How would I learn Unreal Engine if I did it again

Before we get further, let me introduce myself. There is no point in you reading, if you don’t think the information is coming from a reliable source.

My name is Vojta and I have been professional UE developer for over 6 years. I have been also teaching programming and game development for almost 2 years.

I recently finished Epic’s authentication as an official training instructor. and I have also never had any official education regarding programming, development or even IT. I studied gardening and then linguistics FYI.

So, I would say I am pretty confident in talking about how to learn. Specifically how to learn UE so to develop yourself into a capable professional.

Let’s start there:
When I say “learning Unreal Engine” I am already committing quite a mistake, nevertheless that’s how many learners start.

It’s a mistake because no-one learns nor knows Unreal fully.
UE is a tool to accomplish task at hand, most commonly creating a game, but there is many other uses for UE outside of game development.

So step one on your learning journey -> Figure out what the hell do you actually want?
It will save us a lot of time.

Two most common goals will likely be:

1. You want to get job in game development studio
2. You want to make games

These two seem quite similar, but your goal is actually completely different depending on which of these paths you are choosing.

Let’s say you are trying to get a job.
In that case, what you want to work on is a portfolio that demonstrates your skill level.

You will need to think about what will be in that portfolio and to answer that you need to know what kind of studio you would like to work for. (I would imagine that submitting idle clicker game to Rockstar is not that likely to get you accepted…)

Now let’s say you don’t care about getting job, you just want to make games.

Great!

Are you starting a business? Do you want to make money doing this?
Or do you want to create games on the side while you have another job?
There are no wrong or right choices here, but you need to figure out what’s your goal otherwise you will spend time doing lot of work that’s not bringing you any closer to what you actually want.

For example:
Portfolio pieces don’t need to be polished games, they should just demonstrate your skill.

If you want to make hobby games, now you need to think about Steam and planning for that, but if you actually want to start a studio now you have to think about market research, what games to make, monetization, distribution etc…

I realize I haven’t quite gotten to how you actually learn, but you need to do this 0 step first, otherwise you are just wasting both of ours time.

Alright, let’s say you now know what you want, or at least the general direction. Now we can get down to business.

So….

Make some projects. That’s it.

….

Fine, I will outline it a bit more, but that was the gist of it.

1. Get familiar with UI
2. Create small project
3. Go over your project and see what you could have done better
4. Repeat step 2.

Step one;
I don’t know why you need explanation… this should take you like an hour. Read documentation, or watch YouTube video to get familiar with basics.

Step two;
Choose the smallest possible project you can and go make it.

The idea is to choose smallest project you can, ideally something you finish within a week for first few projects. I will go over the details in the dedicated article, but two main axioms it stands on are:

• Following tutorials is mostly waste of time for you. You will learn a lot more by doing a lot of mistakes by yourself trying things out.
  
• 80% of your learning comes from first 10% of your project. Rest is polish and bunch of busy running around.

So optimize it and go make projects. People seem to be afraid of getting their hands dirty and would rather follow tutorials and not do anything, because it makes them feel like they are learning. It’s mostly waste of time. We don’t retain much from watching tutorials, it just makes us feel good.

Making projects is hard, coz you fail a lot. Following tutorials is easy because it’s impossible to fail.
Bad news is that learning comes from failing.

Here are some examples of how this outline would look like for goals I outlined above. Hopefully this will make it easier to map it to your own goal:

You want to join a studio:

1. Choose studio and identify what games they make.
   CoD-like shooters for example
2. Create project
   Simple zombie shooter, player walks around with gun, picks up ammo, shoots, dies.
3. Finish project and go through your code to see what you could have improved
4. Repeat step 2, until you make projects that looks as good as portfolio of junior developers from studio you want to join.

---

You want to start game dev business:

1. Do market research and identify game that could be successful.
   Short jump scare based horror game
2. Create project
   Simplest possible horror game, takes like 20 minutes of gameplay to finish.
3. Release on Itch.io for free and gather feedback.
   Review what you could have done better.
4. Repeat step one until you make games so good people want to pay for it.

---

You want to make games as hobby

1. Think about what game you want to make
2. Create project
   Super simple small little game.
3. Release on Itch.io for free and gather feedback.
   Review what you could have done better.
4. Repeat step one and focus on what you enjoy.
   You got least stressful path, good job.

Hope it helped,
Vojta

PS: If you are looking for help and mentorship on your journey, we at GameReady provide just that. Hit me up at fansi@kampairaptor.com.

We have a limited amount of students we can accept, but it may be just for you.

You can do it yourself tho! Mentorship is for people who want to ride a spaceship instead of a car. Good luck!

PPS: If you wanna read more about picking best first projects, here you go: