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Getting Started With Unreal Engine

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Unreal Engine has been a staple in the world of game development for more than two decades. Known for stunning graphics, easy development tools, and regular updates, Unreal is a wise choice for any developer.

But how do you get started with making your first game in Unreal?

About Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine is a 3D game development engine by Epic Games, the folks behind Fortnite, that debuted in 1998. The tool then grew to become a full game development suite. It offers programming, animation, and a host of other competitive features. The new version of the engine launched in 2022, improving Unreal Engine’s features while also making it more accessible to developers.

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Is Unreal Engine Good for Beginners?

Unreal Engine 5 comes with a range of features aimed at those starting out in game development. You can develop your first game without any code thanks to Unreal’s Visual Scripting features. And you can rely on the detailed documentation available for the engine to kickstart your learning.

Can You Sell Games Made With Unreal Engine?

You can sell the games you make with Unreal Engine under any of the company’s licensing options. It’s important to read your own Unreal Engine EULA when you download the software. Epic allows sales of games made with Unreal and generally only takes royalties when your revenue is more than $1 million.

Is Unreal Engine Free?

The basic version of Unreal Engine 5 is free to all users, whether you are a business, hobbyist, or student. Epic Games also offers an Enterprise Program with premium support and a Custom License option for users with specific needs. Every Unreal Engine 5 license comes with the same engine features and learning materials.

Downloading the Epic Games Launcher

You can download Unreal Engine through the same Epic Games Launcher app you use to download games. You need to download the launcher from Epic Games and install it before you can start working with the engine.

Installing & Setting Up Unreal Engine

You can start to install Unreal Engine once you have Epic Games Launcher installed. Open the launcher and click Unreal Engine on the left side of the window before clicking the Library tab at the top of the window.

Click Install on the latest engine version in the Engine Versions section. Choose the file path you would like for your Unreal Engine 5 installation and click Install.

It will take some time for the installation to complete, giving you the chance to start learning about Unreal before you use it.​​​​​

How to Make a Game in Unreal Engine for Beginners

Epic Games is kind enough to provide sample games to new developers looking to learn how to make games with Unreal Engine. The Lyra sample game is an excellent place to start. Head to the Samples tab in the Epic Games Launcher, select Lyra Starter Game, and click the Free button. This will open a set of terms for you to accept.

Click Create Project and choose the file path you would like for your starter game, then click Create. Wait for the starter game to download before proceeding to the next step.

Now that you have Lyra downloaded, you can start working in Unreal. Launch Unreal Engine from the Epic Games Launcher and Browse for the Lyra project files you saved before opening the development tools.

Exploring the Unreal Engine UI

Everyone will see the same UI layout in Unreal Engine when it loads for the first time. Unreal Engine 5 simplified and improved the general layout in the software, but you can change it as much as you like to suit your own needs.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the main thing on screen in Unreal Engine is the Visual Editor pane. Here you can see the scene you are working on, along with all the objects and other instances within it. Much like tools such as Blender, you can choose from different editing modes within the visual editor.

There are two separate panes on the right-hand side of the screen: the Outliner and Details sections. The Outliner is a text-based hierarchy of the objects within the current level. This gives you access to invisible objects, parent-child relationships, and more. Beneath this is the Details section, showing the properties of the object you have selected.

Unreal Engine Content Drawer, Output Log, and Cmd

Three crucial tools live at the bottom of the Unreal Engine screen. The Content Drawer is home to all the assets used in your game and the Output Log provides information when you debug your game. The Cmd tool allows you to issue commands to your game.

For now, the Content Drawer is the most important part of the UI to focus on. Click Content Drawer to open the content manager, and you’ll see all the files that make the Lyra sample game. You can search and filter the files to make it easier to find what you are looking for.

As you can see from the Lyra example, taking care with file management is always important when you’re working with the Content Drawer.

Adding to Your Unreal Engine UI

As mentioned, you can customize the Unreal Engine UI to meet your needs. Go to Window at the top of the screen to see the list of extra UI elements that you can use. Hovering over each of the panel types will give you a brief description of what you are looking at.

Programming in Unreal Engine

Getting started with programming in Unreal Engine is similar to getting started with Unity. Both tools offer comprehensive options to give you control over your code while minimizing how much you have to write for yourself.

What Programming Languages Work With Unreal Engine?

Unreal Engine uses C++ as its main programing language, with a compiler designed to work with it. Alongside C++, Unreal developers can use the Blueprint Visual Scripting system to create actions and events without having to use real code.

