Where To Begin?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
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I’m sure this question has been asked many times but perhaps my specific situation is different from others. So I’m going to ask the question anyway.

Where to begin? Is what I need to figure out.

I’ve got my game down on paper pretty well, it still evolves but I know which direction I’m going with it. I’ve been learning C++ and some Java and am currently taking C++ tutoring. A friend told me UDK had gone free so I picked it up and am liking what I see. The Blueprint system is pretty cool and is what I want to go about using. I’ve been watching tutorials and reading but I still haven’t been able to actually start anything.

I have a process that I want to use I just don’t know where to start.

I’d like to start and go in order as follows developing the game, seeing as I have a lot of the mechanics worked out on paper already.

  • Title Screen: with Buttons for Start Game and Exit, just to start, I’ll be adding options buttons and such later. With a Placeholder Picture for the title screen
  • Game World: I really just need to figure out how to use Heightmaps and explanations on how the dimensions relate to memory use and such, also how to apply them. Any pointers to tutorials and such for heightmaps would be greatly appreciated! Also anywhere I can learn about interactive Water in game worlds.
  • Lighting: Like day and night cycles, even seasons
  • UI:Self explanitory
    -Terrain Objects & Buildings: Or placeholders like the cubes they use in the Example projects
    -Gameplay Mechanics: I’m still rough with what I need here? A NAVMESH, AI Behaviour? Is there anything to add to this list? Combat and health and all that jazz is a given, I’m looking for things that I’m missing that aren’t so obvious I guess is the word.
    -Animations and Models with Textures
  • And other various things that I haven’t considered doing in any particular order, like sounds and music

I’ve been going through the UR4 documentation and I can’t seem to figure out how to get a game to start, so that it will go to a title screen and I can hit a button, even if the button doesn’t do anything. And have that screen have a background image. If I can get this far, I will have made progress LOL. Then I can move on to working on the Game World itself and using of heightmaps and so on and so forth.

If anyone can give me some pointers I’d greatly appreciate it. I know there are lots of tutorials but I’m not sure which ones to watch! And I’d love to get started sooner than later.
Also is my order of doing things out of whack? Any advice on the order or process of building the game would also be appreciated.

I probably sound pretty stupid… I just really can’t figure out where to start. It feels like Writers Block.

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Moved the thread to General Discussion as the thread is not really about content creation.

That being said,

You should definitely check out the video tutorials in youtube. Those will give you a a better idea about how to make stuff work.

There are more video tutorial dealing with different aspects of a game ranging from UI, AI, Physics, Particles…

Then there are the sample projects (Shootergame, Tappy chicken…) which are full-games with menu screens, scores, multiplayer… Go through them and see how they are implemented.

And to answer your question about how to show a game menu when game starts:

Usually the main menu will be created as a separate game mode. Then in your project settings you will set this s your default game mode so that it will show-up first. You will use UMG to create the menu and use blueprints to handle the events (menu clicks…). Once you press the ‘Start button’, you will change the game mode and map to a proper one - which contains the actual game mechanics.

Once you get started, if you encounter any issues, come here and ask the community and you’ll get all the help you need.

Good Luck

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Okay, thanks for the info! I can’t believe I didn’t think of looking through the samples blueprints!