Have you got to Sam’s content in Testing Grounds yet?
If so are you happy with the way he teaches? Who would you prefer finish the section, me or him?
We’re making a product and don’t take things personally, would just like honest feedback.
This poll is anonymous, and really valuable to us.
0 voters
Having to abstain which is not very helpful i know.
If the lessons arent varied between the lecturers as in Sam prefers to do things one way and Ben prefers another then there is no real difference to me in who presents the course as both have their merits.
A change of pace in a course is good though but solely on that i would be tempted to vote Ben but hope to see (or hear) more from Sam in the coming RPG course over in Unity.
I’m at the end of the current content.
I’ve completely stopped going through the course honestly.
It’s not the fault of either of the presenters; I just found myself with zero interest in both the tank game and the testing grounds game.
If you compare the unity course and unreal course; the unity course was like: here are ten little games to show you how to use unity to make stuff, and the unreal course is like: here are 3 large games which are basically all variations on an FPS.
The tank game was 109 sections! Testing grounds is like 79 and counting?
I get that unreal is a complicated beast, but I feel like maybe a bit more variation, building simple complete things, rather than building these fully fleshed prototypes is the way to go. … at least for me.
After reading the testing games TDD I was just like… eh, sounds complicated. I’ll come back in 3 months when this is done and hope the next section is more interesting.
Thanks for the honest feeeback, keep it coming.
I appreciate the anonymous aspect of the vote, that will perhaps encourage more people to respond, without the worry of receiving hate mail/death threats from either of you 
*chuckle* … however, what it doesn’t do is allow any feedback as to why the voter chose the option - wouldn’t that be useful @Ben? I guess you both have a sense of differences already in teaching style, but that is perhaps your view rather than that of your students?
I’ve not started the course myself and thus haven’t heard either of you teach this course, so can’t really comment, it was just an observation on the voting etc… Thoughts only, no offence intended, obviously.
Thanks, that is really helpful in guiding us on how we make our courses.
Somewhat similar sentiments as @shadowmint. I think I’ll continue once it’s complete, might take a look into the unity course in the mean time.
Do you find the pace with me to be too quick?
Thanks for this honest feedback. Perhaps we will restrict the scope of this section and try to include a small final section. Any ideas for that section would be welcome. What do you still want to see?
Based purely on the built in template projects (which if the section is supposed to be a small section then I think it should be based on one), I think side scroller or twin-stick shooter wouldn’t be half bad.
I couldn’t disagree more. The smaller sections are great introductions to specific aspects of game development, but bigger sections that cover a LOT of subjects are able to to make all the pieces coalesce into a more complete product in a way that smaller sections never could. Learning the pieces is important but seeing how it all comes together is so much more valuable. There are plenty of tutorials out there available for FREE that can teach you one small aspect of these engines. The reason you are paying for an actual course is because you are getting much more than that.
If it wasn’t for the Unreal Course being so heavy-duty and in-depth, I don’t think I would be as dedicated to this pursuit as I am today. I put in about 50-60 hours a week of studying/development in UE4 and Unity, and that’s on top of my 40 hour work week, and in my opinion the notion of “too many lectures” is laughable. For me, there never seems to be enough.
I really encourage you guys to keep providing the robust education that you are, and leave the small tutorials to the other guys.
Now that you mention it there was a section where i struggled to keep up with what was happening and completely missed moving something to be a child of the FPCamera. I think it was worded as in “that should belong to” rather than “Be a child of”.
I think the pace is just because you are enjoying what you are teaching but at that point it became actions faster than words 
Let’s wrap this course up so you can concentrate on your Unity RPG course…and then HOPEFULLY, you can do something similar for Unreal C++…Unreal RPG Course… since we got short changed a bit. But yeah, I agree that the pace of the Unity Course was better than the Unreal one. You can still learn various parts of the engine with smaller multiple games, rather than huge unfinished games. I mean let’s be real, not one of the games were feature complete. As in, it’s not a game really, just a bunch of mechanics for a game.
I think that was really my biggest issue with the Unreal Course. it felt really drawn out, especially in tanks. And I got bored of it and did my own thing. While sure, we can technically complete and of the games, going from A to Z each time, but learning new things each section is the way to go imho.
Then people can be like, alright, I have 4-5 complete games I did, plus I learned a **** ton of different parts of the engine.
Also, optimizations of the engine through code would be awesome, I think that’s what is really lacking here, the after-prototyping phase. Many tutorials do it, so I can’t blame you, but I think it’s a critical part of gamedev, and one that would be awesome to see in C++. Stuff like, using the CPU/GPU profiler and Visual Studio to figure out what’s eating up what resources and then doing something about them. Etc etc etc.
As for a final smaller section, I think Twin Stick Shooter with Gamepad controls would be awesome. But let’s make it a feature complete demo.
Or…and this would be even better…or maybe a separate course… Paper2D sidescroller. Or anything with Paper2D. Look at Tanks vs Zombies thing Epic has… sadly, that thing doesn’t look to ever be finished, but yeah, something a bit different than a 3D would be nice. But if it has to be, Top-Down Twin Stick Shooter is the next best thing.
This is my main problem with the course. That there’s no real “game” in the end, obviously I’m not suggesting that each section has a fully featured game at the end as that would be a tad unrealistic, but a mini game of sorts would be nice.
This is especially true for Building Escape where the “game” consists of putting something in a trigger volume to open a door. Though I don’t have any real suggestions on how you would improve that introductory section whilst being less complicated than the other two .
@Ben, I think my previous suggestion of having Introductory, Intermediate, Advanced courses may help with some of the ideas/feedback, I mentioned it ages ago, although I forget whether it was via email / pm etc…
No one solution is ever going to fit for all, not perfectly. The community is so vast and varied, such a mixture of development, gaming and creative experiences and abilities.
