Starting your new project in unreal engine 5 can be a little intimidating considering the number of template options they provide. In this article, we will go through different ones to get started with your game development right away. It is very simple once you understand what each one does and what the differences are. This article will cover templates made for different genres of games and how to get up and running from an empty project. By the end of this, you will know the basics of setting up your first level. So let’s get started!!!
This is the page you will see if you go into the games tab when you start unreal engine 5. We will only cover this section in this article. Blank is pretty self-explanatory, it creates a blank project with no preset or assets. The started content gives you some assets to work with. We will not talk about the Handheld AR and the Virtual Reality preset because those are beyond the scope of this article. Instead, we will talk about the following templates
- Blank
- First Person
- Third Person
- Top Down
- Vehicles
Before we start with different templates We need to understand some basics of unreal if you are not familiar with them already. If you are already familiar with camera angles, and different types of lighting then skip this part and move directly to the templates part.
Lighting
there are two main types of light you will see when you start out. One is Sky light and the other is the source light. You can think of sky light as the sun. Basically, it’s the global light that illuminates the whole world and it can be used to create different effects like day, night, sunset, etc. Now we have the light source that is point light that is a lot like a light bulb at your home. It doesn’t create as much of an effect like the sky light but it will help you create directional lights that can be used inside the room. Just be creative and mess around with it. There are many things you can achieve by combining these two lights.
Blank Project
A blank project will start off blank as the name says. Now, what does that really mean? When you start with any other preset, you will start with a pre-made level with a character or object with functionality added to them with a map to move around. We will look at these later when we check out different project presets. The blank project will look like the image above when you first start off. The table and chair placed in the scene are from the starter content. So the project will have only these few assets & different kinds of lightning. You can add more light like this into your projects and will change how an object looks and reflections, fun stuff like that. That is about all you will get when you start off blank. Usually, it is the most recommended one to start with when you want to make something of your own. This does not mean the other presets are bad. They have their strength and weaknesses. Sometimes the extra functionality those preset comes with might not be something you want in your project. That is why you can read this article to figure out what you might get when you use one of the other presets as a starting point.
First Person
First-person comes with a level you can walk on with a fully functional character with basic movements that you will get in a first-person shooter game. From the image above you can see the level is pretty well made for a demo for you to check out different movement controls. It comes with more lighting and environment options from the get-go like volumetric cloud, exponential height fog, and post-processing volume to make the level look better. The level also comes with a player start built right in. Now what player starts, you might ask. The player start is referred to the starting point or spawns point of the character when a player hits play. This preset comes with a set of blueprints that allows someone to experience a working character model with a working camera and controls. The player can use WASD to move around and mouse1 to shoot the gun with the mouse to rotate the player’s camera. That’s a lot of functionality built into character for a fresh project. You as a developer might need a few hours to implement all of that when starting out and this allows you to experience that without much hassle as a newcomer. So that’s a +1 definitely. Now it is a first-person template, so you don’t need a player model because the camera POV will be the payer’s eyes. So for the 3d player model, we will only get an arm with a gun that will spawn when the play button is clicked. Be sure to click inside the game-play window to gain control of the player in the game.
Third Person
Third-person and first-person almost have the same setup. The only difference is you start with the camera settings of a 3rd person character and you get a full character model. That is all for visual changes. There is a bit less going on in the background too. The 3rd person character model can only move around and jump. Unlike the first-person character, there is no shooting mechanics or gun included in this one. so if you are trying to make a shooting game this temple is not it.
Top Down
If your goal is to make a top-down dungeon crawler like Diablo or Path of Exile then this is the template you would want to look at. Assets wise they are using the same level and character from the third person template and changed the camera angle to a top-down angled position. The control scheme has also been changed to mouse click instead of WASD. You can move your character with your mouse left click. Clicking it on different places or holding it down while you drag your mouse around works perfectly. It is a good starting point and you can start building inventory and level design from this template.
Vehicles
The vehicle template is rather “heavy” compared to the other template that we looked at so far. If you have a good PC you might not feel it as much as I did. it took longer to create the project and even after opening the project it took a good amount of time to compile all the shaders that this template comes with. It is by far the biggest level map that we have seen so far.
In the play mode, we get a nice-looking car with all the basic controls implemented. WASD to drive the card and there is a speedometer with a gear system. I managed to drive the car up to 160km/h and goes into the 3rd gear. The map is pretty well made to test out the different characteristics of the car. The car physics is very well made and it is really in a ready state so you can start making your game from this.
Creating Blank Level Maps
We looked at the templates and it’s all good and everything but what is your next step as a developer? Making your own level! So you need to start by making a new level and that level is going to be dark and empty. You can use your knowledge of the lights that we talked about before and add some lights and go from there.
You can add lights from the top bar shown in the screenshot. Once you can see with your lights I am sure you will find your way around!
Conclusion
With that, we have come to the end of our journey of looking at all the game templates that are provided with unreal engine 5. The vehicles template and the first-person shooter template are my favorite out of all these and have the most features built in. It takes a long time to create each template and see if you need this for your project. Now you don’t have to, You know all the basic things you need to know to choose a template from these, and once you pick one you can spend your time figuring out all the things that are rooted in the project and use them to your advantage. Next time I will talk about building small games in unreal! So stay tuned for that & good luck with making your next game!!!