The Best Start I Can Give You

Two months into my indie game development journey, I definitely have some insights to share. Obviously, there's a lot of effort involved in the initial learning process. Sometimes it can feel like pointing a wimpy flashlight down a dark tunnel. What's ahead? Do you have what you need? Which learning resources are the best? How can you avoid some of the classic early roadblocks? I'll aim to answer all of that here. But first things first:

1. What Game Engine Should You Use?

This was the first question that came up. I mean, honestly, it's important to tackle. We like to pretend sometimes by saying, "It doesn't matter what game engine you use; just use what's comfortable." But what if nothing's comfortable? What if you've never done this before? I can't really tell you what engine is best for you, but I can get briefly into why I chose Unreal for my project. Unreal is obviously a very mature engine with a lot of features. It has its drawbacks (like any engine), but one feature that really appealed to me is visual scripting. In Unreal, that's called Blueprints. It's basically a node-based scripting workflow so you can visualize your scripting logic as you put it together. Is it as powerful as straight C++ code? In the strictest sense of that question, no. But the truth is it's more than powerful enough to meet the needs of my project. I chose Blueprints because although I'm not familiar with many important programming concepts I've started to learn, I am comfortable with the idea of visual scripting (thanks to my time in node-based Blender workflows like shader & geometry nodes).

2. Where To Even Start?

This is a big one. What topic do you tackle first? The funny thing about learning something new is, you don't know what you don't know. What I mean by that is when you start learning Unreal scripting, you likely don't even know what's most important to start with. So for me, I started with Kevin Freeman's "Unreal Engine Blueprint Fundamentals" playlist. What was so good about this was Kevin's approach to teaching. He's very slow, and explains everything as if from the perspective of a beginner. This is super important, but you'd be surprised by how often this point is missed by instructors on YouTube. It's a systemic issue. I have theories about why this is so common, but when I watch a tutorial, I always ask myself one thing:

Is this instructor explaining the "why" behind what they're teaching, or are they simply running a "do what I do, press what I press" workshop without really elaborating on anything?

Let's face it. We live in the era of posers and cheats. "Whoa, Riley, that's really harsh." It's true, but think about it. Now more than ever, it's easy to swindle people into thinking you know what you're talking about. I could open up an AI chat right now and tell it to write me a tutorial. The difference between that and me actually teaching someone comes down to understanding. We're not machines where we can simply download a program onto our brain like a hard drive or in the Matrix. At our core, we as humans are driven by story. Story is arguably the very reason we started communicating in the first place, and it's still such a core part of how we make sense of the world. People love stories. I can convey information to you right now by saying, "Unreal Engine Blueprints have variables that help define various data points in a graph." Did you follow what I just said? If you know a thing or two about Unreal, you might have context to place that statement within a spot in your mind, converting it into something useful. But what if you're a beginner? I might need to actually have a conversation with you, teach you, and help you understand in a way that clicks for your actual project.

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To me, that's the difference between information sharing and actually teaching. It's the ability to explain the "why" or the "what" behind something in a way that actually clicks for the recipient. When I hear an instructor say "press this button, then this one, then this one" without explanation, I can't help but hear what they're really saying: "Press what I press because I don't really understand how to make this work, or why it works, unless you do exactly what I do."

3. There's a Wall Coming. Make a Plan.

You can find the best instructors out there. They can explain the fundamental principles of Unreal, Blender, whatever you're learning. But just like there's a gap between information and understanding, there's a gap between understanding and application. You may understand the theory of how something like variables works, but until you can start putting it into practice, there are going to be some out-of-focus fuzzy areas. Even the best instructors can't hope to cover every possible scenario you might run into with your actual development. When you have understanding but lack the pieces to put it into practice in a specific scenario, I call this the wall.

I hit this hard at about a month in. The tricky thing is, no amount of Google searching or AI pleading will get you through this phase. Maybe, but if it does, it's at an incredibly slow pace. All the while, you're facing actual landmines as you pick up bad practices from instructors and AI alike. These are often masked by perfect confidence in what they're teaching you. The thing is though, what may work in a very specific tutorial example, may not actually be best for your unique project scenario. Luckily, this isn't my first self-taught journey, so I knew where to turn from here.

4. The Bridge to Actual Development

Guide, mentor, master, and apprentice, tutor—whatever you call them, this is the part where you need them. Find someone who not only has the knowledge but also has enough points of contact that they'll be able to guide you through the specific scenario you're in. Mentorship relationships take many forms. Some are paid, some are found more organically. I'm lucky enough to have both. For a paid option, I recommend Ryan Laley's Diamond level on Patreon. This gets you one recorded call with Ryan per month. Right now, it sits at $50/month, which may sound like a lot, but trust me... If you come to this call prepared with questions, you will get your value's worth and more. One thing Ryan let me know up front was that this call was my time—my time to lead and ask the questions I had. What's crucial about something like this is that you actually come to the call with those questions.

I don't recommend you get a mentor right away. I suggest you start gaining some understanding on your own, and when you hit that application wall, then reach out! This way, you'll already have a foundation of understanding to know what questions to ask and how to get the most out of your time. In addition to this paid mentorship with Ryan, I'm also lucky enough to have a experienced friends who have been willing to take me under their wing and bridge the gap between understanding and actual implementation.

That's All I Have For You

That's it! Two months of development and that's where I'm at: information -> understanding -> application. And what does my game look like so far? If you're interested in an actual breakdown of the full node graph, keep an eye out for an exclusive DevLog coming on my Patreon. You'll see those coming more frequently as I'm actually to a point in my project where I have something worth showing!