I think the courses so far have been very good at creating something which leaves enough scope to then build upon it ourselves. Just my personal view on it, but I fully appreciate for other people they may want a full game from a course. I guess this could get a tad tricky, from the perspective of what functionality you include, and what doesn’t make it. What is “full” for someone maybe “missing a bit” for someone else. A line has to be drawn somewhere, a trade off between more functionality and a longer course before you get to the end of the game, or less functionality but a quicker result, even if some of it is bare-bones for you to add to.
With an introduction, intermediate, advanced (or something similar) approach, you could potentially have a small series of games at the introduction level, nice and straight forward, quick, simple, easy win for the student and covers getting used to the environment, some development principles all whilst keeping things fun.
Intermediate could perhaps go one of two ways, either taking a couple of the previous games from their completed state and then building upon them further (but without the requirement of having to have done the first course, e.g. you get a set of files to start you off, which then allows the student to choose their own level), but then covering more advanced topics, techniques, principles and at the end you have more of the fully signing/dancing game. Alternatively, to focus it on one of two full games, but again, I would strongly suggest that this still needs to leave enough scope for the students to go off and still make it their own, anything less would just mean there are thousands of clones… and when people share their works, it’s a bit like, “erm, yeah, seen this a thousand times already, and it doesn’t stand out”. I believe that one of the best ways to learn is by trying things yourself and the courses currently leave good scope for that.
Advanced I think should perhaps not actually cover making a specific game at all, but cover much more advances techniques/topics. You still end up with a working model of that functionality, but in its most minimal of states. By doing so you could cover quite a few more advanced techniques and, for anyone who had taken any of the previous courses they could perhaps consider going back to those games and progressing them further with the additional knowledge, or just applying it to something that they have started working on themselves.
I think it’s quite difficult to put together material that will please everyone completely, the number of times I have bought books in the passed just because there was a section that covered what I was really interested in, but I had to go through all of the rest (or skip it and still pay for it) just for that bit… It’s not really the authors fault, they couldn’t really write one book that covered everything for everyone, it would never be finished or, by the time they were half way through the first half would be out of date!
Just my two cents, to add to all of the other fab feedback above.
If you want to finish off the course with a bang, maybe build a prototype, and then put the whole thing up on github, and have the last section be; take this and make something of your own which is fun out of it, as part of the course, instead of getting to the end of a section and being like ‘now go finish this yourself’.
In the blender course its like, here’s how make a chess piece. Here’s a bunch of pictures. Now you go, make your own chess piece, or whatever, add some crazy style to it and show everyone. People really seem to like that; I certainly did.
The last few sections of the course haven’t seemed very interactive to me; I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve just been idly watching a lesson here and there like, eh, that’s interesting.
There’s been nothing that particularly draws me in to clone the git repo, open it up and try modifying it to do something different; if I had to put it in a nutshell, I’d say it felt like:
The lessons are covering making game mechanics not making games.
You want a suggestion? My suggestion for the final section: create a set of super basic mechanics, like re-using the pickup and trigger stuff from the escape room, and create an Incredible Machine style physics puzzle sandbox; where people get to:
It doesn’t have to be complicated; it doesn’t have to be that. It could take a starter kit of a racer game and making custom cars, or an fps with custom collectables and enemies, but the point I’m trying to get across is, I feel like after the time spent in the course so far, I think maybe its time to encourage people to make things of their own, show them to people, experiment and share.
If you focus in so closely on the detailed mechanics of every single game system, you’ll be there forever before you build anything interesting.
Obviously everyone has an opinion, so take mine worth a grain of salt, but those are my thoughts.
Wow thanks for this guys, we had a meeting about our 2020 course portfolio structure yesterday and I’d like to present it to you guys for feedback as hardcore fans, ideally during a live-stream in a week or so.
If we did that, can you suggest a few good times of week for you guys so we can pick something that works for most of you?
During school hours or after 9pm neither of which is particularly convienant to anyone -.-
With the view to the cours ebeing too large in its sections and nothing really complete i tend to have to disagree in part. I am on the road to making a fully FPS and althoguh its only one game out of the entire course applying the entire course means i can add my own customisations.
For example i have doors on player triggers, Doors on pressure triggers, Doors that wont trigger with and NPC but will with a Player. This works on cupboards,windows,trapdoors,draws or anything you can possibly imagine opening on a trigger.
The information is there to find in the course and a little googling but its all there to make what Unreal Engine was focused to which is an FPS.
Its not a hard stretch to see from the unreal course how to make an RPG in Unreal from the course as it is, Damage for melee is simply applying the animation and adding the notifier at the right time to apply damage or if you prefer do it via the collision system but simplier is better.
I’ve already started thinking about modifying the current damage system via tags to see if the enemy is armored or if other attributes are in effect.
The only thing really i feel has to be part of the course is we used the sense system with sight and hinted on sound but footsteps to be detected when moving at a certain speed (Ie not detected when crouched/sneaking) in combination with the speed at which the animation and sound plays.
I can understand what people are saying that they prefer smaller chunks of learning with more complete small projects but i feel thats more what unity was designed for and unreal is designed for these bigger projects.
The topic has got a little sidetracked i think in the sense the problem people have is with the course structure and not the people that teach it so the vote may be a little bias.
Maybe i am a little bias towards unreal but i dont know how many of the above have completed the VR course and so are used to Sam’s methods of teaching.
(Darn it guys i used to get yelled at for walls of text so i stopped doing it until you guys made me!)
Don’t apologise for this useful and detailed feedback, thank you.