How to Start Learning Unreal Engine for Game Development: A Practical Guide

Hello, I’m Su San. I saw a Zhihu post that reverse‑engineered the script language of "Black Myth: Wu Kong" and concluded the game uses a heavily modified USharp that runs on all platforms, including Xbox and PC.

Someone provocatively asked if it was written in Java, but as a Java backend developer I point out that each language has its own strengths and typical use cases.

Java excels in enterprise backend development with frameworks like Spring Cloud and Spring Boot, but it is not suited for game development.

The two dominant engines in the gaming world are Unity 3D and Unreal Engine.

Unity 3D primarily uses C# for scripting game behavior, interaction, and logic.

Unreal Engine (aka 虚幻引擎) mainly uses C++ for low‑level development and offers the visual scripting system Blueprints, allowing complex logic without writing code.

"Black Myth: Wu Kong" was built with Unreal Engine, while titles like "Genshin Impact" and "Honor of Kings" were built on Unity.

If you want to learn Unreal Engine, the official website provides a clear learning roadmap.

1. Unreal Engine Basics – a B‑station playlist with Chinese subtitles that covers the fundamentals of the engine and Blueprints.

Video link: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1hy4y1k7JB/

2. Unreal Engine Advanced – the site offers many demo projects with accompanying tutorial videos (though video loading can be slow).

Getting started guide: https://dev.epicgames.com/community/unreal-engine/getting-started/games

From the "Black Myth" discussion I also learned about hot‑update techniques that use Blueprints, USharp, and Lua to update game code without restarting.

Hot‑update is a crucial feature in game development that allows dynamic code changes.

Original Zhihu post: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/715690420

For Java backend developers, Blueprint and USharp may be unfamiliar, but Lua is common, especially when dealing with Redis caching and interview questions.

Redis libraries like RedissonLock also embed Lua scripts to wrap Redis commands.

Technology is interconnected; the "How to Evaluate Tencent's Open‑Source Unreal Engine Lua Solution sluaunreal" talk shows how teams choose between Unreal+Blueprint and Unreal+Lua.

Original discussion: https://www.zhihu.com/question/288766781/answer/487019763

As programmers, the joy lies in exploring new knowledge anytime, anywhere; Lua’s official site is a concise wiki‑style resource.

https://www.lua.org/

I even asked GPT‑4o to draw a monkey with Lua, and it produced a simple result, far from the high‑quality 3D models used in "Black Myth".

The generated image is a modest sketch, while professional characters are created with 3D tools like Blender or Maya and rendered in engines such as Unreal or Unity.

"Black Myth: Wu Kong" has sold 10 million copies, generating over 2.5 billion RMB, and Unreal Engine also profits heavily, charging a 5 % royalty after a product exceeds $1 million in sales.

In conclusion, stop arguing about programming languages; the tool you choose should serve the product you create, whether it’s Java, C++, Python, or C#.