Starting Your Project in Unreal Engine 4

Making a game is hard. It is challenging and time consuming and draining and it can feel like work at times. If it was easy then everyone would be out there making every little thing that came to their mind and there would be a lot more high quality games on the market. Getting over that first step of getting a project up and running scares away most people, but it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it might seem at first. With a bit of determination and planning you can absolutely get yourself started using an engine like Unreal Engine 4 even without any knowledge of code and game development in general.

While it can be fun to jump right in and start making things, especially if you’ve never made a game before, the key to starting a long term game project is to start in the planning phase. Without doing so it is extremely easy to get sidetracked developing a few systems while leaving yourself with an unplayable mess. This might be fine in traditional development where a finished system could exist for a long time, but in game development there’s an expectation that things will change and you could end up throwing a lot of that work and time away later if things don’t work out how you envisioned them.

The initial goal for your project should be a Minimum Viable Product or MVP. This is the bare foundation of the game with the few mechanics you need to actually play and test the core idea. The goal of developing this product first is that you’ll be able to test and iterate early so that you can find the ones that work the best or are the most enjoyable to interact with. This means you throw out less work and find a good direction as quickly as possible so you don’t find yourself restarting in the future. The process of planning your MVP can be fun as it forces you to come up with tangible ideas for what the game should look like and how each system should function. You can also use this time to categorize longer term goals and ideas that you can eventually build up to from the MVP.

When I start planning a MVP I think about my vision for the project and pick out the few fundamental systems that the player will interact with. The systems that the player controls or interacts with directly are likely to be the most important ones for your game and the ones you should develop first so that you have some basic gameplay elements to build upon. Once I’ve come up with these mechanics I’ll use a tool like Trello to map out and really drill down and figure out what the most basic components of those mechanics will look like. The image below is one such example of this with me breaking down every function the player could take to control their ‘generals’ which is the core mechanic of a game I’m developing around necromancy.

Each element in the list is mapped directly to a key or action the player would regularly take while playing the game

While that list is long for a MVP, it also makes up almost the entirety of my initial goals for the project. Once that list is completed then I’ll be able to test and iterate on the basic systems as well as start implementing some of the more complex elements like character customization and progression. This list essentially gives me a tangible goal to work through while trying to get to the ‘fun stuff’ which is actually implementing the game’s unique mechanics and elements and seeing the world come to life.

From here I simply went down the list and identified which mechanics are reliant on each other in order to eventually find my starting point. In this case ‘Move To’ was my first step because it required the least amount of moving parts since many of the other aspects required AI/behavior tree implementation. Thinking about how to implement that basic ‘Move To’ command basically led me right to where I needed to start: First the player so that they can give ‘Move To’ commands, then a system so they can aim and target where they want their minion to go, and finally the ability for the minion to receive that command and actually follow it to the targeted location. By following this pattern and really digging down into how each system works you can avoid getting stuck and unsure of what to do next because you always have that list to refer back to and to tell you exactly what else is needed to move forward.

Once that MVP checklist is completely filled out then you’re essentially free and ready to start actual development. At this point you have a functional (if very rough) game where you can test and see if your initial mechanic is actually fun to play. If not then you can try different things or add some additional features to try and find the experience that makes your game enjoyable.

This whole process can be applied to additional features as well, giving you a clear map of how to implement a system, but at this point it’s really up to you where you go and what’s the most important part to build next. In my opinion, this is the most fun place to be in terms of development because you’ve essentially built your canvas so that now you can have fun actually implementing your cool ideas and seeing how they play and feel, you just have to power through that initial MVP phase where everything is being set up. While there are certainly more pitfalls farther down the road in game development, getting to this point can often be the hardest part. Once you’re here with a MVP and some groundwork in place, even if you don’t finish you’ll still have something functional and cool you can show off and potentially build upon later on down the line.

One final note; don’t be afraid to have a bit of extra fun, even in the MVP phase. Obviously don’t let it majorly sidetrack you from your initial goals, but if you’re making a game for yourself then you should want to work on it. It’s important to remember this and to embrace the little things you can do to make the game and the development experience more fun.

Some things are more important than others. Like skeletons. With hats.