Alex 🦅 @OutoftheboxP Twitter profile

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Alex 🦅

9 months

Friendly reminder: Quick Actions is a free and open-source Unreal Engine plugin which allows you to quickly search for commands and execute. Link to download below.👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Indie game developer with a multiplayer game:

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

10 months

me adding one more if statement hoping this is the last edge case I need to handle

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

11 months

@ronawang Well, if they have the budget to hire fake recruiters, I am sure they will approve my raise.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

10 months

Player: I think something is wrong with your steam integration, my system crashed after leaving you a review. The steam integration:

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Is anybody else struggling with this?

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

I love game development. I switch back and forth between feeling like the smartest man alive to feeling like an idiot every 1-2 hours.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

@John84421387 :)) That is indeed an option, you just need to instruct them how to set up the networking and port forwarding so they are accessible!

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

I have decided to tackle the hardest game development challenge out there, creating a door. Here is how you can create a simple door component and integrate it into a modular interaction system. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

The game engine you start with doesn't matter. You can always go to Unreal later.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Unpopular opinion: The comments in your code should explain why your code does something not what it does. Bad: // Dividing a by 100 a = a / 100; Good: // Transforming a into a percentage because the UI component requires it a = a / 100;

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

11 months

Building a multiplayer experience isn't all fun and games. Here is everything you need to know about the networking setup required to host a dedicated server on your computer and have your friends join. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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@OutoftheboxP

10 months

TIL: This is how Unreal prevents the screen saver from showing up.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

Over the years, I've worked on a wide range of projects from small indie ideas to AAA games. Here is how I would build an interaction system from scratch in Unreal Engine if I were to start a new project today. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

People who think crunch is good probably worked 1-2 extra hours and got pizza for it. Anybody who pulled multiple 60+ hours weeks in a row knows how it can affect your life, work and mental health. Also it’s a completely different thing from working on YOUR project after work.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Is your game struggling with performance? Here is how to run your Unreal C++ code asynchronously to avoid bottlenecks. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Multi-user editor sessions in Unreal Engine. 🤯 I can't belive this is real.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

I've worked in the AAA industry, mid-sized companies, and pre-seed startups using everything from proprietary closed-source engines to mainstream commercial ones like Unity and Unreal. and I'm happy to let you know that I still how no idea what I'm doing.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

85% of your success as a game developer is determined by your ability to avoid distractions.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

I am excited to announce the release of Quick Actions. It's been a long journey, but it's finally ready to be shared. The plugin is currently going out for free. There will be no "Pro" or "V2" products. It is still in development and will be improved. Contributions are welcome

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Do you need to optimize your game? Here is how to use Unreal Insights. A tool that will help you analyze the perforce of your game. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

The number of people who assume I know maths because I worked as a Gameplay Programamer is mind-blowing.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Developing a solo indie game is not a sprint.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

@NormalRiver I mean that could work, but some people like to live in chaos and stress constantly.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

@wrossmck 🫡 they were ready to get latency down.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

Losing your progress in a game is frustrating. However, saving & loading a player's data is not complicated. Here is how you can implement a save system to respawn the player in their last position in Unreal Engine. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Game development is hard and slow (especially if you only get to progress a few hours a day after your day job). But every little step forward feels so damn good.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Are you using blueprints in your Unreal Engine project? You can speed up development by 783% with this ultimate node suggestion plugin. Note: The algorithm is using machine learning behind the scenes and definitely doesn't give out random nodes.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Repeat after me: My game doesn't have to be perfect before I show it to someone else. My game doesn't have to be perfect before I show it to someone else. My game doesn't have to be perfect before I show it to someone else.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

Here is how to create your own editor mode inside Unreal Engine. Extend the editor with custom tools like the Landscape mode tailor to your own project. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Being a game developer is a constant rediscovery of the fact I know nothing.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

One thing I miss about working in Unity is the OnDrawGizmosSelected functionality. Here is how you can achieve the same in Unreal Engine using C++ and FComponentVisualizer. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

After years of programming, I developed unhealthy levels of confidence to achieve things I have no idea how to do.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

God bless whoever made the World Outliner use alternative colors on each row in UE 5.2. You are the real hero!

