Learning in public
Notes from the Unreal Engine beginner path. Short, honest, replaceable as I ship real work.
Wrote a step-by-step on the Games page for Unreal Engine 5.8’s official stack: PCG, PCG Primitives, Mesh Terrain, Biome Core, and the updated City Sample. Enable the plugins in Edit → Plugins, then one graph and one volume before the city. That is the generic modular env path Epic is pushing — best starting point, written in order so I can actually click it.
Started learning Blueprints in detail. New recording on the Games page: Unreal Engine 5.8, Content / BPLearn, a Blueprint Class, the Event Graph. Event BeginPlay, a Timer integer, compile. That is the fundamentals of coding with Blueprints — not a game, an explanation of how the nodes actually run.
The first game page is now the Games page. New recording: Unreal Engine 5.8, Blueprints, Top Down template. Click-to-move on a graybox, then the Enhanced Input actions that make the click an order. That is the start of a top-down strategy/shooter — not a trailer, an explanation of how the next game begins.
A new playable sits on the Games page. Third-person mannequin, a painted start line, colored platforms, and a timer HUD. Recorded in the Unreal Editor viewport. Packaged Android and Windows builds are on that page too. FHOU — coins and game-over from 25 August — stays underneath as the loop that started it.
The Rust polygonal editor now runs in the browser on a Rust page. I am writing my own 3D modeler in system-level code — mesh, GPU, tools. Same tools as the desktop build: object and edit mode, extrude, inset, gizmos, OBJ in and out. WebGPU does the viewport. It is not Blender — it is the workbench I wrote, parked next to the games.
I have a loop I can run. Third-person mannequin on a lime graybox, coins that increment a HUD, a game-over widget. Working title FHOU. Two recordings — editor and standalone preview — are still on the Games page. Pretty can wait. Play could not.
I spent years on 3D modeling and a stretch in other engines and tools. Unreal Engine is where I want to learn game development properly: editor, Blueprints, then C++. Calling myself a beginner is the point. The 3D artist site is retired. This studio site is the new start.
First maps are cubes in a pine clearing. Scale, door height, and a path the player can read. Pretty materials come after the space works. That is a 3D artist habit I am trying to keep — and a game-dev habit I am trying to learn.
Lighting studies first: a lantern, fog, wet bark. If a scene feels like a place with a single source, I trust it more than a dozen fill lights. Next: hook that mood into a walkable blockout inside Unreal.
I already know how to make game-ready meshes. The new skill is import settings, collision, Nanite choices, and materials that survive engine lighting. That is the homework for the next weeks.
