Code Your First Four Game Projects in Unreal Engine 5 with Blueprint Visual Scripting - From Beginner to Advanced!

What you'll learn

Create complete games of different genres including flying shooters, 3D platformers, 2D side scrollers, and vehicles .

Program gameplay with Blueprints, without needing to write code.

Get free, high quality assets for levels, characters, props and effects into your game projects.

Blueprint best practices for development, including optimization, speed, memory, and project structure.

Unreal Engine's modeling and rigging tools.

Create effects with Niagara Systems and MetaSounds.

Understand Unreal Engine Materials and create Materials from pro texture maps.

Manage dependencies, the impacts of Tick and Casting, async loading of assets, soft object references and soft class references.

Requirements

No experience necessary. Start as an absolute beginner.

A desire to learn how to make video games!

A computer with internet access.

Must meet the minimum system requirements to run Unreal Engine 5.

Description

This is the Ultimate Blueprint course for Unreal Engine 5.In this course, you will start with absolutely no experience in game development whatsoever. All of the important terms and concepts in game development will be introduced to you and explained carefully and in detail. By the end, you will have four small game projects of different genres, ranging from 2D to 3D, and you'll understand the underlying principles needed to make any creation you can imagine.The course starts you off as a complete beginner, but experienced developers will also benefit from this course, as many best practices and advanced features are covered throughout.The course begins at the beginning - downloading the Epic Games Launcher, where we will install Unreal Engine 5, as well as gain access to the Epic Games Marketplace where we can get tons of free, high-quality assets for our games. After familiarizing ourselves with the Unreal Engine editor, learning about asset types and how to import asset files, we get some practice manipulating objects in the level and building simple game environments with free asset packs.We then get started learning the basic structure of the Blueprint visual scripting system, as well as cover the fundamental math skills every game developer needs to understand. We get practice visualizing vectors in the engine with the various debug drawing Blueprint nodes.With the original assets created specifically for this course, we then create our first simple game, Bad Bot - a drone flying shooter. We cover the fundamentals of Unreal Engine's class hierarchy, learning about the various game classes that come together to form a basic game - including the Actor, the Pawn, the Game Mode, and the Controller. We learn how to bind inputs from keyboard, mouse, and console controller using Unreal Engine's Enhanced Input System. This project covers spawning enemy bots, firing projectiles, and adding sound and visual effects such as impacts and explosions, before finishing the level with a boss fight.We then dive deep into Unreal Engine's collision framework, with a section dedicated to the collision system in Unreal Engine. We learn how Unreal Engine handles collision, including knowledge of:The physics system versus the query systemCollision Complexity and how meshes can have both simple and complex collision and how to configure theseHow the method of movement determines the type of interactions objects will have with each otherSweeping collisions versus physics collisionsCollision Enabled, Collision Object Types, and Collision Responses, and how these work togetherCustom collision channels, custom collision profiles, and optimization for performanceBy the end of this chapter, Unreal Engine's collision framework will be completely demystified and you'll easily be able to configure the collision settings correctly so that your game object interact as intended, optimized for performance, and without invisible collision interactions affecting the game's frame rate.With our newly-acquired collision skillset, we start the second game project of the course, Jetpack Journey - a third-person platformer with Kix, an original character created, rigged, and animated for this course. Kix has a jetpack, allowing us to step up our complexity, going from the Pawn class to the Character class. We learn about the Character Movement Component, and how to change movement modes from walking to flying. We implement a fully-functional jetpack with a blendspace, allowing for smooth blending