Coding With C++ in Unreal Engine

You can add new C++ classes to your project at any time by going to File and then clicking New C++ Class. From here, the code you write will be like any other project; you can even use tools like Visual Studio to help with your coding in Unreal Engine. You can use the official Unreal Engine 5 Documentation to get you started.

Blueprint Visual Scripting in Unreal Engine 5

Blueprint Visual Scripting is Unreal Engine 5’s answer to block coding and other visual programming methods. Blueprint is a powerful tool that enables you to build games without a single line of code. Lyra, for example, is a game made entirely with visual scripting.

To see an example of Unreal’s visual scripting, take a look at the GA_Weapon_Fire file found under All > Weapons within the content drawer. This file controls weapon fire in Lyra and looks quite daunting when you first open it, but it isn’t too hard to get to grips with.

This Blueprint file has four different sections. The first of these sections performs a weapon trace when the player first hits the fire button. This checks to see if the player is locally controlled, followed by playing animations and controlling the weapon’s rate of fire. The player cannot fire their weapon if they are dead.

Next, the Blueprint visual script processes the target data for the shot performed by the player. This ensures that hits do damage and add effects to players, while also making sure that shots that are off-target don’t do anything to them.

As you can see from Unreal’s visual scripting, the programming you do with this system has a strong emphasis on relationships. Each of the code blocks you put in place will need to have lines drawn to other blocks, forming a flow that will quickly feel familiar to programmers. It’s still worth reading the Unreal Engine 5 documentation about scripting, even if you have experience with code.

Getting Started with Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine 5 is a large piece of software with plenty for you to learn. The time you put into it will always be well worth it, giving you the chance to make your dream games become a reality.

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10 Disturbing Photographs From Post-Roe America

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Roe v. Wade has been overturned and we are now all living in the literal Handmaid’s Tale. Already, thousands of harrowing photographs have emerged from the abortion-free hellscape. It’s worse than we thought. We were warned, and we didn’t listen.

These 10 disturbing photos offer a horrifying glimpse into the dark world we now live in. Viewer discretion is advised.

…are you sure you’re ready?

Look at this woman’s face. Her mouth is agape in horror at this baby who should never have been born.

Two siblings compete for meager food resources. This is what happens when fascists get their way.

This is just a hanger. There’s nothing special about it, it’s just a hanger. But in a post-Roe world, it’s a weapon of mass destruction.

Three kids? Imagine the carbon footprint! Mother Earth is crying.

FOUR of them now?! Make it stop!

Another white male brought into the world. Look how sad his mother is. We hope you’re happy, right-wingers.

This dad could be playing video games right now. Instead, he’s going on a boring walk.

This is an artist’s depiction of what the earth will look like in three weeks if more babies are born. Trust the science and stop this before it’s too late.

This woman missed out on a promising career in office management to have a baby. And for what?

Somewhere in post-Roe America, Clarence Thomas is smiling, and probably laughing an evil laugh. Now it will haunt your dreams. Welcome to The Handmaid’s Tale.

NOT SATIRE: Recently, we held a public event on the evening before our annual Wilberforce Weekend to talk about how we can prepare to live in a post-Roe world. A very important aspect of that event was learning how we can respond to the common slogans, the common lines that people often throw around in support of abortion. We asked Stephanie Gray Connors, one of the great apologists for the sanctity of life in our present moment to address some of these slogans and she answered a common pro-abortion statement, “embryos aren’t people.” It was riveting, powerful and needed to be heard by all. Also, at last week’s pre-Wilberforce event, preparing for a post-Roe future, Stephanie answered three more slogans, just like that one. To receive access to the entire evening event, Preparing for a Post-Roe World, sign up for the daily commentary at Breakpoint!

Satan held a press conference today responding to the big loss of Roe v. Wade. He’s doing his best to keep his chin up.

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DigiKam, a free and open-source raw photo management app for macOS, Windows and Linux, has been updated

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DigiKam is a free, open-source digital photo management app available on Windows, macOS and Linux. The app has just been updated to version 7.7.0, adding numerous new features, bug fixes and camera support.

DigiKam 7.7.0 supports the AOM AV1 Image File Format (AVIF), an open-source video coding format. It’s similar to HEIF. The app also adds read/write support for the JPEG-XL image format in all supported bundles. JPEG-XL support first appeared in digiKam 7.6.0, but there were some issues with animated files, which have now been addressed.

The update uses an updated Libraw version, supporting the OM System OM-1 camera’s raw image files. More than 1,180 different cameras have raw file support in digiKam 7.7.0. The company also notes that the KDE framework has been updated to the latest 5.95 release and Qt 5.15 LTS is used in the Windows and macOS bundle.

