Steven Kastelec
Game & Systems Designer
About
This is my adventure learning C++ and the Unreal engine. Following a Udemy course over 3 months, I learned to code, blueprint, landscape tools and much more.
Once I had headed into Unreal I needed to understand pointers, references and namespaces as well as their accessors.
I knew about pointers in passing but never thought i'd ever learn them. So when the time came, I wrote every bit of detail I thought I would need on the subject.
Since I was familiar with C# I understood some concepts such as strings, ints, and floats. However C++ had a few changes that i felt was worth documenting.
Once I had headed into Unreal I needed to understand pointers, references and namespaces as well as their accessors.
My intro to the course started by getting a basic understanding of C++ code. This involved writing pure C++ code and creating a command line game. Since I had prior code experience, some of this was mostly review but anything new I had written down for reference.
We often got prompts to design how we thought interactions would happen. This was an early concept of how I would pick up objects.
My first time really messing around with Unreals BSP's. learned a lot about there strengths and weaknesses. I still struggle a bit with inside lighting though.
Learning debug options in unreal including debug line. I put a number in the wrong place and got light sabers.
We often got prompts to design how we thought interactions would happen. This was an early concept of how I would pick up objects.
My first real game in the Unreal Engine. it was a word guessing game that let me finally code for the first time in engine. Also provided me an opportunity to get familiar with the editor layout, asset manipulation and even a little landscape tool experience.
This was cool little prototype that introduced me to some more C++ concepts. Primarily, I found out how to use pointers, access member variables and learned more about header and .cpp files. It was also my first time exploring BSP's, trigger volumes, lighting, animation and Unreal's physics engine.
My final prototype was the heaviest to learn, not only from a code stand point but from an engine point too. Here I learned topics such as polymorphism, cross and dot product, delegates, AI creation and pathfinding, forward declarations, and overriding. In engine I learned about transitioning between scenes, UI and using UMG, particle effects, Blueprint and how to combine C++ code with Blueprint. There's a ton more but those were the major takeaways