The Ultimate 2D Top Down Unreal Engine Course

Learn all you need to know about Paper 2D and PaperZD to make 2D and 2D/3D hybrid Top Down Games in Unreal Engine 5!

What you'll learn

How to make 2D Top Down Games in Unreal Engine

Create 3 Awesome Top Down Games with various Art Styles

Mix 2D Sprites with 3D backgrounds to create gorgeous 2D/3D Hybrid games

Create RPG Cutscenes using the Sequencer

Make a Dialogue system with Data Tables and UI Widgets

Best Practices for 2D and 2D/3D hybrid games in Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine Blueprints, starting from the basics up to advanced usage

Requirements

No prior programming or Unreal Engine experience needed! You'll learn everything you need to know.

Description

Welcome to The Ultimate 2D Top Down Unreal Engine Course.This course will teach you everything you need to know about making 2D Top Down Games in Unreal Engine 5 by creating 3 different games.The first 2 projects are 2D games only using sprites, while the last projects is a 2D|3D Hybrid mixing 2D Sprites for the characters with a 3D environment making use of Unreal Engine's cutting edge lighting and post processing.Through teaching Unreal Engine on YouTube and also in person at a Japanese Game Dev school for the past couple of years I've gained an understanding of what students are really looking for and designed this course to teach you the process of making games with Unreal Engine.All of the knowledge you'll acquire by going through this course of course doesn't only apply to Top Down games, but to creating games in general!If you're completely new to Unreal Engine you can check out the Unreal Engine 5 Crash Course which is included in one of the early chapters.After covering the basics we'll jump right into making 3 awesome Top Down Games!The first game is modeled after retro 'monster catcher' games and you'll learn all about Paper 2D and how we can use sprites and animations in our games.We also cover how to use Tile Maps to build our stages and place obstacles and decorations in it as well that will use proper layer sorting so the character appears in front or behind;You'll also learn how to set up Top Down character movement and directional animations from scratch and we'll end things off by creating an interaction system and a Hud Widget that shows dialogue lines and status text.The second game is a Top Down Adventure game again using Tile maps and Sprites.We'll expand upon what we learned in the first chapter and also learn about the intricacies of sword and bow based combat by implementing hitboxes, knockback and much more.The last project is the Hybrid RPG which uses 2D character sprites in a 3D Environment for that unique high definition look that has become popular for JRPGs in recent years.We'll expand upon the dialogue system by using Data Tables and UI Widgets that change size depending on the length of our text which will build up letter by letter.

Overview

Section 1: Course Orientation

Lecture 1 Curriculum Overview

Lecture 2 Why make 2D Top Down Games with Unreal Engine?

Lecture 3 What Version of Unreal Engine to use (UE5.4)

Lecture 4 Our Discord and how to ask for help

Lecture 5 Backing Up Your Projects

Section 2: Unreal Engine 5 Crash Course

Lecture 6 About the Unreal Engine 5 Crash Course

Lecture 7 How to Install Unreal Engine 5

Lecture 8 How to create a new Project

Lecture 9 How to navigate the Editor

Lecture 10 Content Drawer and Blueprints

Lecture 11 How to make a simple Blueprint

Lecture 12 Adding functionality to our Blueprint

Lecture 13 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts and Tips

Lecture 14 How to debug your Games

Section 3: Paper 2D Basics

Lecture 15 What are Paper 2D and PaperZD?

Section 4: Monster World Project

Lecture 16 Monster World Overview

Lecture 17 Setting Up the Project and Importing Assets

Lecture 18 Making a Tile Set and Tile Map

Lecture 19 Preparing the Character Sprites

Lecture 20 Best Project Settings for 2D Games

Lecture 21 Character Blueprint and Pixels Per Unit

Lecture 22 Setting up the Camera and Possessing the Character

Lecture 23 Enhanced Input and Character Movement

Lecture 24 Directional Character Animations from Scratch

Lecture 25 Adjusting the map and collisions

Lecture 26 Foreground and Background sorting

Lecture 27 Project files with layer sorting

Lecture 28 Creating a simple message UI with custom fonts

Lecture 29 Making a pickup

Lecture 30 Showing the item message

Lecture 31 NPC Dialogue and Interfaces

Lecture 32 Wrapping up

Lecture 33 Completed Project Files: Monster World

Section 5: Dungeon Adventure Project

Lecture 34 Dungeon Adventure Overview

Lecture 35 Initial Setup and Asset Preparation

Lecture 36 Inheritance and Character Blueprints

Lecture 37 Multi Directional Animations

Lecture 38 Setting Up the Remaining Animations

Lecture 39 PaperZD Animation Blueprint Setup

Lecture 40 Improving Character Turning and Direction

Lecture 41 Making Simple Enemies

Lecture 42 Damaging the Player on Overlap

Lecture 43 Making a Health Component

Lecture 44 Stunned and Defeated State

Lecture 45 Sword Attack

Lecture 46 Implementing Knockback

Lecture 47 Making Attacks Feel Impactful

Lecture 48 Despawning Enemies

Lecture 49 Player Invincibility

Lecture 50 Health UI

Lecture 51 Making the Bow and Arrow

Lecture 52 Arrow Interactions

Lecture 53 Creating Pickups and Item Drops

Lecture 54 Finalizing the Camera and Map

Lecture 55 Making an Enemy and Pickup Spawner

Lecture 56 Making a Wave System

Lecture 57 Wave System UI Widget

Lecture 58 Adding Sound Effects

Lecture 59 Wrapping Up

Lecture 60 Completed Project Files: Dungeon Adventure

Section 6: Hybrid RPG Project

Lecture 61 Hybrid RPG Project Overview

Lecture 62 Setting Up the Project and Importing Assets

Lecture 63 Preparing All Flipbook Animations

Lecture 64 Creating the Character Blueprints

Lecture 65 Enabling the Camera and Character Movement

Lecture 66 Handling Character Animations

Lecture 67 Setting Up a 3D Map for Sprite Characters

Lecture 68 Camera Improvements and Anti Aliasing

Lecture 69 Depth of Field and Post Processing

Lecture 70 NPC Interactions Interface

Lecture 71 Creating the Dialogue Icon

Lecture 72 Creating the Speech Bubble Widget

Lecture 73 Positioning the Dialogue WIdget

Lecture 74 Locking Characters While Speaking

Lecture 75 UI Transitions for Dialogue

Lecture 76 Revealing Dialogue Letter by Letter

Lecture 77 Dialogue System through Data Tables

Lecture 78 Improving NPC Interactions Further

Lecture 79 Navigation Meshes and Free Roaming NPCs

Lecture 80 Recruiting a Follower

Lecture 81 Adding Sound Effects

Lecture 82 Wrapping Up

Lecture 83 Completed Project Files: Dungeon Adventure

Section 7: Extra: Optional Lessons

Lecture 84 Extra Lesson Overview

Lecture 85 Pixel Art Textures for Map Assets

Lecture 86 Masking Out Foreground Objects

Lecture 87 Making Cutscenes With the Sequencer

Lecture 88 Adding Gamepad Support

Lecture 89 Retro Character Movement

Section 8: Bonus: What's next?

Lecture 90 Bonus Lecture

Beginner and Intermediate Unreal Engine developers who want to make Top Down 2D Games