9to5Linux reports that the latest version of digiKam includes improved support for SVG files, improved DNG file support, better GIF support and Flatpak support. The software also has a new ‘Ignore face’ button for unrecognized faces when using the app’s thumbnail view. Issues with detecting the Hugin open-source panorama photo stitching and HDR merging program have been addressed. There’s also improved reading of raw DNG files from Adobe Lightroom that have been converted to sRGB color space and TIFF file format.

There are also many bug and crash fixes. The team says that 84 bugs have been triaged.

Looking ahead, version 8.0.0 should be released as a beta test later this summer, and a full release is expected by the end of the year. The team is working on porting the git master branch to the new Qt6 framework. A couple of students are also working on improving the neural network for the application’s Image Quality Analyzer. This feature works to analyze images based on noise, focus, exposure and compression.

DigiKam 7.7.0 is available to download for free here. Click here for more information about the software, features, and capabilities.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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True Facts About Beavers

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True Facts About Beavers

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Cue the double entendres. Zefrank1 is here to teach us about our favorite dam-building rodent. These resourceful mammals are good at swimming, carrying things, and eating underwater. You might know about the beaver’s wood-chomping teeth, but we bet you didn’t know all the stuff that comes out of their butts.

The Awesomer

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“The limits of flesh”

 

That’s the title of an article by author and friend Sarah Hoyt, in which she considers, in the light of the Roe v. Wade brouhaha, what it means – or should mean – to be a woman.  Here are a few excerpts from a long, but very thought-provoking discourse.

… our bodies influence us, in health and illness far more than we wish to believe. The thinking meat is MEAT. We are creatures of flesh and blood, who think. We are not thoughts, trapped in the flesh and blood.

And if you ignore the needs and impulses of the flesh and blood, you’ll either lose your mind or your body.

And if you ignore them as a society, you end up with a lot of unhappy, confused, angry people, who can’t figure out what’s made them so unhappy.

On the whole subject of abortion, a friend said — and I don’t intellectually disagree — that we can’t force women to carry babies, because that’s evil. And that we can’t curtail women’s sex drive, or demand they curtail it, because that too is evil. Oh, and that all birth control fails eventually (which isn’t wrong, btw. Reproductive systems are far, far more complicated than we like to believe. Which I’ll revisit again, btw.)

But something at the back of my head piped up and bitched when she said that. It wasn’t a happy something, and it was an admission against interest, since I mostly believe we should make people as free as possible (my protest on abortion is that it involves two people, and the defenseless one gets killed, but that’s something else) and since I legitimately think nature is something to conquer. But what piped up in my mind was “But is that fighting against reality?”

This was brought into full bloom last night, on a facebook thread of Brad Torgersen’s, in which a guy came in guns blazing and said we needed abortion to be safe, convenient and as available as possible so women wouldn’t be “second class citizens.” Because if women are going to be fully equal, we need to eliminate the downsides of being a woman.

At which point the bitching at the back of my mind became a scream “But women are women. You can’t eliminate the downside of being a woman, without eliminating being a woman.”

. . .

… we are not brains, or minds, in a vacuum. We’re creatures of flesh and blood. And contra the “there’s no difference” crowd, you need only have a rudimentary knowledge of biology to know your brain, your tissues, everything were formed differently according to your sex. I don’t remember and am not in the mood to go look it up, but you start differentiating at a ridiculously early gestational point, for sure before two weeks. After that the hormone baths in utero are different, and your development is markedly different.

No, you don’t know what it’s like to be the other sex. No one does. Yes, we’re way more different than our superficial outward appearance would indicate. The longer I live the more aware I become that perhaps Heinlein was right about us really being different species who are merely symbiotic.

So when making women “not second class citizens” requires making them as free from concerns about getting pregnant as men…. are we in actual fact at war with the very fact that there are women; that women are unique and have different capabilities and different downfalls? … Whether you consider getting pregnant a liability or a magic power, it is still an integral part of being a woman.

. . .

It seems to be worth it as a woman you have to pretend to be a male.

The push is on constantly. You’re sneered at for writing or reading romance, because it’s a thing women do. (Yes, men do it too, but the crossover on that is minuscule.) And now a lot of movies, including those billed as romantic comedy are consciously eliminating the Happily Ever After. Instead the woman decides to go off and have a career, or “learn to love myself.”

