A list of the things that are fighting me when building Domus Mortem:
Sequencer resets state even if the cinematic device has a setting to prevent that “keep state” (currently bugged). Because of this, I have to press keep state on almost everything I animate, and I constantly forget which breaks the game on the tests I do. Not a blocker, just annoying.
Weird rotation behavior on sequencers. Quarternion or not, I get cases where the rotation snaps to a point after a keyframe, or things rotate weirdly because I am using a kept state of a prop. Would love if that part was simplified so we can simply rotate without all the extra weirdness involved. How do other editors do it and its so simple (see Gameglobe)
Push changes. Push changes. Push Chages. Push Changes. Nough said, would be nice to sync more.
When pushing changes, the player will never be in current location, but spawn pads, regardless of the island settings. Having to fly to the test area EVERY SINGLE TIME I am pushing changes probably consistutes 3% of the entire development of the game. Would love not to have to do that (too complicated to setup debug spawn pads, that has its own issues)
Using a snowball to have the player carry it only works the first time you test in UEFN. For it to work again, you have to restart UEFN (not just Fortnite, it wont do).
Events are useful in general, but the visualization is super bad and I can easily mess up my logic because I cant see whats happening. Would love to be able to see which device triggers the device I have selected (in the scene highlighted ideally) and the ability to clear events from the device that receives them. Oh, and a button to copy the device and duplicate all the events that are coming to it (for debugging).
Verse is stable and flexible, but you have to jump through so many hoops to do something you want. Weird syntax, (what feels) unessasary conditions to setup working code (like the number.0 for vectors, whyyyy) and lack of context sensitive syntax (VS Studio really needs that). For example, try to damage a FN prop that has customized components, or try to display something as UI then hide it through a HUD message device through verse. Both are impossible actually.
HUD messages HUD scale issues, took me 3 days to figure that one out, glad that I did and I reported. Hopefully it gets addressed, many would benefit from nice clear UIs that are easy to work with (Popups and Verse have their own issues as well, check my post on it, and the comments below bc I added more info: Major - UI widget through HUD device does not align to screen).
Volumetric lights cant be deleted/set to 0 in live edit/published code with FN TODM, would love if that was a thing.
(Feature request) Would love if the player had some alternative animations we could choose. The default jogging and running are not very immersive for more serious maps.
I don’t really have any issues with the loading times for both UEFN and Fortnite, it might be your disk speeds. If you have Fortnite installed on a hard drive then try moving it to a solid state drive, my loading time for opening FN was originally 5 mins but now its down to 2 mins after I moved it. Most of the time SSDs are faster than HDDs, so see if that helps.
Try this link instead… Thank you for your report! We would like to look into this further, would you be able to submit a bug report using the form available here? Fortnite Creative
On the Verse side of things, we are working to make “Push Verse Changes” be more automatic (no need to manually build Verse) and require less steps.
7. Verse language and API
Verse is strongly typed and requires explicit specification. If it is possible to always guarantee the same results we might be able to add some inferred aspects to Verse over time to make things simpler to code. One of the goals of Verse is to have code that continues to work no matter what new code and modules are added over time so that it is always backwards compatible. We recommend that you make your own helper functions, classes, etc. and share them with the community. Extension methods can be especially nice and look like they are part of the original API. We will be adding more helper functions to the API over time.
With respect to Verse and customization - more will eventually be exposed in the Verse API. If you can articulate specific features, friction points or even better - suggested function signatures etc. - we can take that into consideration for how we prioritize.
Hey! Thanks for the feedback. Here are my responses to the notes on Sequencer.
1. Sequencer Reset State
Each track in Sequencer has their own setting that Keeps/Restores the state. The Cinematic Sequence Device’s setting isn’t an override for the option that the tracks are set, since it is common to have specific content handle their own options, especially with nested sequences. We know there is a lot of confusion around this, so we have something in the works to make it easier to understand and also provide options to keep the track defaults or override them from the Cinematic Sequence Device.
2. Weird Rotation Behavior on Sequencers
This is something that is known to us and we are actively working on addressing. Unfortunately no quick fix in the meantime. But something we are keeping a close eye on. Feel free to post examples of what you are expecting as well!
On Pushing changes (3) it is more aimed at certain actions in UEFN that cause a desync with live edit, like editing devices through UEFN, or changing a component (Verse updating is the fastest one so far, but good to know it’s getting even faster)
In regards to Verse API, I am just an artist at heart trying to make my logic work, so even the slightest quirk of functional programming gets to me because I am used to interfaces and UIs to do things. Having to type an if statement to do anything except check for a condition is a crazy concept to me (maybe that part can be omitted when/if an interface were to be built) and we desperately need VS studio to provide some context-sensitive code and help a bit more with errors (errors are not indicative of the fault at all atm, the same error pops up on three different cases, like forgetting the “:=” or “set”).
On sequencer reset state, the cinematic sequencer device has a setting “keep state” but that breaks after a sequencer completes, it’s a bug and confusing to users that see that setting.
On weird rotation, I just want to rotate to places and have 10 types of easing curves with easing control (constant, linear, ease in, ease out, ease in/out, gravity, elastic in, elastic out, elastic in/out). The sequencer overcomplicates this, and the curve editor makes it even harder to be able to add weighted curves and control the easing because I have to search for the right axis instead of the movement itself.
