EPIC MegaGrants Recipient!
I’m happy to announce I am the recipient of an EPIC MegaGrant for future intermediate/advanced level tutorials! What exactly will be covered is TBA but I think many will be pleased to know it’s not going to be entry-level content. And Instead, focus more on the unusual features of which there is very little or no examples/documentation at all.
This content will be available freely on this site (so no Udemy/Thinkific paid courses) The content will drip-feed as I manage to find time to build them. I expect many to originate from the game I am working on (WARPSQUAD) as it already contains a lot of neat features and tricks not commonly covered.
I’d love to hear what you guys want to see covered (besides the already commonly requested things such as Steamworks, Dedicated Servers, Utility AI that are already on the list)
Would be really nice if you made a topic discussing Morph Targets on Modular Characters that are merged into a single mesh. Seems unless you want the cost of many draw calls for extra meshes the Skeletal Mesh Merge process will merge them together, but you lose Morph Targets, Material Features, and quite a bit other things.
There is also not an ideal way to merge Textures or Materials together and preserve the compression between the textures. Any insights on things like that would be awesome.
It would also be really awesome if there were better ways to map a texture onto a mesh that doesn’t have nice easy to work with uvs. You have a snippet of this, but a more in-depth tutorial would be really nice and possibly if you know of better performant ways.
EOS; Epic Online System. Nobody has anything related to it.
It’s definitely a good subject, and still something I got to learn properly myself.
This is probably the first time in my life that I’ve posted a comment on anything related to social media. BUT when I read NO ENTRY LEVEL CONTENT, I was compelled to post a thank you! So THANK YOU!!!
So tired of content like: “Learn to make 500 games in Unreal Engine in 4 hours!” Looking forward to an opportunity to learn something new! 🙂
Thanks! I’m looking forward to publishing more intermediate stuff. It’s honestly more fun for me to build too than the basics – often a chance for myself to learn some details on the subject too.
Can you show something or point me to resources or do something like multiplayer game on Cloud on production level not finished ones just sample to setup it up on cloud which players from all around the world would connect to or something similar like that where the client of game would be on cloud so that user could play through low level hardware or mid range laptops instead of gaming rigs. Thank You
I would buy another udemy course from you if it is in c++ or other advanced ue4 topics.
Something new is coming, it wont be on Udemy – but either hosted here on the site and/or Stanford’s YouTube.
Hi Tom! You received the grant quite a long time ago. Do you have any updates on upcoming tutorials? Thx!
He’s not going to do anything… He’s one of those ‘pros’ who are out as soon as they’re financially stimulated. Epic should have given him half now, half after. Obviously now he ain’t gonna do shit.
I have no idea what you’re basing that on tbh. I just completed a cirriculum at Stanford hence why there has been little content yet – I did release a blog post 2 weeks ago. So clearly something is still happening 😉
Well, it’s been almost half a year 🙂 What about new content? 🙂
There are two new posts, and the major new course is still in approval limbo for what feels like forever. So I hope soon!
Great news Tom! For me interesting from middle+ levels:
download AActors from the internet (like google drive),
more multiplayer,
c++ interfaces and connection with BP,
c++ parrent classes in BP,
some your explaining about the unreal engine, how it works, and your best practice, coz you are a very strong developer.
Hi, Tom! Thanks for Udemy course! Its one of the best! We extremely waiting for intermediate/advanced level tutorials… When you plan to make it?
Congrats! Your code sample and courses were extremely useful for understanding working with UE.
Advice on advanced topics are such a rarity that this is great to hear.
Topics of person interest would be things like:
Designing around multi actor entities (things like ships where you will have multiple independent actors on board with some orchestration for when events happen).
Anything along those lines when you need to delve into using managers to facilitate communication between actors.
The only good news of all of 2020. I literally am so tired of doing the same beginning/ intermediate tutorials over and over. Of all the people to make an advanced course you are by far the most equipped. I’m literally counting the days till this is released. Keep up the amazing work Tom!