And I come back again to: Why can’t women be women? Why is it that performing the most basic and distinctive function of being female is considered being a second class citizen? Why are we all supposed to act like men?

. . .

Arguably civilization came about because women didn’t want to put out all the time and for everyone. If Ogg wanted Morga to put out, he had to make sure he was a good hunter, and could make the spears to make himself so. And no sleeping around with everyone, all the time, because he had to provide for Morga and their kids. In return, he had the assurance that Morga also wasn’t sleeping around, and their kids were THEIRS.

If women sleep around as much as men, the entire world becomes a giant gay-bathhouse. And kids are an inconvenience, or a “punishment.” Stop me when this sounds familiar.

There’s much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

These are, of course, the points that radical feminists either deny outright, or reject with contempt, or simply ignore (usually because they have no answer to them).  Our natures as men or women are fundamental to who we are, how we respond to external stimuli, our roles in society, and so on.  Any variation on those basics tends to be only skin deep, and only effective in a society that has enough artificial supports to make them possible.

I’m here to tell you from long and (sometimes bitter) experience:  when things go badly wrong, through disaster, war, or any other crisis;  when the social norms to which we’re accustomed are sloughed off because there’s no time or energy or infrastructure to support them any longer;  the "bad old days" of society return with a vengeance.  Men are once again valued for their physical strength, their willingness to defend those weaker than themselves, and their ability to provide food, clothing and shelter.  Women are once again valued for their capability to nurture, to make a house into a home, to be the heart of the family rather than its head.  This happens everywhere, whenever circumstances require it.  It’s not strange, it’s not unusual – it’s normal.  It’s not a matter of patriarchy or matriarchy, or anything in between.  It’s the cold, hard reality of life when it’s pared down to its essentials, without any of the luxuries and social trappings that modern society uses as a fig-leaf to disguise the reality of men and women and their complementary roles as human beings.

Go read Sarah’s article in full, and think about it.  It’s worth your time.

Peter

Bayou Renaissance Man

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Two Half Wheel Bike

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Two Half Wheel Bike

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If you split a wheel in half, you shouldn’t still be able to ride on it, right? Well, watch this video from The Q, in which he cut two bike wheels and tires down the middle, connected them with a long chain and positioned them so one half is always touching the ground. Miraculously, the bike rides just fine.

The Awesomer

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These G Suite Alternatives Are Cheaper or Free

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Photo: monticello (Shutterstock)

G Suite (formerly Google Workspace) has shut down its free plans—you can no longer pay for a domain name and use Google’s business email for free. This move isn’t really going to bother big organizations much, as they’re all on paid tiers already, but small business owners or individuals using G Suite will be forced to pay or look for free alternatives.

Transitioning to a paid G Suite account

For most people, the smoothest transition will be to a paid G Suite account. You won’t have to migrate your data anywhere as long as you can spend a minimum of $6 per user per month. For this price, you can use 30GB of cloud storage, Gmail with your own domain, and have video meetings with up to 100 participants. If nothing else, you can consider paying for G Suite as a stopgap measure until you figure out a better alternative.

Microsoft 365 for Business

Microsoft’s suite of business apps is a direct replacement for G Suite. Its plans start at $6 per user per month, but you’ll have to spend about twice that much if you want both email and Office apps on desktop. Microsoft offers 50GB of space per inbox and 1TB of OneDrive storage, which is more than G Suite’s 30GB. Having said that, Microsoft 365 for Business is still a fairly pricey offering overall. Google Docs, Sheets, and other G Suite apps are included for free in Google’s plan, which makes Microsoft 365 look a lot more expensive.

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Zoho Workplace

Zoho Workplace offers most of G Suite’s features at a much lower price. It lets you use your own domain for emails with 5GB of space for free with no advertising. You can set up an organization on Zoho and invite up to five users to this organization at no cost. There’s a 25MB limit on attachments, but the pricing makes that feel bearable.

If you’re looking for a free alternative to G Suite, it doesn’t get much better than this. You can visit the Zoho Mail pricing page and scroll down to the Forever Free Plan. If you add more than five users, Zoho Mail’s plans start at $1 per user per month (paid annually). The 50GB inbox plan costs $4 per user per month, so it’s cheaper than G Suite and Microsoft 365 for Business.

