Game Development! Never Easier!

Any game developers or enthusiasts out there?


I'm not long into my journey, I went from Paint to Torn to EZGif to GIMP to Blender 2.8 to UE4 to Quixel

I want to be absolutely clear, I'm just a hobbyist, I'm not getting paid to say anything, no affiliations. All things i suggest here are 100% free and available to all!

I'm eager to share some of the bits and bobs i have learned. It is all so much more manageable than most would assume. I won't lie... its a headache... but a minor one...

There are many awesome bits of software out there.... But these 3 make an amazing trio... You don't need any coding knowledge to go from knowing nothing to making a working game (an 'okay pc' is needed >_<)

Blender 2.8 is for making things... its Free and open source. A 'point space' program... With the mapping of dots, you can make any shapes move in any way with any colors applied... It also does physics, light and fluid simulations as well as 2d animation. Headache to learn... but oh so goood...

Unreal Engine 4... Unreal engine is for compiling the game.. also good for making some stuff.. But you mostly bring things from outside and arrange them in unreal.... Kinda free... They basically make you 'sign' a deal whereby you promise to give them a cut of any profits you make from having used their software. Something like 5% of revenue after $3k.... obviously worth noting...

The big point here... If you never profit, you never pay.... also a headache to learn... but also very goood.... And damn they are good to their users!! They just bought Quixel....

Quixel (Mixer and Bridge) is for texturing. Now Free to UE4 Users!! The Quixel people are awesome... they use 3d image scanning techniques to make super realistic materials and assets. I'm gonna link a vid to show what you can do with these 3 programs and free time... it says a bit about quixel... their techniques make current game making methods hyper realistic... real time...


As for PROCESSING POWER!... 8-16 GB Ram... i5-i7.... And a semi decent graphics card..

Its the GPU that mostly dictates how 'smooth' your journey will be... But even an ok 1gb card, an i3 processor and 4 gb of ram would be enough to do lots of fun stuff. If your graphics card is too old or not powerful enough, the software likely just won't even start >_< Its worth checking ahead of time... And also. i want to reiterate... Quixel do sell their products... pls ignore that... Unreal Engine people bought them all for us to play with >_< I'll happily hand out pointers. Here's that video. With a few months of learning, this software and a few headaches.... you can do this.... real time graphics... not cinematic..

Quixel/UE4 - Rebirth

(turn screen res up)

Unity > Unreal :P

Did Unity buy their users A Quixel?

No?

SHup!

eh... potentially bad advice.. so i deleted it.

(i think there is a legit way to get the quixel assets in unity for free... without legal issues.. you'd just likely lose a larger cut)

Unreal is all about (un)realism lol

You rarely see a realistic looking Unity game, and it's more flexible, so no need for Quixel :p

RPG maker

no neeed for quixel... careful sir... you might break me...

different code.. different styles... but both capable game engines. One is more 'almost free' than the other though >_<

I've had a brief go. Bought it on steam >_< Not for me though. I loved playing the oldschool rpgs, little slow for me these days.

does it need coding skill?

Nope, You don't need any coding.... That's not to say its simple... But no coding is required

Blender 2.8 isn't that bad. I find it very comfortable. I tried to learn Blender 2.6x or something and it was horrible. The new UI makes much more sense. Some things like simulating fire, smoke or water can be hard sometimes.

agreed... the differences between blender 2.79 and blender 2.8.... its huge...

Just mapped my first character thingy with controls and shit... So now, with all the bits and bobs i have learned... i can technically make a large fully playable game...though obviously some extra depth will be good.. I'm over 6 months now, but only about 3 of those have been dedicated to learning this. Couple of hours a day and you can be making games in a couple of months. Realistically, an hour or two a week... you'd learn lots, but it'd take several months :) Plenty of great milestones before making games though!


[image: i.imgur.com]

As yreew asked, the image shows the 'blueprints' containing the required nodes for mapping the characters movement. It is these nodes and blueprint thingies which replace the need for coding. Its a small loss in running efficiency. But typically gaming computers have a lot of processing power to play with now >_< and if you make a game for 4 years.... its the gaming computers in 4 years that will be 'struggling' to run it >_< so the loss in efficiency isn't a deal breaker

i'm thinking of learning unreal engine 4.. with that said.. do you guys have any recommended tutorials for complete beginners?

Depends on what you want to learn first. I might recommend blender, But Unreal is a good starting place for most things. A few sub categories. ... Level design, modelling, concept art... character design... texturing... User Interface. Physics... animation and there are others :)

Also, do you have any experience with photoshop, gimp or any similar 2d image program? they are good stepping stones.

well..i think id want to learn how to make characters and then the levels and yeah i occasionally use photoshop for school projects.. ive tried using gimp before but i did not like the GUI so i uninstalled it

Yeah GIMPs UI isn't the best, But it does have some customisabillity, like icon size and colours. It is a good program underneath though.

Characters are probably one of the hardest parts... Realistic organic stuff is tricky and so are stylized characters. Even when using unrealistic proportions, there is a lot you cannot get away with.

I'd recommend having a go with Blender first. Between Blender and a program called 'makehuman' You have a great starting point for making characters... There are 4 main parts to learn for characters...

Blender - Making the mesh, The structure, the colours/clothes etc
Blender - Rigging the mesh, Adding in bones and connecting them to the body to facilitate movement.
Blender - Mapping animations by moving bones and recording it.
Unreal Engine- Mapping controls and animations in a game engine environment (assuming for game use)

Simples >_<

You can of course cheat many steps, You could make a character and set it up to work with existing animations, Or you could use someone elses fully rigged set-up and just change bits till its a new character. Its good fun, Digital sculpting is great!


This was my first character animation (animated in blender) steps 1,2 and 3.. i think i was on like week number 2/3 of learning it all.

[image: profileimages.torn.com]