Two years later

Remember when I said I didn't want to burn out and give up? 

Ha, that was funny.

But I'm starting again. I still want to make that game, but I need to start somewhere else to figure out what I'm doing.

Crazy how only two years ago UE5 was just in early beta. We're at UE5.3 proper, now.

I still don't know much, but I've got a new mindset now. Trying to become a jack of all trades with UE is exhausting and futile. I won't retain anything because I wouldn't be understanding how to do any of it, and I'll get frustrated and burn out again.

Instead, I'm going to start small. Use premade assets. Narrow down my learning goals. Instead of learning how every single thing in blueprints works, I'm going to just try learning what I need to do what I want. Keeping it relevant. Lowering my scope should help keep it fun to actually do, and using stuff like Synty assets will let me get started building something out right away, rather than spending time trying to make my own custom stuff. That might still be something that I do, but it's not important right now.

Step 1: Make something playable.

Right now, I've been able to follow guides to apply that advanced locomotion system (ALS4) to the Synty characters from the asset packs I have. Some of the things look odd, like the hands clip through the surface when mantling, and holding the stock items with ALS4 don't fit the proportions. I had been trying to figure out how to fix that, but now that I'm writing this out, I think I can just put that on a "refinement" list. I do have a trello board prepared, I should probably fill that out.

Anyway, I've got the character working. The next thing I should do is... basic NPCs. Have some people walking around and stuff. I'm going to take what I learn in this project to have a better start with the original dream game. So this is actually going to be a smaller sandbox-ish game.

The plan: I want to have a small sandbox town roughly the size of a block. 2 or 3 houses, an apartment building, grocery store, and an office building. The biggest problem with the assets I have is that there are no interiors, so I'll have to figure that out myself. But I can start with building the block out, probably using the demonstration map provided with the City pack as a base. Once I have the exteriors, I'll work on adding NPCs with pathing routes. Some with a set route, and maybe a couple that are more dynamic, finding their own way to a randomly assigned point. I think that's a good start.