Udemy has released a new course entitled “Unreal Engine 4: How to Develop Your First Two Games”, which is now available and uses Unreal Engine’s Blueprint Visual Scripting system to deliver rich insight into Unreal Engine according to Epic Games’ own best practices and recommendations for working with UE4.
Taught by Unreal Engine evangelist and indie game developer Chris Murphy, the new course gives those with only a passing knowledge of game development the opportunity to take their work to the next level. “After completing this course, any student should be able to get dropped into a team working with Unreal Engine and be a capable, functional member,” Murphy explains. “That was the real aim of this course.”
Rather than deliver standard lessons about product features, Murphy walks students through unique projects that teach them how to use specific features through practice. This approach helps students learn a little bit of everything about UE4 and not just specific aspects of the engine.
The projects Murphy covers in the course are:
- An architectural visualization, which introduces students to the basics of Unreal Engine 4 editor
- A pinball game, which teaches how to create a series of interactions with a ball that isn’t dependent on characters or a human element
In the course, Murphy also drills down into topics so students understand why they need to do certain things, not just how, so they’ll apply what they’ve learned correctly in future projects.
To further assist developer progress, Murphy delivered additional content to the course post-launch. This additional project, which is now available as part of the course, leverages Infinity Blade assets to teach use of character classes, movement components and outdoor landscapes to create a top-down survival game. This project will also teach more thorough mapping and lighting techniques to enhance environment creation.
At the end of the course, students can use these projects to demonstrate their skills to hiring managers and communicate their knowledge of Unreal Engine 4, including particle systems, Blueprint templates, Cascade, shading, artificial intelligence, and materials – “a little bit of everything,” according to Murphy.
You can access the course at a discounted rate by using this link. Those new to Unreal Engine can download UE4 for free right here.