Whole game tutorial.

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

I’ve been searching for the last hour for a tutorial or guide of how to approach the development of a new game from scratch, without any luck.

What I mean by whole is something like:

  • splash screens (company logo, presentation if any, etc)
  • main menu with sub-menus
  • game modes
  • gameplay
  • game flow (showing the menu, pausing a game, saving, loading, etc)

So far I only found very specific functionalities, like, how to use UMG, or how to build something using blueprints, everything is very well documented, but, there is still a gap that new developers in my opinion can’t fill, and that is how to put together all the pieces to make a game.

I’ve been programming for the past decade in languages like AS3, Java and C#, and back then building a game from scratch without using any kind of framework it was… hard, and that is knowing the language.

This feels similar, I don’t know where to start to create the game. I don’t know how to create a menu that triggers an event to show the actual game, or how to go back from that point to the main menu again, for example.

I feel like this is a vital aspect that is left unattended.

If there is actually some sort of scaffold project that addresses this, please just point me in the right direction and delete or edit this topic.

2

Look for postmortems to see how devs approach things.
The reason there’s no ‘tutorial’ for this is because every game is different and although they all have all of these components, it’s always made differently each time.
For example, my main menu I built based on Enum flags; every time a flag is set, a different menu is drawn. Ppl could do it in many different ways.

Splash videos/images there are documentation for these. Game modes have documentation about it as well.

Gameplay is your job, you say what the gameplay is.
Gameflow is part of the gameplay experience, you as the designer dictates how the game should behave on that regard, not the engine.

Those two last subjects comes from experience and experimentation.
Read postmortems and examine game projects from the Learn tab.

3

There are no complete game creation tutorials around, but just split everything into parts and then search for a tutorial on youtube + the documentation: https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/ (with the help of this link you can find a thread about nearly every topic) :slight_smile:

4

TeslaDev is doing a Twitch stream of starting a game from scratch. It is archived on his YouTube channel. The first one is here:

?v=F6uexi3XXEM

6

Thanks everyone.

I will expand my search to point to those sources of knowledge!.

7

Hey Artemix, keep your eye on this project ://www.reddit/r/unrealengine/comments/2za143/would_you_be_interested_in_an_endtoend_video/

8

I guess it would really help to see tutorials on how to have proper transitions between different states of the game. Most tutorials, as you said, show how to do a very specific thing like building a first person shooter, or creating a brick material, or writing a HUD.

But it’s not entirely obvious how to do some of the other common things in games. For example, how to build a match making lobby and transition from that into an actual match or coop campaign. Or how to even hit the New Game button in a menu and go to level 1. I can design a level, and specify in my game mode what my default pawn class is, and it magically works somehow. But once you try to do more complex things, like player classes, single player campaigns, etc… You end up really needing to dig pretty deep into the C++ source code, which I personally am perfectly capable of but not all people are. I sometimes feel like I’m exploring the frontier or something because UE4 is new and things aren’t quite as documented yet. Many tutorials still have yet to be created. I suppose I might be able to create a few tutorials myself at some point once I figure things out, mostly in C++ though since I haven’t even had a chance to touch much blueprint yet.

I can sort of piece things together from looking at UT4 code and ShooterGame but it’s all in C++. Those that aren’t strong C++ devs might want to see how to do similar things in Blueprint.

I managed to sort of figure out how all the GameMode and GameState and PlayerState objects come together, but it was definitely very confusing at the start. I still wouldn’t say I understand that part of the engine 100%. I haven’t completely figured out, for example, how to maintain a player’s campaign state and inventory between level transitions.

In UT4, Pawns store inventory, but that won’t do for level transitions, so I need to figure out if I want to store inventory in the Player Controller, or Player State, or whatever. Maybe I’ll store it in the Pawn, but on level transition, copy it to the PlayerController during the Seamless Travel?

I’m sure many other people are trying to do things like this, and it’d be great to have tutorials on common things like this.

9

Thanks!, seems like I’m not the only one that wants/needs a bigger picture.

exactly.

