Chilli Framework to Unreal?

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Uta
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Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by Uta » April 1st, 2019, 11:55 pm

The TLDR Upfront: I want to know how to translate my skills with Chilli's Framework into Unreal 4. But All of my attempts to even learn UE4 end in disaster. I've done up to Lesson 6, and I think I can build a rudimentary version of my core game loop using the Framework. In Unreal though I can't even program a movable box. The hardest part would be animating an attack and making an enemy to hit with that attack. (I've got some ideas on how to do it, but I have a hunch I'd need more Lessons to work it out fully)

Longer Version: I've generally heard that building a Game Engine is totally cool to learn more C++, but that if you're trying to make a game then you're never going to match the hundreds of thousands of man-hours that went into one of the bigger names like Unity or Unreal. The main reason I want to use Unreal is for the C++ and the Graphics capability It just seems like a good overall fit. But for now I just want to be able to build something like the Poo RNG Game in Unreal.

But Unreal's "real" tutorials totally suck. Here's an example: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Pro ... mersEvents
I couldn't even get that to compile properly until I reordered the Includes (The Error kept saying I needed to use Pragma Once in the .h file, but if you look at the WIP Code it's there, plain as can be) and once I finally got it to compile it still wouldn't let me add it to the Game World nor attach it as a Component, so it's effectively useless. I even tried copy and pasting the code whole hog and it still wouldn't work. Sorry for the mini-rant there, but what I'm basically asking for is how best to learn Unreal so that I can begin translating my skill in normal C++ to the kind of skillset you need to use a Game Engine. I have a feeling that Blueprints aren't going to get me where I need to be, so scripting is probably going to be a big part of my project.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read through this.

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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by albinopapa » April 2nd, 2019, 12:27 am

Wish I could help, I downloaded it once, got overwhelmed and deleted immediately.

The only advice I could give is check out YouTube. I'm sure there are a lot of tutorials on there to at least get you started.

Nothing more frustrating than to download some source code just to find out that it won't compile because of this, that or the other.
If you think paging some data from disk into RAM is slow, try paging it into a simian cerebrum over a pair of optical nerves. - gameprogrammingpatterns.com

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Uta
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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by Uta » April 4th, 2019, 1:32 am

I suppose the meat of my question could have been boiled down to "Who is the Chilli of Unreal Tutorials" then. I've tried finding a variety of tutorials but most of them are focused on using the Editor or Blueprints to do everything. There seems to be extremely little in the way of C++ for Unreal Tutorials.

https://www.youtube.com/user/VirtusEdu/videos

Digging through some old forums posts spits out this guy, and he does have a small sample of C++ Videos. I suppose I'll check it out for a start, but if anyone knows more and / or better resources for this kind of stuff I'd be eager to see them.

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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by chili » April 4th, 2019, 12:37 pm

Yeah, I noticed as well. There is a dearth of stuff on actual C++ UE4 dev.
Chili

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Uta
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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by Uta » April 6th, 2019, 7:37 pm

It can be a bit frustrating to say the least. Thanks again for the Tutorials though Chili, I'm glad I found this stuff. I've got some other questions if you've got time to answer.

I told a friend about Lesson 8. His response was "wait you're learning through Object Oriented Programming? That's so useless, if you want OOP stuff just learn Java it's way better". Now in my mind the Chili Framework is just an illustrative tool not meant for serious use but is designed to create visual feedback for our code that allows for accelerated learning, but in spite of that his question confused me. C++ is an OOP (well, it's more than just an OOP), so why would he say not to use C++ for it and to instead use Java? And since I'm kind of on a roll. Why is it that whenever I tell people I'm learning C++ their response is always "I hate it because Pointers are terrible. They're cool, but they're horrible, no-good, no-fun programming."

And on that note. About how many lessons in would someone be able to create their own Chili Framework? Every few videos or so I dive into the other files and start looking for things I've learned and haven't learned. Trying to make sense of what's making the framework tick, and it seems deceptively simple yet still out of reach.

As a final aside, I think I'm gonna try to make a really basic game where you kill some guys, and maybe make the guys run around a little. Should be fun, I'll post the results here if / when I finish it.

