okay. i’ve had UE4 for several months now, and after countless hours of reading, i’m still dead in the water… the only real things i can do so far is make sketchy looking terrain, dev materials, and start so many projects with a different goal in mind that i will never finish any of them…
i guess i’m just a solo indie hobbyist developer. but i want to make a free-roam FPS game with the potential to have multiplayer (if i even get that far). i’ve looked at the coding and blueprints for the FPS templates and even the ShooterGame from the marketplace, but neither really helped me much. i’ve tried making a 2d sidescroller instead. or a thirdperson game instead. no luck.
i have barely any experience working with any programming language other than HTML, although i’m taking a C# course this summer, and i just found learncpp.com today. i am definitely willing to learn… i have a lot more experience with blender and autocad (just got 3ds max and have been messing with that the past couple of months). i’ve designed several models before, but never got far enough to do materials and textures.
i guess my two main questions are:
where do i start on a simple FPS free-roam project from a blank template? i want to learn how the code actually makes my character move and look around.
and where can i learn more about creating entirely new materials and textures from scratch or for a specific model? like how to make UV’s, bump-maps, etc.
You could probably find tutorials online that relate to these things. For games, you want to use C++. It’s faster than C# by far, however it’s one of the lowest level programming languages and as such it does not really help you. If you get an error it generally tells you that there’s been a mistake, but C++ doesn’t really tell you how to fix it. For starters, you probably want to focus on basic things like unpacking the code in the C++ template. It contains code that tells you how the character is able to move, but it won’t make much sense to you unless you have a fairly decent grasp on C++.
I’m currently watching this channel - the guy knows a lot about programming and takes you through all of the main stuff. He has stuff like C++, Java, Python and other languages. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnAdXkr17iQS8YcYl0LhPdw
As for creating materials and textures, there are probably tutorials relating to that on youtube that relate to 3ds max. You’ll just need to look them up.
wow, thanks a bunch for that link, that will help me a lot.
i’ve been looking up info on textures and materials and slowly learning about them. i was just wondering if anyone had some pointers, tips, or even a link to some long lost tutorial/archive that might help speed up the learning process lol
I think your issue is that you’re jumping ahead a little too much. Examining the blueprints for the sample projects won’t help you. It would be like taking apart a ferrari before you’ve even learned the basics of how a combustion engine works. I think you also need to focus on one area at a time; your post touches on blueprints, the UE4 editor and 3D modelling.
It sounds like you’ve made the most progress so far in modelling, stick with that first and try to get a few textured models in your game before you think about trying something else. Once you’re happy with that, try creating a whole environment. Then start looking at incorporating gameplay.