10

I am currently busy with a video tutorial that starts from Day 1. Assuming you have your project idea ready.
It goes into the different phases of completing the game. Planning the game up to publishing the game.

However this is my approach and everyones approach might be a bit different

11

I agree , I think there should be multiple for different basic game types. A basic deathmatch fps, basic racing, etc. Just something to complete completion would be incredible, really what other tool in existence has no instructions on how to finish a project from start to finish? I do realize it’s hard because everyone wants different things, but basic game types that are complete would make it a whole lot easier to pump out products and make Epic money.

12

It is true that every game is unique, however, they also have a lot of things in common, specially the general architecture of it.

13

Why start from scratch? Stormrage256 has a cool menu system already for tweaking over here. Reverse engineer, extend, reiterate. Even if there was a Full Game Tutorial it would probably be 200hrs long and bore you out of your mind. There are plenty of tuts and examples out there. You may only need a hand finding relevant ones. This is what the community is for. What type of genre of game are you trying to get working on?

14

It is a sort of vertical scroller, like 1942, with a tweak or two to change the gameplay a bit. It is not a big project, since it will use and abuse the multiplayer aspect, for now local only, so I don’t need a lot of content to make it work. What I do want is to make it look really next-gen-ish, lots of particles, effects, lights, explosions, interactive background, etc.

I will look into that thread TechLord, ty.

16

Conducted a lil review on 1942. Watch a few Youtubes. You’re going way back. Lol. I still love the Arcade Games of yesteryear and they heavily influence my game design today. Anyways. At glance, 1942 has the game play similar Galaxian/Galaga with a scrolling background. Two references came to mind:

  1. UE4 Launcher –> Learn –> Features Tour 2014 –> Space Shooter Mini-Game. All the Blueprints associated are prefixed BP_Pixel_ label should be easy to filter, crack open and see whats going on.
    Additionally, I have the math code for Enemy movement in Insectoidz, which could be translated to Blueprints.
  2. Side Scrolling Template.

https://arcadekomodo/home/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Screenshot-2015-03-19-03.12.58-150x150.png

17

I’m not certain there is a Linear approach to Game Dev, even less so if you working solo. I assemble myself a reference of references: Tutorials, Articles, etc in my Design Document. Collectively, they’re a Whole Game Tutorial custom tailored to my needs. In my opinion its faster to search online or local help docs, just have to ask tweak the keywords. When all else fails, I just ask in the UE4 Forums. Its close as you can get to having someone teach you directly.

18

Totally agreed, i think this user on reddit summed up the newbie Unreal 4 experience perfectly:

19

TechLord, I downloaded the Features Tour 2014 and it is great. I’m learning a lot from reading the space shooter, ty for the suggestion.

20

Tracey White has a YouTube channel, and is going through a beginning to end process for several of the items you are talking about. I would highly recommend looking into what he is doing.
UE4 - Maze Game Development Tutorial Series

21

I’m in need of similar solution to implement an automated PaintGun System that uses patterns in GOLEMCraft and Monster movement in my game. BTW, I strictly use Blueprints for Game Dev in UE4. This is a code maths issue. I could visualize Spline Components being useful for some complex patterns, however, I have yet to use them. So in the interim, I would seek articles/tutorials that explain and provide movement algorithm in code behind Galaga-style movement, then translate the codes into Blueprints Nodes. Let me Google this for you: [FONT=Courier New]Implementing Galaga Movement Patterns Algorithms. I also have a working example + Code in Insectoidz3D TournamentBlitz Edition:

://www.hpquest/TournamentBlitz/images/tbems_list.jpg

://www.hpquest/TournamentBlitz/games/insectoids.png](://prezi/p0w12vrktr4b/arcade-komodo-development-roadmap/?kw=view-p0w12vrktr4b&rc=ref-11026558)Click to Download the INSECTOIDZ Proof of Concept 2004 (Requires DX7).
U/P: guest/guest

22

Hey TechLord thanks for the support, but I didn’t want to derail this thread with this since it has nothing to do with this topic, that’s why the private message.