This is just shouting into an empty void but I wanted to express my personal grievances for design decisions with devices that do not make sense and create friction in the experience.
Prop Manipulator - Why is there an item list but not a prop list for affected props? Who thought the best way to select a prop is to make a box and try to get it to touch a prop. Why can’t there be an array like the item list where I can just manually select my props there. What if the props are small? Placing the device directly on a prop doesn’t seem to work and its hard to tell if a 2D sprite is actually touching a prop. This would also be useful because it seems to only work on building_props.
Carryable Spawner - The physics object was a nice addition. But why can I not specify the throw speed? Why do I have to throw it however fast you guys wanted me to throw it? Also why is the impact function only called with an agent? Why can’t I get the prop I hit? You literally have to track in a map to see who threw it and what it hit. And pray two people didn’t throw it at the same time. What if I didn’t want to just throw it at an agent? And what is even the point of having the option to define the spawn velocity and angular velocity? Is that if I want the thing to shoot in the air when it spawns? How does that even make sense. It would make more sense if that was the values for when the ball was thrown. Also why can there only be one carryable at a time. What if a player just picks it up and holds it? It never spawns again? Also why can I not sprint with the thing? Why do I need to run at a slow pace with it? Just because you guys said that this is the exact speed the player should run when using this device? Like cmon.
VFX Spawner - Randomly does not render or work. Also just giving us Enable() to turn the device on instead of something like Play() to have more control of the VFX we want to play. Not only is it pretty much broken right now but if I wanted to play an explosion I have to do Enable() then hope it plays during the sleep() then disable it? Doesn’t make much sense. Also why is the spawn rate capped between 0-2?
VFX Creator - Literally just a way of throwing icons in the air. Can’t actually make anything cool. Could probably just be merged with the VFX Spawner
NPC Device - Good idea, but if you try to add more than the basic attributes to the guard NPC definition the device breaks and doesn’t spawn anything. Adding them to the device works fine though.
Barrier Device - Needs a toggle to let vehicles through. It can let agents on a list through but if they are on a vehicle it blocks them. Not sure how this oversight got through.
Camera Devices - Not sure if this is still an issue but I’m pretty sure whenever you enter a vehicle it switches back to the 3rd person camera. Why.
Teleporter - The checks to see if the player will be nice and comfy are too much. Half the time you cant get them to teleport or it teleports you away from where you wanted from all the checks. Just let things break. If I put a teleporter in a bad spot, run through it, and see the player get stuck, then I wil adjust it.
Video Player - Literally just doesn’t work
Use latest HUD option - Why is this an option but when I uncheck it, it doesn’t revert? Why can’t I select previous HUDs?
Movement device - Forgot what its actually called but why can I only move my player so fast? What if I want them zooming around? What if its a single player map so I don’t care about hit detection or anything like that? What if I want them to constantly slide no matter what? Why can’t I make those changes.
Physics in general - Why is it so terrible? I mean one of unreal engines main selling points is there physics, interactability, destruction, etc. But getting a ball to roll straight and not glitch out or feel floaty is almost impossible. Especially since there were some pretty great physics in Lego Fortnite.
A lot of these devices seem like they were designed for a single use case when yall were making something and thats it. Like it works fine for your perfect cookie cutter example but anytime you want to try and branch out or try something new it is just not possible or theres so many work arounds it’s not worth it. I believe these devices need to be made more modular and give the creators enough options where they can use them outside of what yall used them for your island examples and called it a day.
There is like a design philosophy where everything needs to be made with such guard rails that nothing can go wrong. But that just makes creators need to use all these work arounds and bloats their projects. The red vs blue maps will work regardless what additional features you give devices. If a map becomes laggy because theres 500 carryable objects spawned in and the creator isn’t checking them then thats something the creator just needs to go in and fix. But atleast give us the option to break our maps if we want.