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

@cdranzer87 That would be a nice "upgrade" indeed.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

11 months

As promised here is the code you need to draw a custom widget for your Unreal Engine settings class. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

@SudoKidTV Indie game dev cost optimization. By removing any reccuring 6$/month charges you can extend your runway.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

13.200 downloads in the first 12 days. That's how many Unreal Engine devs found my last editor extension valuable. This is a clear sign the community is eager for new tools to improve and simplify their workflow. And it's our job to integrate existing ones and create more.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Unreal Engine 5.3 is running C++ 20 by default. Here is what you can do with it:

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

10 months

Do you spend too much time re-arranging elements in your scene outliner? Here is how you can add your own column using C++. A short thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Just submitted my application for Epic Game Grants. Fingers crossed for some funding to bring Quick Actions to the next level.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

Are you feeling bored and you want to embark on a adventure? Here is how you can create your custom blueprint nodes. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

After working in game dev and seeing first hand how things are done, it blows my mind how anything gets shipped.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

People underestimate the effort required to replicate a mechanic they saw in a AAA game in their own project.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

How to bring YOUR icons inside the Unreal Engine editor In the beginning, it might look like an intimidating task But I broke it down into a step-by-step guide for you🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Woke up to this.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Newbie dev: "I will find a tutorial series/course for this" Intermediate dev: "I will just google this" Senior dev: "I hope someone implemented it in the engine before me." Expert dev: "I found an article in Japanese and I use Google Translate to read it"

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

Hear me out: Shark tank but for indie games.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

If you’re working with C++ code in Unreal, you need to understand solution configurations. Using the proper option for your case can save you hours of debugging and help you avoid headaches. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

Integrating third-party C++ libraries in Unreal Engine can be either moderately difficult or total pain. One of the toughest parts of the process is building the actual .lib / .dll files and linking them to Unreal. Today I will go over how I integrated in Unreal's build process

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Unreal Engine Interfaces are essential to your game's architecture. Do you have 2 unrelated objects (e.g.: doors & explosives) but you want to add a common functionality (e.g.: the ability to interact) to both? Create an interface. Be happy.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

3 years ago, I used to teach C++ to high school students who were preparing for programming contests. My favourite thing to do was to show them that MyArray[Index] and Index[MyArray] are the same.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Did you know pressing CTRL+S once is enough?

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

@scrumtuous Agreed, it distracts me from the music.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Here are 9 C++ keywords I use to convience my co-workers I know what I am doing. Disclaimer: None of the advice here is meant to improve performance, readability or arhitecture. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Indie game development is about priorities. Before starting to work on something, ask yourself: - Will it get me closer to the finish line? - Does it create additional value for the player? - Is there a bigger issue I'm trying to avoid by working on this?

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

10 months

Want to customize how your struct shows up in the property editor of Unreal Engine? Here’s how to do it with C++. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

Are you struggling to debug your game at runtime? Here is how you can add custom console variables to hide & show debug data in Unreal Engine. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

10 months

Tired of writing if's just to print stuff? Use Unreal's UE_CLOG.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Multiplayer development tip: Enable late joining inside your Editor Preferences. With this feature enabled, you can start additional clients during a PIE session. Steps:

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

I recently talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly of code architecture in Unreal Engine projects. Here is a practical example where I implement a modular and extensible interaction prompt on top of an existing system. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

If you are not happy single, you won't be happy in a relationship. True happiness comes from finding that checkbox hidden in the project settings that solves your bug, not from someone else.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

8 months

As you can see I am a horrible art person, but I figured out a way to set folder icons in Unreal Engine.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Do you want to add custom buttons in the main Unreal toolbar? You can do so by using this 20-lines snippet inside your project.👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

TValueOrError is my new favourite class in Unreal Engine. Often times I want to write a getter but I want to give the caller some information about why it failed. Here is a practical example:

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

Did you know you can create your own UFUNCTION meta properties in Unreal Engine and access them via reflection? Here is a quick example: For instance, with this code snippet, we can execute all functions with our tag:

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

A deeper dive into Unreal Engine's log categories: 1. How logging looks like To start things off let's take a look at a simple example message: UE_LOG(LogTemp, Warning, TEXT("Hello world!")): The first parameter of the UE_LOG macro is the category. LogTemp is a built-in

