Unreal Engine 4 Game Development in 24 Hours, Sams Teach Yourself

Sams has always published solid content, and this book does not disappoint. In fact, I think one of the first game development books I read some 20 odd years ago was from Sams. This text on Unreal Engine 4 is comprehensive and worth reading (even if it is a few years old). Here the authors cover many important topics, like installing Unreal, working with the gameplay framework, understanding coordinates, units, and transformations. Static mesh actors, lighting and using materials. Audio. Landscapes, world building, and particle effects. Skeletal meshes, cinematics, physics, visual scripting (including level Blueprints and classes), key events, UI, packaging your game and mobile optimizations. By the end of the book you’ll have a simple asteroid shooter demo to play. All in all, there is a lot of content in the 24 chapters and around 500 pages. I found the discussion on customizing the game mode and player controller to be particularly helpful and not widely covered in other books. The chapters on working with skeletal meshes and cinematics were also nice. I was never bored, and each chapter felt engaging and useful without being too long. Though the book is a tad older, most of the concepts still seemed relevant, though I did not test the code and wouldn’t be surprised if a few things have changed. But it’s a solid resource and worth reading.

OK, no book is ever going to teach you Unreal Engine 4 in 24 hour-long lessons, it's a huge program with thousands of moving parts. This book does provide an excellent overview of the program, however, and a chance to gain a great deal of familiarity with the essentials of how the Unreal Engine works. Each chapter is presented in more or less the same format: the author describes a concepts, then provides the user with a chance to practice doing the concept in the Unreal Engine, then, at the end of the chapter, the user is quizzed on information from the chapter, and given the opportunity to do another project based on the concepts they learned. I found that this method was very helpful, and if, by the end, I didn't learn all the concepts presented in the book, I, at least, knew they existed and where to look them up. I have two main complaints about the book. 1) Chapters are not of uniform size. The premise is that each chapter is an hour long lesson, but some of them I could breeze through in 15 minutes, while some took all afternoon to get through. That can be a little demoralizing. 2) The further along in the book you go, the more typographical errors you find. In Chapter 16, there is a particularly egregious one where -- in what looks like a "find and replace" error -- the words "Timeline Node" have been replaced with "Particle System Node." This was very frustrating and almost caused me to give up on the chapter, until I went to their downloaded content and saw their example and realized what the problem was. Finally, in regards to some of the complaints of other users: The book is for a slightly earlier version of the software than the one currently being distributed, but there were only one or two places where this made a difference. As to the user complaining that the downloadable content was available, they were either mistaken or the problem has been corrected, because I could download it fine. My final conclusion: With the exception of a few rough spots, I found this book an excellent was to get acquainted with Unreal Engine 4.

Like many others have mentioned, this book is great. It has colored pictures which helps when first digging into Blueprints. The exercises are very straight forward and the book is written in an easily digestible format. I'd love a newer Updated version, but I just downloaded the old version of UE4 to practice the exercises. Although some things have changed with the latest versions of UE4, it's still a really great book for getting a firm grasp on the UI and game logic. Even though this book is a little older now, I'd still recommend it over most of the other UE4 books in my library.

I am a teacher at a community college teaching 3D modeling and video game design. I got this to help me understand how we could use Unreal 4 in our program. This book is a life saver, has helped me prepare various levels as well as given me the understanding of how to help students grasp the basic knowledge of creating games in Unreal 4. Things to remember: The software does change allot but even then this still covers the basics in great examples. Epic Games also provides an amazing evangelist program for schools wanting to incorporate Unreal 4 into their class, and this is the go to book for the team. So this says allot about what you get.

A great intro to working in Unreal Engine 4. Even with UE4 at version 4.16 right now there is still lots to be gained by reading this. Well worth the purchase and gets you familiar with how the engine works pretty quickly and a great reference in case you need to brush up on a certain aspect of how things work.

It's a good book for basics. It will definitely help you on your journey if you're just getting started but if you've had experience with the engine before it's better if you just feel your way around and use this book as a sort of reference.

Ok, truth be told I am only abit more than half through this book, but by god it is a ton better then the other 5 or 6 that i bought before. It explains and takes you step by step through UE4 with out bad editing. It has given me a better grasp of the basics of UE4. It reads very easy as it is not riddled with typos and bad english translations.Got to say I like the quizes and excerises at the end of each day to inforce what was learned. Great Job

I believe the title is misleading. It should be: "Way Too Basic UE4 in 24 Lessons". I also believe that a full comprehensive printed manual based on UE 4.15 is overdue! IS SAMS LISTENING?

The book gives a good start, but does not cover too much. Would recommend for beginners as a good introduction in addition to the documentation

This is well written book very clear, if you have Unreal Engine experience then just jump to the relevant chapter.

The topic is very well explained. Very easy for any novice to follow.

Hello, I got this book to get more pointers at UE4, in general, and the Blueprints. (I can code in C++, but am rusty in it, and I don't intend on developing AAA games for now ;-) , so I would like to understand UE4 in & out using BP first, then moving to C++ will be far easier). The pros: - Very good introduction to UE4 - Explain all the various elements an user will mainly use during Game Dev - Almost a small introduction to code logic, but you probably need to be a coder for that to be far easier - Cheap Cons: - Outdated, so some Nodes, and bits aren't working, or need to be upgraded, which can be a con, as it will force you to do some research on UE4 and how to do some bits :-) - Very beginner for some one who knows a bit about UE4 already. - If you need understanding of Shaders of UE4, there's nothing about it - If you want to know more about Particle, Cinematic, Animtation, you will need another book or Documentation to really dig into it. I would say, if you're new to UE4, and don't know C++ or prefer to use Blueprints, this is a very good book to start with. It would be good if it could be updated though

Great book