of animations while flying. This project involves creating precious resources in the form of jet fuel, allowing us to implement pickups to refuel, a progress bar for the fuel percent, and moving platforms that force the player to use the flying capability. We learn about some very important concepts in this section, including:Movement modes, and switching to flying modeSingle and two-dimensional Blendspaces to blend between animation posesBinding inputs in the Player Controller versus the Character classKeeping Blueprint nodes clean and readableManaging class dependencies and coding best practices - we're using Blueprints, but we should still follow best practice!Skeletal Mesh Sockets, utilized for jetpack thruster effectsEnforcing precious resources in the form of jet fuel, with jet fuel pickups to refill fuelUse of UMG (Unreal Motion Graphics) to create UI including a progress bar to display fuel percentThe impact of Casting on runtime performance and memory via the creation of hard referencesAnalyzing class memory size via the size map, and dependencies via the reference viewerReducing file size with texture compressionLazily loading of assets at runtime and how to load assets asynchronously, using soft object and class referencesLighting and Post ProcessingThis section covers many important aspects of game development that even experienced developers aren't aware of. You're verging on intermediate-to-advanced territory with some of these!The next game project introduces Unreal Engine's 2D capabilities, as we enable the built-in Paper2D plugin for 2D games. We also download the now-free PaperZD, a very important 2D plugin allowing us to use important 2D features for our games. This section's game project is a 2D dungeon-crawling side-scroller with Red Hood, a hooded 2D figure who ventures through a dark dungeon, battling skeleton minions via melee combat. We cover some valuable ground in this section, including:Where to get free 2D assets, including animated characters, props, UI and environmentsCreation of sprites, flipbooks, tile sets and tile mapsImportant settings for a 2D Unreal Engine game project2D level creationEnemy AI with the Behavior Tree and BlackboardCombat and combo attacksUse and creation of the compound data types such as enums and structuresFloating damage numbersImplementing melee combatBy this point, you will have the skills necessary to create your own game projects, but we're not quite done yet. We wrap up the course with a final section on Unreal Engine's Chaos Vehicles! Chaos Vehicles are Unreal's physics-based vehicle system. We use original assets created specifically for this course, importing a sci-fi car and wheels into the engine. We use the engine's built-in rigging tools to create a skeleton and skin it to the mesh, before creating a fully-functional chaos vehicle. We end by implementing enter/leave functionality for the car, by migrating the vehicle into our Jetpack Journey project so Kix can enter and leave the vehicle. We learn:Creation of Skeletal Meshes from Static MeshesRigging and skinning, creating a vehicle skeleton and physics assetCreation of a fully-functional chaos vehicle with keyboard/mouse and console controller input (using Enhanced Input)Coverage of Chaos Vehicle settings including torque/rpms, friction, front/rear/all-wheel drive, front/rear wheel steering, and moreMigrating the vehicle into our Jetpack projectChanging possession of Pawns/Characters to enter and exit the vehicle.By the end of this course, you will have gone from absolute beginner to having intermediate/advanced skills. You will understand the principles necessary to create game projects on your own. You will have hands-on practice, as well as theoretical knowledge underlying every tool and concept used throughout this course.You will also have access to our Druid Mechanics Discord Community, a community of over 23,000 students of all skill levels, all interacting, conversing, and helping each other throughout their game development journeys.After this course, you will fully understand Unreal Engine's architecture and class hierarchy. If your aim is to develop your own games, or even to further your career or learning journey, or move on to tackle Unreal's C++ system, this course will prepare you and equip you with the skills needed to do so.You will gain lifetime access to the course for a single, one-time fee. You will have access to all updates and patches made to the videos.If you're ready to learn how to make your own games, this course is ready for you.See you soon!

