Ideas for UE4 video tutorials to teach Computer Science concepts

I'm pleased to announce here that I have received an Epic MegaGrant to create video tutorials designed to teach Computer Science concepts through Unreal Engine 4. For those who don't follow me on YouTube, I have a Game Programming playlist with twenty public videos that I have created for my classes. Several are introductory or cover specific tips about version control, but some of my favorite ones cover more technical Computer Science concepts, such as decoupling modules through interfaces and the Observer design pattern. My proposal to Epic Games was to build upon this style of video, teaching real and interesting Computer Science ideas through their UE4 technology. I am glad that they agreed with me that this was a worthwhile pursuit.

The grant provides me with some extra time in the Spring 2020 semester to devote to making video tutorials. I have the freedom to choose the number, duration, and content of the videos, so I'm starting the project by reviewing my notes from teaching Game Programming using UE4 last semester. There were a few topics that came up during consulting meeting with students that point me toward specific videos, many of which are reinforcing ideas from earlier classes in the context of game development. Also, since writing my reflective blog post, I have been able to read the student teaching evaluations from last semester. Some of the comments there reinforced one of my observations from last semester, which is that students don't see that they can deploy the techniques they have already learned about object-oriented programming to UE4, both in Blueprint and in C++. That is, students who already understand topics from earlier courses did not recognize the affordances to use them to create more interesting or robust game software.

Before the new year and the new semester's classes kick off, then, here is a list of some of the videos that I'm considering developing in the Spring:

• Type coercion through casting: What it is, why it is necessary in statically-typed languages, and how it manifests in Blueprint.
• Refactoring Blueprint spaghetti by introducing new abstractions.
• Comparing two techniques of implementing state machines: using enumerated types vs. the State design pattern.
• Places where Blueprint expressiveness exceeds text's capabilities, such as the Select node.

Just after I posted by last video on the playlist, which is about getting started with C++ development, I learned about subsystems through an Inside Unreal livestream. I would like to explore the implications of this feature for software architecture. I want to see how much of what I love about entity system architectures I might be able to bring into UE4 using this technology.

What do you think, dear reader? If you have any suggestions for Computer Science concepts that can be explored in UE4 through video tutorials, leave a note in the comments. Thanks for reading!

[Update: Over on the UE4 Developers Facebook Group, there was a suggestion for a discussion of Big-Oh analysis and how it manifests in game programming, as related to performance. This is a great idea for a topic. I am adding it here so that I won't forget it when I come back and start scheduling production.]

[Update 2: A conversation with a friend online made me think that another good entry might be fundamentals of debugging: a quick tutorial on using the integrated debugger for Blueprint and also for C++.]