How to develop a game using unreal engine

Unreal Engine – A popular game engine developed by Epic Games. The unreal game engine is not only used in the gaming industry but also in the architecture and cinema industry. Epic games recently announced the release of Unreal Engine 5. But here in this blog, we use the previous version to demonstrate developing a game in an unreal engine.

Reasons to develop Games in Unreal Engine?

• It provides flexibility to work between different platforms.
• You can develop games without even writing a single line of code.
• For artists Incorporate powerful capabilities for complex scenes and effects.
• You can master this game engine in a short time 
• Get help from the huge community. 
• Unreal Engine is free to use. 
• Has great tools for building a virtual or augmented reality.

How to Install Unreal Engine

You need to have some specific hardware and software requirements to install your unreal engine and this will be a very basic one. 

Software requirements are

• Operating System: Windows 10 (64-bit)
• Processor: Quad-core Intel/AMD, 2.5 GHz or Faster
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphic: DirectX 11 or 12 compatible graphics card

Hardware requirements are

• Visual Studio 2017 v15.6 and above or Visual Studio 2019 is required now.
• iTunes 12 or higher would be needed if you want to code the game for the Ios Operating system.

Installing with Epic Games Launcher

After having the specific hardware and software requirements, you need to get into the Epic Games Launcher for downloading and installing games & their assets.

Steps to install the Launcher:

1. Go to Unreal Engine’s Official Download page.
2. Choose the license option ( Publishing License: If you want to make games. Creators License: If you have a plan to produce content outside of the game, you can choose this license.)
3. Then click on the download option.
4. Once downloaded you can run it.

There will be a few pop-ups to grant access, read them and click yes to proceed with downloading.

Creating an Epic Games Account

Once the launcher has been installed a signup or register screen will display. If you already have an account login or else register to create an account.

Installing Unreal Engine

Installing the unreal engine is very simple you can check out the below article to install the unreal engine versions to run the game.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pIcezCPSkTa3htsxHLWBBK9Sy5HjlOff4k1RBZJDgAQ/edit

How to Create Projects with Unreal Engine

For Unreal Engine project creation, first, you have to click on the launch button

An interface shown in the below image will be opened. As we discussed earlier unreal engine is not only for games, you will be having other industry options to choose from. Click on the games and then the next button.

The next screen shows many readily available projects, you can either choose one from that or create an empty project. Select your choice appropriately and click on next.

The next page will have the project settings where you can choose whether you want Blueprint or C++. This page will show you the graphics option/ Raytracing feature and the target to start with.

Before choosing Raytracing and Maximum Quality options, check your graphics card capacity, this will affect your Unreal Engine performance.

The default image appears on the game screen when the project is created initially. On your first open project, you will get a short tutorial by clicking the “blue hat” icon on the top right portion of the screen.

Unreal Engine Interface

The Unreal Engine interface is customizable according to your requirement. As a start, you can focus on a default interface. This will be very simple to start with.

You will be having a set of buttons, which you can make use of 

Tab Bar and Menu Bar – Similar to the web browser, where you can see different tabs that you are making use of.

Unreal Engine Toolbar – It has many items listed below for you to choose from and even has a play button to preview the game.

Unreal Engine Viewport – It has a wide area where we will use this space for game development. You can use your mouse and the WASD keys to navigate from one place to another.

Unreal Engine Details – In this panel, you can see all the information about the current item that you are working on. You can add the rendering features, lighting, and other components, and scripts here.

Unreal Engine World Outliner -Here, you will find all the actors present in your play scene. Rather than looking for actors on the playing field, you can select them here and make the necessary changes.

Mastering the entire interface will depend on experience and time. For this, you should try to develop a lot of projects. This is the best way to gain experience with Unreal Engine.

Game Development in Unreal Engine

The above tutorial gives you an idea about how to install the Unreal Engine, how to start a new game project and game engine interfaces, etc. Game development is a field that requires a lot of hard work and experience. Unreal engine is a popular game development platform, and expertising it is a great decision. One can explore more and have a lot of fun along with their work. Keep track and regularly check on the unreal engine official website to stay up-to-date.