DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES

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Throughout my time working with developers and on my own projects, I've gathered a list of valuable resources for prototyping or working on production games. Here is a (growing!) list of things I use / suggest others use when making their games.

ASSETS

• Kenney's Free Game Assets (Free): If you need a nice looking placeholder asset or are building a game with a compatible art style, KenneyNL's free assets probably has something you can use. They're an enormous value for the cost (infinite value, I guess?) and I find the UI icons to be especially useful. 

• Paragon Heroes and Environment Components (Free for Unreal Engine use) : Paragon was a beautiful, Free-to-Play AAA 3D MOBA from Epic Games, and when it was canceled, Epic released a whopping 17 million dollars in assets including 39 hero characters for free for Unreal developers to use in their games. These fully animated characters and gorgeous environments allow developers to stub out placeholder features or even ship them as is in their game. 

• Unreal City Sample Buildings (Free for Unreal Engine use) : Modular Buildings used in the City Sample project. Great if you need to build out an outdoor city environment.

• Unreal City Sample Crowds (Free for Unreal Engine use) : Crowds of people used in the City Sample project. Like the above, great if you need a bunch of people.

• Unreal City Sample Cars (Free for Unreal Engine use) : Cars used in the City Sample project. Like the above, great if you need some realistic cars for your game.

PLUGINS / PROJECTS

• Unreal UGC Example Project (UE4 / UE5): OK, I am a little biased here since I made it, but I reference it regularly to remember how to add Editor buttons and how to write custom automation tool scripts. Epic Games and Github account association and login required.

• Unreal Lyra Project (UE5): An excellent starting point if you're going to make a multiplayer game in UE5. Like ShooterGame before it, Lyra exemplifies numerous aspects of building a multiplayer game in Unreal and can even serve as a backbone of a starting point for you to build your own game on. 

TALKS / VIDEOS

• Borderlands 2 Postmortem by Matt Charles: It's an older talk now, but it still has a lot of relevant info. As a Tech Designer at heart, one key thing I took away was the importance of optimizing pipelines for building enormous amounts of content in a short amount of time when it's what your game needs. Around the 30 minute mark, he talks about doubling down on Construct for streamlined character creation (to handle hundreds of distinct characters in the game on their tight timeline)

• Double Fine's PsychOdyssey: Excellent, long series that shows a great deal about how games are made and how teams operate. Well worth the time if you make games, are interested in making games, or are curious about how games are made (or just love Double Fine)

LEARNING

• Tom Looman's C++ Course: I've known Tom for a long time, and he's always been super helpful to the development community. Give it a gander if you're interested in learning how to code in C++ for Unreal.

• Unreal Engine 4: How to Develop Your First Two Games by Chris Murphy: Chris is a great teacher and widely knowledgeable about UE. This is a great series that goes on sale often, I encourage anyone looking to get started in Unreal to pick it up.

ONLINE GUIDES AND PUBLICATIONS

• UE Style Guide: A guide on how to responsibly set up and maintain an Unreal Engine project's code and content base. 

• The Level Design Book: A great, volunteer-driven resource for understanding the level design workflow and a few tidbits about general game development.