Unreal – Lets get started!
The first thing you need to do is goto www.epicgames.com and download the Epic Games Launcher. There are two reasons to do this. The first is that it will be your resource to installing the latest game engine. The second reason is that you can get a new free game every week. This proves nice when you need to take a break from the AAA title you are developing.
When you goto Epic’s webpage, you will see something similar to the above. we want to pay attention to the three bars in the upper right corner. You will want to click on it, then on the next screen, click the big blue button at the bottom center of the screen. This will download the Epic Launcher. Download and install the launcher and create an account in process. (If your studying this, more than likely you know how to install software and create accounts. 🙂
Once you have the Epic Launcher installed, you will have acess to install the latest engine. (*please disreguard the other items I have installed. I have had this installer a long time.*)
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More than likely you will be presented with a blank page when you click on the unreal engine tab on the left side and then look under library. Here is where we will install the engine of choice. (In this case, we will go with 5.2.1) There is a newer engine version, however i would like us all to be on the same page so I am opting to use 5.2.1.
To install this enging, clicke the small yellow PLUS button next to engine versions. you will be given an option to choose which engine version you want install. Choose option 5.2.1, you can opt to use a newer version however some menu items maybe moved to different locations and other things may have been changed.
You are also (as evident looking at my page) able to install multiple versions of unreal engine, however keep in mind that each install is a hefty size for download. We will also talk some about the library of content you can/may build free from epic. The following paragraph is fairly important and it would be to your benefit to pay attention as you could end up out of drive space very very fast if not. 🙂
IMPORTANT information on how Epic handles their content.
Just remember — if you dont need it in this project… dont add it until your sure. When you add content to a project, it does not just go in one place — it goes in two places (specifically when talking about content from the marketplace.)
When you add an asset to your project, what will happen is first epic launcher will check to see if you already have that asset downloaded. If you have not downloaded it yet, epic launcher will then download the asset (s) into the directory it set asside for the content. after it downloads this into the folder, it will then install the asset into your project. thus doubling up the space required for your asset(s). This method they chose to use can in the end tear up 4 TB of data very very fast.
Also – keep in mind a FREE GAME every week 🙂
From here, I will create a new page to get into the user controls of unreal engine.