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction to Unreal Engine

Lecture 2 Assets for the Course

Lecture 3 Your First Challenge

Lecture 4 Installing the Engine

Lecture 5 Our First Project

Lecture 6 Editor Layout

Lecture 7 Play In Editor

Lecture 8 Manipulating Objects

Lecture 9 Perspective

Lecture 10 File Types

Lecture 11 Mesh Scale

Lecture 12 Materials

Lecture 13 Drone Material

Lecture 14 Marketplace Assets

Lecture 15 Migrating Assets

Section 2: The Blueprint Visual Scripting System

Lecture 16 What is Blueprint

Lecture 17 The Level Blueprint

Lecture 18 Creating a Blueprint Class

Lecture 19 Components

Lecture 20 Append String

Lecture 21 Coordinates

Lecture 22 Debug Shapes

Lecture 23 Local vs Global Space

Section 3: Vectors and Rotators

Lecture 24 Vectors

Lecture 25 Vector Examples

Lecture 26 Vector Examples Practice

Lecture 27 Vector Operations

Lecture 28 Vector Operations Examples

Lecture 29 Vector Operations Practice

Lecture 30 Vector Magnitude

Lecture 31 Vector Magnitude Examples

Lecture 32 Vector Magnitude Practice

Lecture 33 Booleans and Branches

Lecture 34 Vector Normalization

Lecture 35 Vector Normalization Practice

Lecture 36 Delta Seconds

Lecture 37 Rotators

Lecture 38 Rotators Practice

Section 4: Bad Bot - A Drone Flying Shooter Game

Lecture 39 Multiple Materials Per Mesh

Lecture 40 Geting a Reference to the Pawn

Lecture 41 Interpolation

Lecture 42 Static Mesh Sockets

Lecture 43 Blaster Beam Mesh

Lecture 44 Spawning Actors

Lecture 45 Projectile Movement

Lecture 46 Blueprint Functions

Lecture 47 Niagara Systems

Lecture 48 Spawning Effects

Lecture 49 Meta Sounds

Lecture 50 Timers

Lecture 51 Hit Events

Lecture 52 Expose on Spawn

Lecture 53 Floating Spheres

Lecture 54 Rotating the Spheres

Lecture 55 Timelines with Float Curves

Lecture 56 Timelines with Vector Curves

Lecture 57 Sphere Spawner

Lecture 58 Overlap Events

Lecture 59 Game Mode

Lecture 60 Bad Bot Level

Section 5: Pawns and Enhanced Input

Lecture 61 The Pawn Class

Lecture 62 Creating a Custom Pawn Class

Lecture 63 Adding Components to the Bot Pawn

Lecture 64 The Enhanced Input System

Lecture 65 Firing the Rifle

Lecture 66 Mouse Movement

Lecture 67 Floating Pawn Movement Component

Lecture 68 Camera Lag

Section 6: Collision Essentials

Lecture 69 Unreal Engine's Collision Framework

Lecture 70 Collision Complexity

Lecture 71 Queries

Lecture 72 Sweeeping Collisions

Lecture 73 Set Actor Location with Sweeping

Lecture 74 Collisions with Physics

Lecture 75 Collision with Movement Components

Lecture 76 Collision Callbacks

Lecture 77 Custom Collision Presets

Lecture 78 Custom Collision Object Types

Section 7: Bad Bot Wrap-Up and Boss Fight

Lecture 79 Material Instances

Lecture 80 Blueprint Interfaces

Lecture 81 Widget Blueprints

Lecture 82 Line Trace for Aiming

Lecture 83 Level Assets

Lecture 84 Bot Spawn Volume

Lecture 85 Spawning Bots

Lecture 86 Boss Bot

Lecture 87 Boss Challenge

Lecture 88 Boss Challenge Pt 2

Section 8: Jetpack Journey - a 3D Platformer with a Jetpack

Lecture 89 The Character Class

Lecture 90 Creating the Kix Character

Lecture 91 Kix Game Mode

Lecture 92 Camera and SpringArm

Lecture 93 Look Input Action

Lecture 94 Kix Player Controller

Lecture 95 WASD Movement

Lecture 96 Clean Nodes

Lecture 97 Jumping

Lecture 98 Console Controllers

Lecture 99 Animations

Lecture 100 Blendspaces

Lecture 101 State Machines

Lecture 102 Movement Parameters

Lecture 103 State Alias

