I started looking into the Unreal Engine since last week. I followed some video courses to get a feeling of the engine. After using the blueprint system in the courses till now I find it hard to understand. If I understand it right blueprints are a visual version of c++ coding? Is it recommended to follow some C++ coding tutorials first to better understand the blueprint system? I have no coding experience at all. Or shall I just keep on following blueprint tutorials to understand the logic?
If you don’t have any programming experience I would say that you should probably avoid the C++ side of things as it might be too much to take on. You’ll probably find yourself studying the language more than making games.
Blueprints are relatively powerful and you should be able to get what you need done using them.
I’m relatively new to unreal as well, and it was hard to grasp it all until I just went through a tutorial and started making a game. I suggest following along with something like Alan Noon’s 2D side scroller demo. He goes step by step through the first stages of the build, so you naturally start to understand the logic behind blueprints. After completing the tutorial, you can go back to researching or just continue building your game, doing what you can and looking up the roadblocks as you come to them. It isn’t the proper way to do it, but without a formal class, I feel like it’s the best way to stay interested and keep learning.
At the moment I’m following a YouTube series from user Wazza, he has a serie about setting up a 2D side scroller. I’m doing exactly the same as you do. While watching I’m building the game the same steps he does and meanwhile I regularly pause the video to try and manipulate the blueprints etc to my own liking. I think it will cost me some time to understand the blueprints. The hardest part is, where do I start when building my own ideas with blueprints. I suspect this will take a lot of time before I can fully create things and let actors do what I want them to do without copying somebody else his blueprint setups.
Sorry for the delay. It really is just a matter of time. Keep trying to modify it like you want, and if you want something specific, just do a Google search. When you finish the series, you should have a good enough understanding of the language to be clear and concise in your searches, and if nothing else, you can always post another question on this site.