Thanks! I think I got some cool stuff lined up!
Fantastic news Tom! Looking forward to whatever tutorial you decide to produce.
I’m most interested in learning about client-side prediction, specifically regarding projectiles and movement based abilities. Also would like to learn more about the gameplay ability system plugin and/or the new Network Prediction plugin that I believe is coming to 4.26.
Congratulations! Do you have any advice in applying for the Epic MegaGrant?
Creating plugins is a topic that I have found lacking decent resources for.
Any chance you can do a deep dive into the Gameplay Abilities System? I’ve watched several youtube videos, including yours, that touch lightly on the subject but no one seems to have done a good tutorial on actually implementing the system. Maybe you could use the Paragon assets and basically recreate one of the heros in a tutorial series?
Congrats!
Recently moved from Unity to Unreal, and just bought your Udemy course, great stuff.. so can’t wait to see more interesting tutorials.
Topic I’d love to see covered in some tutorials, is how to create a strategy game type world map terrain, like one used in Port Royale 3 and countless of other games. Where you have units moving across land or sea, and to be also possible to do that on mobile devices. I’ve searched a lot for that kind of info and just can’t seem to find anything :(.
Hi Tom, I’d love to see an implementation of marching cubes terrain mesh generation in UE4. C++ seems to make it much more difficult since it doesn’t have multi-dimensional arrays in an easy to use way. The one guy I saw doing it in UE4 on youtube using a 1d array with like partitions to simulate the terrain map. Another idea is procedural level generation with blocks that connect at different heights along square edges in particular.
one more thing, collaborative AI for groups of enemies. I’m not sure what “Utility AI” is so wanted to add this.
Modifying and exploring source code.
100% agree with Ido – would love to learn how to implement Quadruped characters / enemies in UE4. Have tried and given up in the past. Specifically how to set them up for melee combat without running right through them (them running through me?) or getting stuck far off.
Congrats Tom! Given the previous topics you cover I suspect anything you do will be of great interest. Can’t wait.
I hope there can be some explanation and use of the GamePlayAbilitySystem.
Congrats Tom! and Kudos to Epic, a wise decision.
> many will be pleased to know it’s not going to be entry-level content
Hell yeah! And I also vote for memory/async loading topics but also mixed with data driven stuff like DataTables and in general best practices used in the industry for Software Architecture .
Of course more Utility AI would be GREAT!
Those are on my list. I’ve been doing more with that lately and eventually should have enough actual game-dev testing to make posts about it.
Congrats !
I’d love information on how you would tackle Quadruped design in UE4 (with collisions).
Thanks 🙂
congrats! thanks for great resources, keep it up! 🙂
Congratulations Tom, I like to know about Tools development and plugins making
I am applying for a mega grant in 1-2 months. Could you speak about what you know about the application process? Eg, are there better or worse times to apply, or deadlines, or metrics they pay extra attention to? When they contact you, is it a yes/no email, or a series of in person / video meetings and presentations?
Also, I hope it goes without saying, but congratulations!
Well deserved Tom. Looking forward to what you crank out. Steamworks is great and all, but seems documented well enough for anyone that has the time. I loved your tip on arrays the other day and love content like that, it’s there in the meta docs but more of a hidden gem.
Congratulations Tom! There are so many undocumented features and know how required to use UE effectively. I’m looking forward to see what you come up with.
Great news Tom! Congratulations! My hands are itching for something more well designed and more advanced! Good luck!
Congratulations Tom, that’s very awesome.
i like to know about hlod optimizations, impostors lod.
I have a feeling the LOD paradigm might change with UE5 coming next year as it eats poly’s like it’s nothing at all.
Oh yeah!!!! Would be great advance gameplay ui, and memory management (soft class reference, etc)
More on UI w/ UMG and soft reference is on my list. I’ve been working with the Asset Manager lately and using it to manage soft refs and async loads. Finally getting to make sense of things like Asset Bundles.
Awesome, congratulations, looking very much forward for this!