So I’ll start off saying that I did like the course and I did like the Testing Grounds section.
However, the Testing Grounds section was a lot of grinding for me during certain parts. The most excruciating part of the section was by far all of the in depth animation lectures. While there was a lot of interesting parts of the animation lectures, I would have skipped it if I had the option to. Like many people and how it was even brought up midway through the section, I’m really only interested in the C++/blueprint assembling part of the grand scheme of things.
I do enjoy learning a bit of basic knowledge of certain systems, but I feel as if there was a large section dedicated to learning about the animation system. If the section were to be reorganized, I would suggest supplying the animation blueprints and giving the option to skip several of the lectures.
Secondly, I think that the teaching method of this section was a more hard to follow than others. I really enjoyed the circular learning method in the Tank Game section where Ben would touch on certain subjects a little bit and then move onto another subject. It kept the lectures fresh and interesting. It also allowed people to digest how the systems worked over time. In the Testing Grounds section, many of the lectures would focus on one subject for several lectures in a row. Sometimes 7 or more.
Lastly, I feel like the flow of the section seems to jump around in the last half. I feel as if there were lectures added in later between others. I also feel like the lectures have been heavily edited over time. The obvious fix would to just redo the videos and the section but it would be a lot of work.
Overall, I enjoyed the section and learned a lot from it. I would recommend people to still do the section, but I would say to people that the amount of C++ learned over the section is minimal. It’s generally just more of the same from the Tank Game section but slightly more built upon. I would have recommended doing more lecture similar to the bonus videos added to the Tank Game section. It introduces new ideas and gives more knowledge of Unreal components and C++ to people taking the course.