Hats off ! Old ToonTanks course VS new ToonTanks course

Unreal Courses Talk
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#1

Hello there,

I followed the old Toon Tanks (v1) course back then with the other instructor (and struggled a lot back then) and after a while came back to check this V2 course and I just finished it right now.

Well, Hats off Stephen! The course is really clean and comprehensible even with the most difficults concepts ! I didn’t feel overwhelmed at any point, wich is a sign of a great course.

There are a few things that could be a bit clearer, that i’ll mentions below, but it didn’t blocked me in any way :

  • Delegates part was a bit abstract (like, finding the parameters of the object returned) . Unreal Documentation about TSparseDynamicDelegates and their usage is poorly written and I wished in the course to understand why I should type the parameters you enumerated (for the OnHit and DamageTaken functions). I managed to find where to get those parameters later with researches in the codebase but it wasn’t intuitive.

  • Countdown implementation seemed weird to me (functions in C++, visuals in Blueprint and make them run autonomously). It already was the case in the V1 of the course, but I thought it would change in this V2. Is it the best way to do it? Or was it the easiest way to teach it?

In any case, well done for this V2 !

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#2

Hey, while I never experienced the old version, I totally agree with the remaining feedback and am quite interested in a response to your question regarding the countdown.

I hope you do not mind me trying to get your attention via the notification system @StephenUlibarri :wink:

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#3

Hey all,
I’m glad the new section is well-received.
Regarding the countdown, having two separate variables like we did, one in C++ and one in Blueprint, is actually not the best way to do it. It would be better to have a single variable. So that’s something you can look into if you’re interested in making some improvements!
And yes, CptJack, in this case, for our situation, it was the easiest way to teach it, to get something quickly working. The section is already quite large for the course, and I didn’t want to risk making students bored by increasing the amount of work to architect it differently.

And regarding the delegates, yes, I agree the documentation is lacking in this area. I actually did record myself showing how to go to the delegate definitions and finding the input parameters required for any callbacks that you wish to bind to the respective delegates. Again, this increased the length of the video and it was too much. I had to make a decision regarding the length of the video and the section as a whole and I opted not to show it. Digging into engine code can really prolong the videos and while I myself don’t mind longer tutorial videos, we’re trying to keep these on the shorter side. Luckily the TA’s and support in GameDev are both excellent and they make it easy to get additional info on the nitty-gritty of the engine’s inner workings when students want more information.
My best,
Stephen

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