The Ultimate Unreal Engine 5 Guide

Intro

Unreal Engine 5 will be the new gold standard in game design. The Lumen Lighting System is a revolution in game design, the Nanite Mesh will allow more complex and beautiful environments to be created, large scale universes can be created by loading and unloading segments dynamically at runtime, the interface is also cleaner, easier, with a variety of ease of use functions and features making game design a breeze.

There is no longer any reason to use Unity. It is deprecated. Unreal 5 is the new standard. Unreal 5 is what employers will want you to work with. Unreal 5 is what you will use to make high quality games, among other things. As an indie developer, you are blessed with technology good enough to make a AAA Commercial-Grade Game costing multiple millions of dollars to produce. And once you’ve made a few games like that, I think you’ll find those big companies are quite happy to scout impressive new talent skilled in their favorite engine.

Even if you’re just a hobbyist, tinkering for fun, you should be playing with Unreal Engine 5. It costs nothing to download, use, or sell your games, and it is MORE FUN than the best videogame you’ve ever played. Being a game developer is GREAT.

You can check out our beginner’s guide to Unreal Engine 5, here. <——

Is Unreal Engine 5 out?

Unreal 5 hit early access in May 2021, and it’s set for a full release by the beginning of 2022 or towards the end of 2021.

You can find out more with this press release from Epic Games.

What Computer do I need for Unreal Engine 5?

Do you need a good PC for Unreal Engine 5?

Unreal Engine 5 recommends a 12 core CPU clocked at 3.4 Ghz, with an RTX 2080, and 32 GB RAM at a minimum. You can run it on lower, but not without a degradation of features.

Starting out

So here we are in the editor, it’s a lot cleaner and more efficient looking than the old editor. First thing I’m doing is removing the content browser. We don’t need it anymore, we have the content drawer. The content drawer is a temporary content browser you can open and close at will, it automatically closes when not in use, then you just click a button, it pops up, you make your changes, and you’re good to go, the content drawer closes, and you have more screen space.

The Command Console

The Cmd console. You don’t have to call it up anymore, you can type in commands direct to here, and make some very significant changes, at times it is more efficient and accurate than fumbling with a variety of menus and tabs to get what you want done, and also a lot faster, although you’ll have to memorize commands. It’s there if you want it, but no, it’s not mandatory or anything, but it’s a nice advanced feature that’s baked into the engine now, so you’ll probably make more use of it.

Plugins

Before we go any further, let’s talk about plugins a bit. You will probably be using some variety of plugin software in your Unreal Engine 5 game. Right now it’s in Early Access, but in about a year, basically every plugin worth it’s salt is going to be converted to Unreal 5, and at that point, you should adopt it. Unreal 5 is the future, but it’s still in a very early unstable stage, most of the good plugins are not available in Unreal 5 right now. In fact besides built in plugins, basically nothing is available in Unreal 5. But let’s have a look anyway….

Here I am looking at the installed plugins, there’s not many of them, but there’s a few, the Quixel Bridge is a nice one, it will let you import photorealistic scenes into your game, scanned from real life scenes and objects. You’ll find a lot of things like this, right now there’s only 4 installed plugins, and about 100 system ones, later on, down the road, there will be dozens if not hundreds of installed plugins as well, for you to choose from. Until the Daz to Unreal Bridge makes it over, I’m going to stick with Unreal 4.

Here are some of the system plugins

As you can see they have lots of nice treats here, I searched for the word Chaos, and it’s pulling up Chaos Cloth, Chaos Cloth Editor, Chaos Editor. The new Chaos systems are beautiful, they have chaos destruction, the new destruction system allowing you destroy objects and probably terrain, you can put damage thresholds and breakpoints to determine exactly how the object will break down.