Lecture 104 Skeletal Mesh Sockets

Lecture 105 Thruster Effect Components

Lecture 106 Activating Thrusters

Lecture 107 Thruster Sounds

Lecture 108 Flying Mode

Lecture 109 Thruster Movement Input

Lecture 110 Flying Blendspace

Lecture 111 Blend Poses vs State Machines

Lecture 112 Sound Notifies

Lecture 113 Jet Fuel

Lecture 114 Enforcing Jet Fuel

Lecture 115 Fuel Assets

Lecture 116 Jet Fuel Actor

Lecture 117 Refilling Jet Fuel

Lecture 118 Juicing it Up

Lecture 119 Widget Blueprints

Lecture 120 Fuel Bar

Lecture 121 Class Dependencies

Lecture 122 Updating the Fuel Bar

Lecture 123 Casting and Memory

Lecture 124 Texture Compression

Lecture 125 Soft References

Section 9: Platformer Mechanics and Advanced Skills

Lecture 126 Platforms

Lecture 127 Pressure Plate

Lecture 128 Moving the Plate

Lecture 129 Interact Interface

Lecture 130 Floating Platform

Lecture 131 Ping Pong Platform

Lecture 132 Placing Items

Lecture 133 Packed Level Actors

Lecture 134 Win and Lose

Lecture 135 End Game Menu

Lecture 136 Menu Functionality

Lecture 137 Event Dispatchers

Lecture 138 Data Types

Lecture 139 The Construction Script

Section 10: A 2D Dungeon Crawler - Red Hood

Lecture 140 Free 2D Assets

Lecture 141 Project Creation

Lecture 142 Sprites

Lecture 143 Flipbooks

Lecture 144 Paper Character

Lecture 145 Camera Settings

Lecture 146 Input

Lecture 147 PaperZD

Lecture 148 Locomotion

Lecture 149 Transitional Animations

Lecture 150 Sound Notifies

Lecture 151 Jump Sounds

Lecture 152 State Events

Lecture 153 Tilesets

Lecture 154 Tileset Layers

Lecture 155 Sort Priority

Lecture 156 2D Level

Lecture 157 Level and Adjustments

Lecture 158 Enemy Class

Lecture 159 Behavior Tree

Lecture 160 Behavior Tree Tasks

Lecture 161 Decorators

Lecture 162 Patrol Box Overlaps

Lecture 163 Services

Lecture 164 Custom Decorators

Lecture 165 Attack Task

Lecture 166 Skeleton Sounds

Lecture 167 Box Trace

Lecture 168 Anim Notifies

Lecture 169 Trace for Objects

Lecture 170 Hit React

Lecture 171 Disable Movement

Lecture 172 Hit React Effects

Lecture 173 Damage and Health

Lecture 174 Player Health Bar

Lecture 175 Updating the Health Bar

Lecture 176 Damage Numbers

Lecture 177 Attack Input Action

Lecture 178 Throttling Attacks

Lecture 179 Attack Combo

Lecture 180 Attack Count

Lecture 181 Attack Anim Array

Lecture 182 Structures - Attack Anim Data

Lecture 183 Reset Attack Variables

Lecture 184 RedHood Hit Boxes

Lecture 185 Skeletons Getting Hit

Lecture 186 Combat Effects

Lecture 187 Damage Numbers on Skellies

Lecture 188 Enemy Health Bars

Lecture 189 Enemy Death

Section 11: Chaos Vehicles

Lecture 190 Assets

Lecture 191 Combining Static Meshes

Lecture 192 Adding a Skeleton

Lecture 193 Skinning the Mesh

Lecture 194 Vehicle Physics Asset

Lecture 195 Wheel Blueprints

Lecture 196 Torque Curve

Lecture 197 Animation Blueprint

Lecture 198 Vehicle Blueprint

Lecture 199 Vehicle Inputs

Lecture 200 Moving the Vehicle

Lecture 201 Migrating the Vehicle

Lecture 202 Interact Widget

Lecture 203 Interactables

Lecture 204 Interact

Lecture 205 Possessing the Vehicle

Lecture 206 Edge Cases

Lecture 207 Exiting the Vehicle

Lecture 208 Bonus Lecture - Continuing your Journey!

Complete beginners to game development.,Those interested in making games in Unreal Engine.,Those interested in game animation, visual effects, sound effects, and materials.,Those interested in programming gameplay without writing code. Blueprints only!