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

1/10 Disclaimer The famous "The Door problem" is referring to the inter-department problems that arise while creating a door. In this thread, we are going to focus on the bare minimum programming requirements to get something working, no signs & feedback or anything fancy.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

Discord is the go-to place for gamers to hang out and play with friends. Here is a step-by-step guide to integrate Discord functionality into your Unreal Engine project using their C++ SDK. The GitHub link is included below if you want to try it out. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

Here is how you can run custom logic during the engine initialization from your own modules. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Do you want to hack into someone's Unreal Engine game? ...While I can't teach you that, I can show you how to use the UnrealPak tool to open .pak files. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

11 months

Having bookmarks > likes is my cue people found this useful.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

Every single time.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

You will never regret buying a mechanical keyboard. However, people around you will regret it.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

My first programming job was in Unity. The studio had a paid plan so I had access to the dark editor theme. When going back home, I couldn't stand using the free white theme. So I switched over to Unreal and gave it a try since it had free dark theme. Haven't left ever since.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

@maximilianhils “I understand this is important for you, if you are interested we define contract and get it done.” = “Extortion attempt” 🤔 interesting.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

8 months

I realized I won't be able to cover everyone's use cases when it comes to cleaning up your project. So here is a short tutorial on how to find all nods without any connections (pins). A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

10 months

Has your code been running bug-free for too long? Are you feeling bored and want to instigate chaos in your project? Here is how you can use Unreal's FRunnable to run code asynchronously in C++. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Cheat codes for productive game development: • schedule deep work in a distraction-free environment • set clearly defined goals before starting to work • get enough sleep the night before What else?

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

How did I miss this? Is @mathewwadstein coming back in 2024?

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

If you are setting up a git repository for your Unreal Engine project, make sure to mark huge assets as LFS. With this simple change, you can drastically decrease the size on disk of your git repository. Here is a sample file to get you started: You

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Here are 10 Unreal Engine helper functions I use to deal with array operations while feeling like a wizard 🧙🏼 Use at your own risk 👇🏼🧵

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

7 months

Integrating UI with gameplay can look simple, however, it has huge implications for the project's architecture. Here is how these decisions impact your codebase, what you want to avoid, and what options you should consider based on your situation A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

If you're going through Unreal's source code, there is a strong chance you've seen a this in a bunch of places: bool bMyBoolFlag:1; The :1 marks the member to use only 1 bit instead of the standard 1 byte, therefore drastically reducing the size of the struct.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

The person who added ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to the official Unreal Engine editor deserves a promotion. 🫡 My eternal respect.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

@MrGemezl We should make an Unreal plugin that adds a "Not made with Unity" splash screen.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

9 months

I've been integrating a few third-party libraries in Unreal recently. One common issue I faced with almost all of them was Error C4668: MACRO is not defined as a preprocessor macro, replacing with '0' for ' #if / #elif ' For raw C++ it's fine to use a macro without having it

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

One of the first thing we learn when doing Blueprints is to add debug messages to the Viewport using the Print node. Here is the C++ way to achieve the same result:

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

10 months

I've learned this lesson the hard way. More than 1 time.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

11 months

I just discovered custom widgets for project settings are a thing in Unreal Engine. It feels so good to have this menu configurable so you can choose only the most useful views.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

How to write and refactor code without introducing any bugs. Write your first Unreal Engine test today in 6 steps using Rider. A thread 🧵👇🏼

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Real programmer quiz: Do you actually own a rubber duck?

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

How to become a great programmer: 1. Start a new project way above your skills 2. Try solving it with your current knowledge 3. Google all the remaining problems 4. Create an almost-working prototype 5. Give up and go back to step 1 Each time spend more and more time on step 2.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Pro tip: Don't add a wall of text tutorial to your game. No one will read it.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

Game development isn't just about talent and skill. It's about the perfect blend of patience and grinding.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Here is your friendly reminder to start with a small game.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

2 years

Releasing only one indie game in your life is already an incredible achievement. Building something from scratch, and publishing it takes a lot of time.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP

1 year

I wish late-night-programmer me would know he will solve this bug within minutes tomorrow morning and all he needs to do is go to bed.

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Alex 🦅

@OutoftheboxP