Then there’s Chaos Cloth, the new cloth system, it will allow a character’s worn clothes to move around in a more realistic, more lifelike manner. The current system is a bit broken, it does it’s job if you know how to use it, but it’s lacking some finesse. I suspect the new upgraded system will have all the finesse I need. And I can finally put a dress on my character, and have it move naturally in the wind as they walk, instead of hysterically jumping around and flying and moving back and forth like a tornado just hit it, sometimes 50 feet away and constantly switching directions. This is not what I want in a dress for my character.

Perhaps as slapstick comedy, but it doesn’t really work in a serious game until it was super arthouse.

Oh yeah, it also has the chaos vehicles plugin, this will allow for the streamlined, system supported, creation of cars, and bikes, with anything from 2 wheels to 8, or more. Cars will now be built in as a part of the engine, you won’t have to build them or buy them from scratch anymore.

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Hey, are you the unfortunate majority, who has not been blessed with a career, and instead you’re working at food service/security/retail/sales/office work? Maybe you’re one of those food delivery guys I see everywhere now. Are you maybe unhappy with the quality of work you’re getting? With no room for advancement, nothing to advance to except more of the same somewhere else? Yeah, drop that junk. Get a few porfolio pieces under your belt, get really good with Unreal Engine (you can learn it in a few months), then get on self employment sites and start looking for entry level work. You might start out with lower wages than you’re used to, but by the time you get to your second or third job, you’ll be doing a lot better than you used to.

And you’ll be working from home, making your own hours, being your own boss, doing work that you actually enjoy, and you can do this from anywhere in the world, you can spend all your time with your family, and still pull in a good enough salary to put food on the table. It worked for me. I have good work now, I enjoy my job. You can do the same.

The Project Settings

Ok, to start out go, EDIT -> Project Settings

So here we have the project settings. It’s too broad a topic to cover in one article, or 5, but let’s discuss it a bit. The project settings are where you make major changes to the way your project runs, you can control all kinds of things here. In fact, if your Unreal asset is full project, instead of add to project, and you migrate the project and it doesn’t work, it’s probably because there is something in the Project Settings preventing it from working.

Let’s go over a few of the settings.

Here, let’s try Maps and Modes.

Here you can find, DEFAULT MAPS, and both the EDITOR STARTUP MAP and the GAME DEFAULT MAP.

These are remarkably useful, and it does what it says on the tin. You can choose what map the editor starts up with, when you open the program, the Editor Startup Map will be the first map that opens. Very handy, and important, a good setting.

And obviously enough, Game Default Map, this is the map that will load when you startup your deliverable. So the first map you want the player to be going through when they startup the game for the first time. Very important, very useful, I was happy when I found this.

Packaging

Packaging has all kinds of important settings to get your game to package correctly. Oh by the way, it’s dumb that I even need to tell you this, do not make a copy of your project, move it somewhere else, and start up development. You will have a hell of a time fixing it when it comes time to package the project.

If you expand out the window, click the little down arrow there, you’ll eventually find this:

List of maps to include in a packaged build. IF this array has no elements, it will just default to including all maps in a packaged build, this would be pretty stupid, because it will include all demo maps and demo scenes from your asset packs, which if you’re like me, number in the hundreds.

Any map loaded into this array will build, as well anything inside it, so prefabs, characters, music, whatever exists as an object in the world, it will be included in the build if it’s in the map. I think it also checks where you’re teleporting to and includes those but don’t quote me on that, actually, I think it’s wrong because certain maps weren’t showing up in build for me. I think that’s why.

Final Thoughts

The Unreal Engine 5 is almost here, it will soon take over the world as the biggest game development platform on the planet. It has the most advanced features, the best interface, backwards compatibility with most things after Unreal 4 v4.27.

There is really no reason to use anything else when this thing drops in a few months. So why not get in on the ground floor. Employers will be seeking it, everyone will want these skills, and more to the point, you will want them for your own projects, which ultimately are the most important.

Learning Unreal 5 will be a boon that helps jumpstart your career, and also gives you a hobbyist’s dream when it comes to making you own games. You can make commercial grade games with this thing, just sitting alone in your house. I would recommend it.

Sooner rather than later.

Baskin out!