Hey!
I am curious on which of the current UE4 versions is most stable for commercial work? Now I am using 4.13 (only for Arch-viz - VR development) for a long time, but since the 4.13 release & hotfixes there are a lot performance fixes and overall new features on the most recent versions that I would like to use.
But the problem is the real possibility for something very wrong to happen (bugs etc.) on a newer versions so that I cannot even downgrade or whatever, and I dont want to risk losing commercial projects because of bugs that I dont know exist (short deadlines…). I have gotten a very solid workflow and pipeline on 4.13 and I know all the small tids and bits and workarounds so I can always deliver my projects on time (which makes for the short deadlines, peoples wants stuff for yesterday :D). And now there is this very sweet and amazing UnrealLightmass.exe aka multi-bounce light solution from @Luoshuang but its only limited to 4.15^…
So whats is your experience on 4.15 or overall newer versions since 4.13?
For bugs, it generally seems like different people have different bug experiences with different versions. Some people will report a particular release is super buggy, and then others will report it’s the most stable version they’ve used.
If you do encounter a bug, don’t automatically assume it’s an issue with the current version of the engine, try testing on a new project in an empty scene. Sometimes there’s bugs related project migration, or just quirks that cause something in the engine to break for your current project.
Usually people will stick to one version of the engine for an entire project, only upgrading if there’s some big features added to the engine that they need for the project. If you have a workflow that’s stable and works perfectly, keep everything in place so you can go back to those builds and versions if you have to or if something does break, and backup everything needed for that stable workflow. But don’t be afraid to test the new versions, Epic is constantly added new features worth trying and keeping up with.
For me the latest version has always been the most stable. Which would mean 4.17 when it’s released. You don’t have really have to ask anyone what the most stable version is, just try the newest one for yourself on a copy of your projects and see if it works or not.
Same here, I’ve been using 4.10 for a project I’m working on for 2 years, and don’t have any crashes pretty much EVER (After I recreated all of our Structs & Enums in C++, that is), where-as I can expect a few crashes a day casually working in Blueprints in the newer versions.
Yes generally the most recent version is the most stable. I remember having a few weird bugs which all get squashed as we upgrade the version. And also try not to be left too behind ie in my case, I will upgrade when I am two major version behind (even when it is not really needed).
Guys, thanks for the insights! I found out how to see all of the current unresolved bugs in the last versions and I found out that almost everything that I am using now as workflow and features are broken in 4.14, 4.15, 4.16… And the target version for fixes is 4.18 which is kind of shocking and very disappointing… Nvm I will continue using 4.13 as it seems to be most stable version for my workflow.