For those who want a complete office suite to go with their business email, Zoho Workplace is a decent alternative. It has email, cloud storage, video meetings, a Slack alternative, and office apps, at a starting price of $3 per user per month.

iCloud+

If your G Suite organization consists of one person, you may consider using a custom domain with iCloud’s email service. The iCloud+ plan costs $1 per month for up to 50GB of cloud storage, and it allows you to use a custom domain for your emails.

iCloud+ is not targeted at businesses, so you shouldn’t use this service to manage multiple users in an organization. For individuals, you have access to both iCloud email, as well as Apple’s already-free office apps, such as Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Document collaboration works well in Apple’s office apps, too.

Having said that, it’s best to note the quirks of iCloud+. You ideally don’t want to use this if you have non-Apple devices in your workflow because Apple’s support for Windows and Android devices is flaky at best. Also, iCloud’s email is serviceable, but we’ve heard several complaints about emails not showing up in the inbox and an overly aggressive spam filter.

ProtonMail

ProtonMail offers end-to-end encryption on your emails, which means the contents of your emails cannot be read by the email service provider. If you’re looking for a more private alternative to G Suite, ProtonMail’s free tier could be worth trying out.

Its paid plans start at about $4 per month, which gives you 15GB of space, support for your own domain for emails, and up to 10 email addresses. ProtonMail doesn’t have an office suite built in, but you can use its cloud storage service called Proton Drive if you opt for the most expensive plan at about $10 per month.

You should be aware that even if you use an end-to-end encrypted email service, the encryption is valid only if you send email to others who use a similar level of protection. If you email a Gmail user from ProtonMail, the encryption falters because Gmail doesn’t encrypt emails on its service.

CryptPad

If you are looking for a Google Docs alternative with better security, look no further than CryptPad, an end-to-end encrypted collaborative office suite. The free tier lets you use up to 1GB of storage space and it has alternatives to Google Docs and Sheets, along with a few other tools. As long as you don’t plan to store large files here, the free tier should be good enough to store tons of documents. If you’re ready to start paying, plans start at about $5 per month for 5GB of storage.

Other email alternatives to G Suite

There are several decent options for those who want an email service that isn’t owned by Google. Here’s a quick list of the best options:

  • Fastmail: You get a 30GB inbox at $5 per user per month, with support for custom domains. The service lets you use aliases, has no tracking, and blocks remote images by default.
  • Hey: Made by the company behind Basecamp, Hey offers a fresh take on emails. It’s pricey at $12 per user per month for custom domains, but has useful features like email tracker blocking, good email filtering, and a better email reading experience.
  • Rackspace: With plans starting at $2.99 per user per month, it’s a cheaper alternative to G Suite that offers 25GB of storage for your inbox on the base plan.

   

Lifehacker

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New Thor: Love and Thunder Footage Reveals an Unexpected Ragnarok Connection

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Thor and Star-Lord devise a new handshake in Thor: Love and Thunder.
Screenshot: YouTube/Marvel Studios

With Thor: Love and Thunder just two weeks away, you might have a strong desire to stop watching new footage. You’re going to see the film. Maybe you already have tickets. Do you really want to see more clips that could spoil the action, jokes, and story writer-director Taika Waititi has in store?

For some of us, the answer is “No.” For others though, the answer is “Oh hell yes, give me everything.” This post is for those people. A brand new mini-trailer has just dropped for the fourth Thor film, starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, and Christian Bale, and it reveals that Love and Thunder shares some important DNA with the previous Thor film, Ragnarok. Take a look.

Marvel Studios’ Thor: Love and Thunder | Team

You might remember in Ragnarok, Thor puts together “The Revengers,” a team he hopes can band together to defeat his sister, Hela. It was Thor, Hulk, Valkyrie, and Loki, with Korg and his friends joining up soon after. Well, in Love and Thunder, we now know that he’s building a new team. Korg and Valkyrie remain but now there’s also Jane Foster as the Mighty Thor, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and some mythical goats.

Knowing Waititi though, you get the sense this is a bit of a fake-out. Would he really go back and do the same type of thing two times in a row? Thor might, which is probably the driving force here, but Waititi will almost certainly subvert it in some way. We’re anxious to find out if we’re right.

This clip also makes us wonder just how much are the Guardians of the Galaxy in this film? They’re at the beginning, we’re guessing, because that’s the last time we saw Thor, but do they come back for the final act to face Gorr? Seems plausible. In fact, and I’m just riffing here, but one would guess if Thor: Love and Thunder has any credit scenes, the journey of the Guardians is likely to be a focus. Maybe even a Gamora or Adam Warlock tease?

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Oh, and yes, that is a badass Jean Claude Van-Damme homage there with Thor doing the splits. It fits in perfectly with the bright, ‘80s vibe Thor: Love and Thunder is going for. It’s out July 8.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

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