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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by Pindrought » April 8th, 2019, 11:30 pm

Uta wrote:
April 6th, 2019, 7:37 pm
His response was "wait you're learning through Object Oriented Programming? That's so useless, if you want OOP stuff just learn Java it's way better". Now in my mind the Chili Framework is just an illustrative tool not meant for serious use but is designed to create visual feedback for our code that allows for accelerated learning, but in spite of that his question confused me. C++ is an OOP (well, it's more than just an OOP), so why would he say not to use C++ for it and to instead use Java?
He doesn't know what he is talking about.
Uta wrote:
April 6th, 2019, 7:37 pm
Why is it that whenever I tell people I'm learning C++ their response is always "I hate it because Pointers are terrible. They're cool, but they're horrible, no-good, no-fun programming."
They don't understand how to properly use pointers without having issues so they dismiss the language entirely. Opinions should not be based off ignorance.
Uta wrote:
April 6th, 2019, 7:37 pm
And on that note. About how many lessons in would someone be able to create their own Chili Framework? Every few videos or so I dive into the other files and start looking for things I've learned and haven't learned. Trying to make sense of what's making the framework tick, and it seems deceptively simple yet still out of reach.
Chili's 3d hardware tutorials are really close to covering everything you'd need to be able to create the framework from scratch I believe. Of course, you'd want to have finished all the Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced series first, and the gems would be a nice addition as well.
Uta wrote:
April 6th, 2019, 7:37 pm
As a final aside, I think I'm gonna try to make a really basic game where you kill some guys, and maybe make the guys run around a little. Should be fun, I'll post the results here if / when I finish it.
Awesome dude! The best learning experiences are from actually applying your knowledge into your own projects. Looking forward to seeing it if you get a chance to share.
PM me if you need to contact me. Thanks to all the helpful people on this forum especially to Chili.

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Uta
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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by Uta » April 9th, 2019, 4:40 pm

He doesn't know what he is talking about.
While I am sure this is the case, I was hoping for insight on what would make them say such a thing. I want to be able to refute their points intelligently, and to do so I need to understand the logic behind their words. The same goes for Pointer comments. One of my friends is a very good, professional programmer working in a pretty prolific company and has high-vis projects working with companies like Twitch. And he's one of the people saying he doesn't like C++ because he dislikes working with its syntax and pointers. He knows how to use it, he just doesn't like it.
Chili's 3d hardware tutorials are really close to covering everything you'd need to be able to create the framework from scratch I believe. Of course, you'd want to have finished all the Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced series first, and the gems would be a nice addition as well.
Thanks. I'm pretty sure I'm in it for the long haul so here's hoping. I plan on playing with some of the Unreal Engine stuff once I'm done with Beginner Series.
Awesome dude! The best learning experiences are from actually applying your knowledge into your own projects. Looking forward to seeing it if you get a chance to share.
Version 1 is done. It was a fun little exercise, but I'm not going to share it until Version 2. V2 will see the game in something actually resembling a game, but to pull it off I need a few more lessons.

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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by Pindrought » April 9th, 2019, 6:58 pm

Uta wrote:
April 9th, 2019, 4:40 pm
He doesn't know what he is talking about.
While I am sure this is the case, I was hoping for insight on what would make them say such a thing. I want to be able to refute their points intelligently, and to do so I need to understand the logic behind their words. The same goes for Pointer comments. One of my friends is a very good, professional programmer working in a pretty prolific company and has high-vis projects working with companies like Twitch. And he's one of the people saying he doesn't like C++ because he dislikes working with its syntax and pointers. He knows how to use it, he just doesn't like it.
Chili's 3d hardware tutorials are really close to covering everything you'd need to be able to create the framework from scratch I believe. Of course, you'd want to have finished all the Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced series first, and the gems would be a nice addition as well.
Thanks. I'm pretty sure I'm in it for the long haul so here's hoping. I plan on playing with some of the Unreal Engine stuff once I'm done with Beginner Series.
Awesome dude! The best learning experiences are from actually applying your knowledge into your own projects. Looking forward to seeing it if you get a chance to share.
Version 1 is done. It was a fun little exercise, but I'm not going to share it until Version 2. V2 will see the game in something actually resembling a game, but to pull it off I need a few more lessons.
Well your friend who thought java was a better choice for OOP may have suggested that due to java being a strict OOP language where with C++ you have the option of going the OOP route or the procedural route. I, for one, like the fact that C++ does not restrict you in how you choose to design your program. C# and Java are similar in this manner where they tend to force you to do everything in classes.

