Unreal Engine 5 is the latest version of this amazing game engine. Over the years, the Unreal Engine has established itself as a game engine that pushes the boundaries of game technology and graphical realism, which made it become widely used not only for games, but also for simulations and architecture.
While Unity has established itself as the go-to indie game engine and features a huge community of indie developers, thanks to its being designed around being easy to use, Unreal Engine 5 is also a great choice for indie devs, thanks to its wide range of features and its focus on graphical quality.
So, if you’re interested in the Unreal Engine, you might want to learn how to make a game in Unreal Engine 5.
Why develop in Unreal Engine?
Developing games in Unreal Engine is a great choice as it provides a powerful, versatile game engine that can be used to create games and experiences on different platforms. It also has an easy-to-use visual scripting system known as Blueprint Visual Scripting, which allows users to script their own game without having to write a single line of code. This makes creating games without even having to learn programming much simpler and faster.
Additionally, Unreal Engine is completely free to use and provides the necessary tools for developing high-quality, graphically advanced 3D games. With this toolset you can create beautiful immersive experiences for players across multiple platforms. All these features make Unreal Engine an ideal choice for anyone looking to develop games with great results.
How to make a game in Unreal Engine 5: your first steps
Compared to Unity, Unreal may be a bit more advanced. Its programming language of choice is C++, which is not as intuitive as Unity’s C#, but it allows it to reach higher performance. However, Unreal also features Blueprints and plugins, which aim to make it easier and faster for people to develop games and animations using it, even when they don’t know to program too well.
However, you still have to learn how to use those features in order to know how to make a game in Unreal Engine 5. So, let’s see what should be your first steps in this adventure.
1 – Installing the Unreal Engine 5 development kit
In order to make it easier to develop games using the engine, Epic Games, the company which develops it, provides a fully-featured development kit, which people also informally refer to as being the engine itself. Downloading this kit is the first step to learning how to use it, as it allows you to learn the ropes with a hands-on approach.
It consists of software that allows you to create maps, handle assets and implement the game mechanics much more easily and visually, which makes it much easier and faster to develop games.
The dev kit is available for free, and you get it here. You’ll also need to download the Epic Games Launcher and create an Epic Games account in order to install and use it.
You’ll also need to have some free space available. Aside from the development software, the kit also comes with a lot of free assets to help you get your game up and running, even if you don’t have the assets ready for it. They provide a great way to learn the basics of implementing game mechanics.
Also, make sure that your computer fits the minimum hardware requirements to use the development kit. While it may be possible to use it while having lower-end hardware, your experience may not be as great.
2 – Learning how to use it
Now that you have the development kit ready, it’s time to learn how to use it. If you open it up, you may notice that its interface is quite busy, so it’s easy to get lost in it if you’re not familiar with it.
Because of that, it’s very important to find some tutorials and courses that can show you the basics and put you on the right track. After you get familiar with the interface, it’s much easier to use it and find what you need on the internet.
Fortunately, there are a lot of great courses out there, many of them developed and maintained by Epic Games itself. For example, for a great introduction to the engine, you can check out their own basic tutorial for it. Afterwards, you can also use their other introductory courses on the engine.
However, if you prefer other approaches, the internet is full of them. You can find many free courses on YouTube, for example, like Unreal Sensei’s 5 hour long basic tutorial, as well as many paid courses on Udemy.
You’ll also be able to find written courses throughout the internet, but video tends to be preferred because the development kit takes a more visual approach than a pure programming approach.
3 – Getting into the marketplace
The Unreal Engine Marketplace is the best and easiest place to get many kinds of things to help you develop a game in Unreal Engine, and it’s also quite useful in order to learn how to use it too.
It features a large number of assets of different kinds, as well as plugins and blueprints which can make your life easier, by implementing features and mechanics that lots of games have. You can, for example, find plugins that make it easier to develop pixel games, rhythm games, and much more.
While most of the content there is paid, you can also find a lot of free content to help you kickstart your development, and they can complement very well the huge amount of free assets that already come with the engine.
Having assets that are ready to use can really speed up your development. You can’t really just code everything in and test it all later when the assets are ready, and making the assets while you program can be really difficult and make you lose your train of thought.
So, take advantage of this great feature of the Unreal Engine so that you can focus on developing your game!
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