Blueprint file size question

[Zeustiak]

I am curious if there is an upper limit, or a stable limit for a blueprint.uasset file?

My map generator is at 7.5MB and doesn't seem to mind, but am wondering if anyone or especially Epic has seen any problem specifically related to size.

I feel like complexity is more the issue than physical size.

[Zeustiak]

So my blueprint is now at ~17MB, and still no huge issues other than compile times that are starting to actually matter.

I have been noticing a curious side effect though. My blueprint file size seems to fluctuate by large amounts, even with relatively small changes such as an additional node or two. Generally this has been 300-500KB. Today though, my blueprint ballooned by 6MB which is probably bigger than most people's entire blueprints. Again, it hasn't caused any problems other than me observing it grow and shrink, and I haven't been able to link it to any specific events.

Wondering what could cause this. Anyone have a clue?

[The Britain]

I will be following along as I am curious myself. We might be transitioning around 5k lines of code to Blueprint. I would love to see Epic chime in on this one.

[Zeustiak]

I will be following along as I am curious myself. We might be transitioning around 5k lines of code to Blueprint. I would love to see Epic chime in on this one.

I should note that I have 17MB in a single blueprint. You are probably not going to want to keep everything in a single BP, so you likely won't see the fluctuating file size issue. Though that doesn't mean it won't affect you, because it probably also happens to smaller blueprints, but you won't be able to see the fluctuation on smaller blueprints.

I don't think it causes any actual issues either way. It hasn't caused any problems other than me noticing the file size differences. For all I know I could just be tipping some threshold in a compression algorithm that causes chunks to be bigger or smaller depending on the arrangement/type/quantity of all the bits in the BP. The 6MB I gained today is just as likely to disappear tomorrow the way I have seen it behave.

[The Britain]

Possibility, but we might end up seeing it ourselves. That 5k is all state checks on the base of our character, so it pretty well needs to stay on the character.

[Zeustiak]

Yeah seems pretty random.

Loaded it up today, compiled/saved, and it went back down to 17MB. Made some changes, compiled/saved, and it jumped to 21MB. Compiled/saved again, and it went back to 17, then again, and it stayed the same. Made some changes, it jumps to 19MB. Played and saved, stayed the same. Disconnected a variable, reconnected, compiled/saved, and back to 17MB.

Also, I found another discrepancy. In the file folder it lists the size as one value, but as a different value when you go to right click the blueprint and go to properties.

For instance, it was showing 17.2MB in the folder, and 16.7MB in properties. Then I disconnected/reconnected a variable, compile/save, and it shows 17.2MB in the file folder, but 18.8MB in the properties.

I guess it could be windows. Maybe it just doesn't know how to read these files?

[The Britain]

Check the size of the Intermediate folder, and see if that is what is doing the fluctuating. It could be Blueprint's own flavour of Intellisense.

[Zeustiak]

The folder is seeing the same increase as the file. I actually just deleted a chunk of code and it went up 500KB. I don't know, probably done messing with it.

[Zeustiak]

So, I noticed the file size for my Map Generator blueprint has now ballooned to 85MB... 4 times bigger than the last time I looked at it. I haven't been THAT productive lately. I think it is 4.7 related, but as with much of the above posts, I am not sure what relationship the file size has to the actual blueprint.

I will say though, that I have noticed that simply creating a variable now has a noticeable bit of lag in 4.7, perhaps because of the bloated file size.

Refactoring this into a number of smaller blueprints is on my to-do list, so when I do that I will post here how things add up once that is complete.