I started writing the second volume of the Blueprints Compendium immediately after the success of the Blueprints Compendium at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) in March 2016.
I had already structured the content I wanted to cover in the second volume of the Blueprints Compendium that I finished writing in June 2016. In the same month, Epic Games selected me to receive an HTC Vive development kit for virtual reality.
In 2016, the best option to get started on the HTC Vive VR was Valve's The Lab, which is a compilation of VR experiences available for free.
My favorite experience from The Lab was Xortex, which is a "Bullet hell" spaceship game.
Another fun experience at The Lab is Longbow, where you have to protect a castle from invasion using bow and arrow.
One of the most fun games on the HTC Vive in 2016 was Audioshield, which is a rhythm game. The levels are generated based on music chosen by the player.
Another awesome HTC Vive game in 2016 was Space Pirate Trainer. It's a shooting game where we have to fight waves of flying droids.
In the following years some existing games were adapted for VR. One game that had an excellent adaptation was "The Talos Principle", which is a philosophical and puzzle game.
One game I wanted to try the VR version of was Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. This is an intense experience that makes us even more involved with Senua's pain.
There is a 5 minute video on YouTube from SIGGRAPH 2016 of a Real Time Cinematography demo with the Unreal Engine using a scene from Hellblade. This is the video link:
Real Time Cinematography: Siggraph 2016 Reveal
This was a revolutionary demo in July 2016 and the music from the Hellblade game used in the video adds to the emotional engagement with the scene being created. I liked to show this video at the end of my Unreal Engine lectures.
I continued with my journey on Blueprints:
- In 2017, I wrote the third volume of the Blueprints Compendium.
- In 2018, Epic Games hired me to write the official Blueprint Instructor Guide.
- In 2019, I wrote the book Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine – Second Edition, published by Packt.
- In 2020, my project to teach C++ programming in Unreal Engine was selected for the Epic MegaGrants program.
- In August 2020, Epic Games invited me to a live stream named Teaching & Learning Blueprints with Marcos Romero, which is available on Unreal Engine's YouTube channel.
- In 2021 and 2022, I wrote the book Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5.
I'm ready for a new journey that starts this March 2023 with the release of the Verse programming language and the Unreal Editor for Fortnite.