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The physical animation component they showed off on the stream this week looked great.
Given the preview of all these features has been out for weeks, doesn't seem particularly noteworthy?
Anyone have some recommended tutorials on how to get started working with Unreal Engine? I've done some googling, but curious what the HN community has done/suggests.
I taught myself the basics by picking apart the sample projects in the learn tab of the launcher. Specifically I started with a top down template (c++) for my own project and then looked at how the strategygame sample worked, gradually porting features across to my own project and adjusting as needed. I think a lot of people do something similar with ShooterGame, since that's a really simple multiplayer shooter and also gives you an idea of how to structure things for network replication. I had even heard that the Ark: Survival Evolved binary was actually still called ShooterGame, but I don't know how accurate that is.

The UnrealEngine youtube channel is also fantastic, and their training streams are very good. The documentation is OK, but you're better off reading the source most of the time for anything lower level - the headers are generally pretty well commented.

This playlist is amazing: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaCL2XjKluO...

I watched it before starting my last semester in college with 0 Unreal Engine experience. I was able to create a game which got an award for our senior capstone showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z1RVBELKAU

You'll have to check the comments often to see what broke (and fixes pasted in an unformatted textbox!) Don't just download all of the videos, there's important context considering some of those are from the initial release.
I have been working on a side project for over a year now in UE4, and my suggestion is this:

1. Just dive in, it is definitely one of those applications where you dont learn many things other than by doing them.

2. Read the documentation, forums, and answers section. You can see what other people struggle with and try to avoid it.

3. Video tutorials. Sometimes they suck, but sometimes they show you that one blueprint thing, etc, and it makes a big difference.

4. Marketplace and starter content. I love the starter content and the marketplace because I dissect them to see how they did it so I can do it my way.

5. Finally, I highly suggest you review and read all you can about gamedev pipelines. If you dont understand your workflow you are going to have a mess thats hard to manage. Ive forked my project 5 times before finally starting over from scratch and it was a good feeling to strip the project back to bare essentials.

It all depends on what you want to do as well. Im interested in VR MMO backend infrastructure and netcode (prediction, etc) so what Im looking at might be different than you are.

Just my few cents. Now if only I could get my hands on a Vive...

I learned much of the basic things in about couple of days using their tutorials and quick start. Then spend ~1 week to learn advanced stuff and dig through undocumented features. I'm now able to build functional drone simulator is pretty cool looking world :). Sure, there are tons of videos but they are pain to watch than just reading a doc with screenshots.

Quick Start https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/QuickSt...

C++ Tutorials https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/Tutoria...

How soon is Vulkan support coming for non mobile versions (Linux specifically)?
When you're using a fully fledged game engine like Unreal why does the form it takes on the hardware matter? What devices or platforms does Vulkan support add to Unreal it didn't have before? Is there a measurable performance improvement?
> why does the form it takes on the hardware matter?

Obviously because of performance. It matters, and a lot.

> Is there a measurable performance improvement?

Yes, it should be expected, of course if they use Vulkan properly.

Those demos for VR editing are amazing, I'm really looking forward to the day that 3D worlds can be designed from within them.
Is there a progress bar for rendering light maps in it yet? Nothing quite like waiting for unspecified amount of hours. Nor do you know how much is left, nor how much did it pass. Nothing. Otherwise, product with a bright future.
That's a good new that ive read today so far