GUIDE

Online game development course: learn by building your own game

Most courses teach on a sample project you will never ship. In Duke Forger's Course mode, every lesson has four parts: learn the idea, watch it on a sample game, do it on your own game, and check it with the same gate the pros use.

Finish a phase, pass its quiz, and you get a shareable certificate. Finish the course and you have a working game.

The steps

1. Step 1: Define the game in one paragraph

   Write who you play, what you do, what you want and why it is interesting. This paragraph is the compass every later decision is checked against.

2. Step 2: Set the quality bar with references

   Collect 20 to 40 screenshots from games and films that show the look you want: light, skin, cities, crowds. Pictures settle arguments that words cannot.

3. Step 9: Get a capable PC

   AAA-looking scenes do not run on laptop graphics. Epic recommends a 12-core CPU, 64 GB of memory and an 8 GB graphics card for its open-world City Sample. Duke checks your PC for you.

4. Step 15: Build a blockout test level

   A blockout is the level made from plain boxes. You settle room sizes, door widths, jump distances and routes now, while changing them costs nothing.

5. Step 23: Photograph yourself

   Headshot 3 needs only one front photo. For the best likeness, shoot in soft even light with a neutral face: front, both sides and three-quarter, plus full-body front, side and back.

6. Step 34: Start the world in World Partition

   World Partition splits the map into cells and loads only what is near the player. Turn it on from day one, because converting a world later is painful.

7. Step 45: Build the seed cast for each species

   Make 6 to 10 base heads and bodies per species covering age, build and sex, plus a modular wardrobe. This is the bare minimum the variation system needs.

8. Step 53: Choose each track's source and record its license

   Music is AI-generated or bought. Suno Pro and Premier include commercial use (Suno keeps authorship and licenses it to you); ElevenLabs Music Pro covers indie games. Marketplace tracks come with a license file.

9. Step 59: Finish the vertical slice

   One region with final graphics, controls, combat, population, audio and interface working together. Everything later is measured against it.

10. Step 64: Measure and fix performance

    Pick a target frame rate and a minimum PC. Unreal Insights shows what costs time; fix the real bottleneck, then measure again.

Common questions