For your friend who hates pointers, he might have just had bad experiences with them. Pointers are very easy to use wrong. With raw pointers and manual memory allocation and deallocation, there is room for potential memory leaks. With the introduction of smart pointers, this is not as much of a concern in my opinion, since there are many smart pointer options that are very noob friendly to use and will handle the memory cleanup. C++ is a bit dangerous in the sense that it at times gives the programmer so much control that they can blow up their program if they don't know what they're doing.

TL;DR: There is no argument/points that can really be made to either of your friends in my opinion. They aren't right, but they aren't completely wrong either.
PM me if you need to contact me. Thanks to all the helpful people on this forum especially to Chili.

yanamar
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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by yanamar » April 10th, 2019, 4:46 am

Uta wrote:
April 6th, 2019, 7:37 pm
I told a friend about Lesson 8. His response was "wait you're learning through Object Oriented Programming? That's so useless, if you want OOP stuff just learn Java it's way better". Now in my mind the Chili Framework is just an illustrative tool not meant for serious use but is designed to create visual feedback for our code that allows for accelerated learning, but in spite of that his question confused me. C++ is an OOP (well, it's more than just an OOP), so why would he say not to use C++ for it and to instead use Java?
It really seems like your friend just say that based on the fact that Java is the symbol of oriented object programming. But as was already said he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. You want to make games ? Then Java certainly is not the language of choice. C++ is a good one, especially if your goal is to make performance demanding games. You could go the Javascript / Web / Mobile game route, or other languages and frameworks out there, but C++ is a sound choice while Java really isn't.

I'm not in the video game industry but i read about game development, and they certainly use C++ and OOP. Although now the industry is trending towards Data Oriented Design (not to be confused with data driven); but DOD is more of a concept that uses OOP language constructs anyway, like classes and polymorphism.
Uta wrote:
April 6th, 2019, 7:37 pm
Why is it that whenever I tell people I'm learning C++ their response is always "I hate it because Pointers are terrible. They're cool, but they're horrible, no-good, no-fun programming."
This sounds like people who experienced C or C++ some years ago, only in school, am I wrong ? Pointers are a real thing existing at hardware level, so if you want performance you just want to have control over this kind of things. Their use is certainly error-prone, but today there is so many things to ease the use of pointers. Smart-pointers, handles. As a side note on this subject don't believe people telling you that you should never ever use a raw pointer in modern C++. It's true that smart pointers are a super thing, but they go hand in hand with naked pointers, while still avoiding most of the hassle when combined properly.
On the other side of the scope there is Rust which offers a compiled language (so really good performances) with new and interesting ownership semantics and compile-time static analysis that basically prevents from making most of the mistakes that one can make with pointers.
Anyway, learning in C++ the concepts of ownership, why pointers are dangerous, how to avoid this kind of bugs and the designs that help do so, would be a huge improvement for one's programming skills.

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Re: Chilli Framework to Unreal?

Post by albinopapa » April 10th, 2019, 8:31 am

It's funny that when you bring up C++, pointers are the first thing that came to mind. C++ is so much more. Hell, I really don't use raw pointers unless I have to anymore. There's the smart pointers as mentioned, but mostly you should be using iterators and constant references.

I've seen people use pointer arithmetic to "speed up" performance, but in my own experience using indices are just as fast or not worth the risk for whatever nanoseconds you'd save.

Iterators are an abstraction of pointers. They allow you to set a start and end point, allow you to iterate over a container be it an std::array or C-style array, std::vector, or even an std::list.

Any language can be used for games, I've heard of games written in Jave, Javascript, python and C# as well as C and C++. Java has gotten pretty fast over the years from what I've heard. It really depends on how well the java virtual machine is written and how well optimized it is.

I have heard good things about Rust, but I haven't looked too deeply into it, I'm a C++ fanboi through and through. I like the features and the control.
If you think paging some data from disk into RAM is slow, try paging it into a simian cerebrum over a pair of optical nerves. - gameprogrammingpatterns.com

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