, like when it comes to finding out what I need to trigger attack animations, do damage, save high score for the next level, and all the little things that go in between, all their own blueprints. Surely there is something out there that tells someone an example of a what a full game would need for everything to work properly.

Like a full flowchart, that starts with like Player 1 attack - >code a button to trigger attack animation with collision detection boxes - > code a hit detection on enemy that triggers gethit animation, and it just shows all the things needed for each part of the game, like which scripts are needed for the buttons to animate when pressed, go to this menu or that menu, **** like that.

That’s literally how all the rest of you learned, right? Eventually, you had to find out all the different scripts required to run each little part of the game. You either knew through learning it already in your programming courses and knew which blueprints to search for in the first place, or you somehow got a list of what algorithms/scripts are needed for each part of a game some other way, and then found the code to type in for each one.

Somehow, you ended up learning what code to search for, and which scripts are needed to connect them together to get things to work together. That’s what I’m looking for. A source that will tell me what types of things are needed to make each thing work, and then a source that holds the codes for programming each thing if i type in or look up the names/phrases they’d give each piece of code like “Detect attack collision” or whatever.

Nobody’s going to find this out by typing in random things, that’s like asking when a monkey would ever write Shakespeare. Somehow you guys found something to show you all the things that were needed, maybe not all in one source, but it was something that showed you by laying out the whole code, and possibly explaining what each line meant, and you learned it like that. That’s all I’m looking for too, something that lays out the code and tells what each part does, and shows how it fits in the game, and what else the game needs to be complete. You all learned it somehow in some pre-made form or another.

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At the moment, books have the issue in that they take too long to make and things change by the time they’re out so they’re not as popular to produce anymore. What can help a lot to learn is looking at completed projects, like the free ones that are available in the Launcher, a lot of what I’ve learned is by looking at other people’s work. You can probably find some complete step-by-step tutorials but not exactly for what you want.
For me, the way I learn is that I’m working on my own project so I break that down into each problem and search for solutions to those problems when they come up

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Personally, I did not learn it in a pre-made form. I followed 1 complete mechanic tutorial when I first started (During my first week in Unreal), which was Kleiner Baer’s Complex Day/Night Cycle. 95% of what you will probably be working on will not have a tutorial that fits your needs. Like for a maze generation blueprint that I worked on, I devised an algorithm, and shaped it all in Blueprints, which simply required knowledge of the Blueprints framework. Of the nearly 30,000 Blueprint nodes I have in one of the project I am working on, none of them came about through a tutorial that I followed, nor were the mechanics and how to design them taught to me previously in any form. My learning resources were the documentation, and some videos from Epic to first familiarize myself with the engine, and then I moved on to experimentation, which I believe are the two greatest learning tools. My point is just that games are not just a list of scripts or algorithms needed for each part, as you describe it, but your own creation that nobody is there to walk you through.

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I would like to recommend the following best unreal engine book:Best Unreal Engine Books for Developed, Design and Build Games. These book shows you how to work with Unreal Engine 4’s interface, its workflows, and its most powerful editors and tools. It gives you a rock-solid foundation for real-world success. These also shows you how to create complex enemy AI that can sense the world around it and attack the player.These gives you enough confidence and skills to design and build your own games using Unreal Engine 4.