Making a good start

Let’s start with the basics. The first steps are to create a new project with Unreal Engine and set up a git repository associated with the project.

Using a git repository, even when working alone, is a great way to keep track of your work, and it also allows you to step back if, for some strange reason, your project has decided to stop compiling. You’ll go back to the previous commit (or the one before that) instead of having to redo the entire project from scratch.
Using git the right way is definitely among the good practices for a developer.

Regarding the installation of Unreal Engine 5 and the programming tools, I refer you to articles I have written in the past since the procedure is always the same and is fully guided.

How to install Unreal Engine 5

STEP 1: Project creation

You should find yourself on a similar screen once you open Unreal Engine through the Epic Games hub.

Selecting the Games item will allow you to start with a blank project or one of the templates offered.
For my project, I will start with a blank project, but I often find myself using the third-person template to make small prototypes and experiment with features that I later want to implement in games.

On the right-hand side, you can also see other settings related to the project, associated with the use of Blueprints versus C++, what will be your primary target platform, quality, initial content, and use or not use of Raytracing

These are all editable later as well; by habit, select C++ since I will always use the code to define my Blueprints, but we will get to that later.

Finally, at the bottom, you can decide the name of the project and where to go to save it.

Creating and opening the project will take some time. In the meantime, let’s start talking about git.

STEP 2: Creating the repository

I have already written an article explaining everything, but a quick review and a few additions are okay.

Day 1: Git, the tool you absolutely need

NB: I recommend using Github since I use that, but if you prefer to use Gitlab or Bitbucket, there is no problem.

When creating a repository, we can define a .gitignore to use. We can directly select Unreal Engine and proceed with the creation among the various choices.

STEP 3: Initialize git and link it to the repository

Arriving at this step means that we have installed Unreal Engine and Git on our PC and created a project on the computer and a repository in our Github account.
What we need to do is connect them, and to do this, we need to open the git terminal in the root folder of the project.

Let’s open our folder, and inside it right, click and select “Open git bash here.”

A terminal like the one in the figure should open.

Inside it, we go to enter the first command. In this way, we will initialize the repository on our pc
git init

To link the project to the online repo, we should use the command
git remote add origin <URL_repository>

NB: if this is your first time, it will ask you to enter your GitHub credentials and authenticate your computer.

You will need to use the git pull origin master command to grab the data already in the online repo, like the .gitignore

Now, it’s time to upload your files to the online repository. To do this, you need to use the command git add .

Now, you have to create your first commit with the command git commit -m “your first commit” (you can enter any text you want)

Finally, you must use the command git push origin master to upload everything to the remote repository.

If this was your first commit, congratulations. Now we can start.
See you in the next article🚀.

I just added two small notes.

1. Having done this procedure, I usually use a program to manage everything about Git in projects. I use Fork, but many programs, even free ones, can do the same thing without always using the terminal to do these operations.

2. Modern conventions have replaced the name ‘master’ of the main branch with ‘main’. I recommend not making mistakes since the git terminal will still call it ‘master’ after initialization.