so i just startet with it and had a look in the marketplace. sadly most of the stuff seems outdated(?)
does this mean its complete useless for unreal engine 4.9 users?
is there a workaround?
greetings
VoodooDog
4.9 was just released not long ago and the content creators need time to update their content to the newer version, I believe they have around 45 days to do so. That said it is only a matter of time until they are all compatible with 4.9, and if you purchase the content it will be automatically updated via the launcher and you will get a little !] icon to let you know there is an updated version available. Some of the content is compatible but doesn’t say so yet like some of the environment packs I know are because they are mostly non code-reliant assets, its really blueprints and things that may be affected by changes in the version’s underlying coding that need updating.
This may be changing to quote @ :
The workaround is add the asset to a 4.8 project, and then, in Windows Explorer, drag-and-drop the files into the 4.9 project. They should work fine, as the “incompatibility” is usually not an actual problem.
I hadn’t seen that post yet on the 10 days. That’s good to know though, means even less of a wait for compatibility clearing.
Hi there! Yes, we updated that last night and we’re notifying all sellers to update their content ASAP. Since 4.9 is relatively new we’re still waiting on updates from quite a few creators. It’s the responsibility of each individual creator to keep their content up to date. If you want to help speed up the process, I suggest emailing the content creator of the content you’d like to see updated and requesting that they submit it to the Marketplace so we can get it online as fast as we can. 
The flip side. If the asset creator is unable or unwilling to update their content to function with the latest build would Epic consider taking it down from the market place?
Art assets is not much of an issue but BP based produces is.
I have a question. If your pack is just stuff like assets (meshes or materials), and shouldn’t have been affected by the new release, but it hasn’t been flagged as compatible on the Marketplace with the new release, can the user download and use it? Will it open in the new version of the engine? Do you need to have the version of the engine the pack is at to convert to the new version?
I’ve actually been very curious about this since my first pack. I have never submitted a new version, but the marketplace eventually gets updated to say they are compatible with the latest version.
I check my packs to make sure there arent any problems, of course, but do i need to start submitting updates now or will you continue to just update the compatible version numbers if there arent problems?
Yes, we reserve the right to remove content from the Marketplace if it’s unable to be maintained with new versions. It’s in our agreements with each seller that they keep their content up-to-date. Everyone that bought the content will still have it and be able to download it, but it won’t be visible in the catalog to people that don’t own it, and they won’t be able to purchase it.
On our end it’s a switch we flip to enable that version compatibility, but we don’t flip it without first verifying that it does work without issue. For pure meshes\materials there’s rarely any need to update the content. All content creators need to do is add it to a new engine version, make sure everything is hooked up correctly, then email us at marketplace-support@unrealengine to verify they’ve tested it on the new versions, and we’ll flip the switch and add the compatibility in the catalog.
Yes, we’re changing to a new policy that will require you to submit updates (if any) for each new engine release. Fortunately though, for meshes and materials, there’s pretty much nothing to be done but drop it into 4.9, make sure nothing breaks, and to tell us. For Blueprints, it might require some simple updates based on what’s new in that engine version. If you could verify your content is compatible and drop us an email at marketplace-support@unrealengine, we’ll get it updated ASAP!
So here’s another peek behind the curtain to explain the change: Before 4.9, for every new release the Marketplace team would stop almost all other work and manually test every single piece of content on the Marketplace for compatiblity, then flip the switch to update the compatibility. It would take a solid week of time, and was extremely labor-intensive, but it ensured quality. However, between 4.8 and 4.9, the amount of content on the Marketplace nearly doubled, and we simply can’t afford the time to do all of it ourselves any more, and still maintain everything else we do. We’re in the middle of shifting the responsibility fully to the sellers to verify their content works, and then we update the content and compatibility when we receive the update from the seller. This is really the only way we can scale, and fortunately it isn’t very much work in 90% of cases.
Thanks for the information. My experience has been similar to -undertow-. I’ll check my packs in 4.9 over the weekend and notify the team of my assessment ASAP. =)
I am sorry but to avoid all of this couldn’t you just add backward compatibility to Unreal Engine itself? So that assets/plugins that don’t get updated would still work “automagically” (a word known in the SCSI world) ? Of course most or none of the new engine features wouldn’t be used but at least the assets would still be usable without modifications even with a performance hit due to the obvious internal translations/mappings you would have to enable to make those work when something has changed.
Yes you would have to add some new layers of code in order to make such a thing work but you would avoid having to break compatibility for both projects and assets in the marketplace between new Engine versions.
If you keep releasing so many new Unreal Engine version each year that change critical things so much you end up having to do a lot of extra work yourselves and oblige both developers and marketplace assets developers to do extra work and extra checks on everything as well.
Adding a translation/mapping layer to ensure some backward compatibility would ease both your life and that of your customers. Or not ?
Hey guys, I just got a mail that someone said my both assets are not compatible with 4.9
Why exactly did this get changed ? My packages contain textures only, its literally impossible that anything is wrong with them. Also for 4.9 ? I dont want to resubmit all my things for no reason, if it were 5.0 or so I would understand but this sounds like this will happen
again in the future.
Also I have no clue how I would update my packets, there is no client, no guidelines , no package settings or draft anything I know of, how would I do that ?
We really need Unity-style package drafts, it would make this a lot more bearable.
Just do a right click on your uproject file - switch unreal engine version - choose 4.9 - star the project and check if everything works -> send it to epic games
When you just provide textures -> copy them into a 4.9 project and send it to epic
With a new update it **could **be that some settings from the texture gets changed -> e.g the texture mode
I don’t have a finished version of a BP market place i’ve been working on but it’s usually pretty simple to fix things between versions. For example I started in one version and to upgrade to the newer one it was just dropping a few lines off blueprints that no longer compiled cause a false branch never returned. All I had to do to get my WIP project up to 4.9 compatibility. Overall it’s simple things like that. I’ve done the same with several other packages I have, drop them in hit play get the X blue print has errors, cancel out then open up error log fix the issue. Half the time it’s just a warning on a node that got a rework. Other times it’s a process that got fortified by things like the not returning in a returning node improvements. Textures survive with like no work, but materials I have found had things change, or what usually happens is a new lighting scheme really blasts out the old material or such, and it needs adjusting. For the creator that understands probably not much work for me that tend to not dig into materials as much no chance in heck I could fix. So it’s good ot have the version protection but also like the aspects of older versions being available for adaptation by msyelf / fixing on newer versions.
Thanks you for keeping us informed I also think this is going to be the best decision in the long term!
Going from a post mentioned in another thread, they used to do this but due to the large quantity of packs they can’t handle this on their end anymore and still keep up with their other duties. For packs that focus on environments, textures and the like we need to convert them to 4.9 and then email the marketplace support team to notify them that everything checks out. They will then apparently toggle the switch that marks it as compatible. If there is an issue, then you will need to fix it and send them the updated files. =)
I know the onus shouldn’t be on Epic to quality-assure everything on the Marketplace (that’d be an impossible job once the Marketplace gets bigger) but to just flat-out DISABLE ALL THE THINGS seems… well, completely ridiculous…
I’m also aware that “including backward compatibility” is way easier said than done… but surely there would be nothing wrong with a simple WARNING “Hey, this might not work with 4.9 or above, be warned guy!”.
I’ve just got a new computer after my old one died, and finding I have to cobble a hack involving re-downloading two different versions of a 5+GB engine on top of the assets… well, it seems a bit unprofessional.
Sorry for the griping.