Updated Books / tutorials?

[mtcoder]

So been trying to take my games to new levels of abilities and skills, but I keep running into not having a good set of books / tutorials / online info for the more recent UDK releases, Or am I just not getting google to understand what I want. So far Youtube has been a great source of examples at times, but getting tired of just "seeing" how to do something I need to better understand the workings of UDK.

Really need to find a good tutorial for the Unreal script the books I have found are so outdated it's almost pointless to even look at the table of contents.

Also could use a bit more work with my skeletal meshes and such.

Any resources / links would be greatly appreciated. I really loved the tutorial videos and they got me a long ways, but even those are starting to fall a bit too far out of date. Don't get me wrong they are a heaven send for the true newbie but once you step just past that, your stuck searching the web for this or that tid bit of information spewed all over the WWW. My onenote is packed with stuff, but im getting tired of searching randomly for knowledge.

Thanks

[JackBurton]

I am having the same issue. I have a few I have found but it is a short list right now. If anyone has already did the footwork can you post a list here?

[Blade[UG]]

The "UnrealScriptReference" document on UDN is far and away the best document on US out there, although it's not a tutorial. If you know any other languages, it's probably not very difficult to read through that, and then just look up the unreal-specific concepts that you don't know.

[Biino]

I'm surprised this question comes up a lot. There's a fair bit of information out there if you search through the forums, UDN and google. Compared to other graphics engines I've used the documentation here is pretty good. It just takes a bit of effort to get over the initial learning curve.

I'll agree it's a bit "all over the place" and at times it out of date. So there is room for improvement there. But information is there to get started.

Sorry can't help you if you're getting tired searching but that's life sometimes I'm constantly searching the forums, udn and google. It pays off.

For me, I started with the 3dbuzz video tutorials. It got me acquainted with the UDK toolset very nicely. They are very well done and help you understand the workings of the engine. (I'm not sure if these are the videos your referred too)
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VideoTutorials.html

There's a bunch of starter guides on the UDN that explains how to set up the development environment.

The forum even has a "documentation" section with a plethora of useful sticky topics.

The UDN also has a good technical document on Unrealscript. It's a bit dry but after going through it you'll be ready to tackle the source code for dungeon defenders and chicken coup (which I recommend all coders to download and study).

I understand the frustration, I was there just recently. I took a week of going through videos (and doing them!)and reading technical documents on the UDN before I started my game. The investment I feel has paid off and I'm getting pretty comfortable with the toolset and Unrealscript. There's really no easy-all-in-one-resource to take you to game development nirvana.

Have fun

Bino

[mtcoder]

Yeah I'm finding a ton of great information, but its so spread out that I don't know that I'm missing out on this or that technique which makes life oh so much better. That is where I think I struggle the most, sure I found the youtube video on how to put a new bullet type, in the default gun. Cool, but in that video was talk about using this or that interface, so then I had to dig up the interface videos and try to learn it but it brought up putting static meshes together, which meant more. I'm getting it all together, but when I finished, a friend sent me a link to a guide that did the exact thing in about 20 steps instead of the nearly 200 I just had preformed. LOL

I am in love with the engine, and the 3dbuzz videos are so much a keen primer for me, heck built my first "game" just by altering things it covered. Was a "lightsaber" game where I used a light bulb static mesh to beat crowds down. lol

Just be nice to have updated 3dbuzz or a few more start to finish game tutorials. Overall though just wanted to make sure there wasn't some hidden gem, or such laying around that filled my needs. Well time to fire google up again.

[nsx_nawe]

I think that one of the most difficult issues is that normally, people who find themselves stuck like these are people who either:
- Dont have experience as a developer
- Do have experience developing non-gaming related apps. Which is my case.

Regular applications differ a lot from game applications... and trying to get a grip on a huge engine like this one can be intimidating.

Patience and knowing where to start is half the work, I think.

[Biino]

Dont have experience as a developer

Yeah that's a good point I take for granted. I have a lot of experience with C# and C++ and that has made learning UnrealScript quite easy.

Mtcoder: Have you checked out http://www.udk.com/elements/download...cument_1_2.pdf ?

And http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Dunge...loperBlog.html ?

[mtcoder]

Yeah have worked through both for the most part. the unrealscript is almost second nature as ive written C++, C#, and numerous other code languages. The parts I find myself hitting road bumps is when I want to do this or that, and I either dig up how to do it over a year ago method, or I find a great video that skips the key parts.

Like I said just wanted to make sure i wasn't missing any hidden troves. Been numerous times when I went to pick up a language, or new program and started off jumping all over the place then one day hit / find a few websites that have everything I'd been looking for.

I know part of the problem is UDK is really about 25 different programs wrapped into one massive game engine. Overall though I am making my way along really nicely. And have started pushing myself into my first real game. Thanks for the support though.