A stripped down editor (that can be shipped with the game as map editor for the community)

General Feedback & Requests
1

An extra stripped down version of the current editor which can be shipped with the game enabling the average gamer to tweak or fully customize a map of their own.

The essentials are:

  • terrain editing
  • lights, sounds
  • Predefined “entities”/blueprints that can be placed on the map
  • blueprint level editing
    [HR][/HR]
    Edit:For legal reasons
    Since you can only distribute to people that have an Epic account meaning that they have agreed to the EULA.

You need to have an Epic account and logged in with it inorder they can use the stripped down editor.

2

Conan actually does this (and is UE4).

3

That’s how modding works with UE4 games, but you have to create the stripped editor yourself with the source. It’s a huge amount of work and probably goes nowhere without support from Epic…

4

Squad also has an editor and it’s downloaded via the Epic Launcher, under modding tab.

5

You aren’t allowed to redistribute parts of the editor, if you want a custom game editor tool you’d have to create one.

6

That’s clearly not true, as you can see there are already two examples of games with redistributed editors in this topic.

7

Reminder I’ve posted this in ‘Feedback for Epic’. I hear you but what about having a stripped down version that *is *allowed to be distributed along with the developed game.

8

From the EULA:

You can only distribute to people that have an Epic account meaning that they have agreed to the EULA. If you have access to the marketplace or Github then you’ve already agreed to it.

9

Interesting so a common ground would be that in this stripped down version they have to have an Epic account and logged in before they can use it.

10

If they did make a stripped down version they could have different terms applied to it, but the biggest issue though is what things would you keep in a stripped down version? Since each game is different there’s many things that a game might not need to customize that other games would.

11

That’s probably why those custom editors are downloaded through their launcher, then. So it’s not really “you can’t” but “you got to ask us first”

12

Most games are not that different modding wise. Shooters, MOBA’s, Strategy, race games all have maps/levels. Which communities can be creative with.

  1. The essential tools: “Paint, landscape, foliage, geometry”
  2. level blueprint (to set the game logic ex. capture zones/flags, spawn enemies, win/loss conditions etc.)
  3. content browser (showing a selection of usable entities if that’s not reasonable show all content)

*I suppose a system to add custom content to the map is perhaps out of the scope of the “stripped down version” idea. But perhaps I’m wrong on that… *

So having a tool to design levels and having the level blueprint for the game logics should give alot of creative freedom already.

13
14

Feel free to add to it! how would you do it? You don’t seem to like level blueprints. Although many editors like warcraft 3, starcraft 2 , company of heroes editors work with simplefied scripting. While there are others that don’t even have any scripting to it. And for UE4 current there is no client map editor at all…

15

There’s many games that wouldn’t need a landscape editing tool, which would be a significant thing to remove

16

I think that the problem doesn’t lie in how much functionality does an in-game editor has, but how easy is for players to access these editors. I think that most modders won’t mind to have an Epic Games account.

is what Epic could do: create a plugin, that allows players to create an Epic Games account while inside the game, without the need for the launcher. After the modders create an account or login, the game downloads the required files for the in-game editor.

17

But they need to open launcher and sign in so they can download editor in the first place :wink: :stuck_out_tongue:
Seriously if somebody is too lazy to create one more account, he isn’t worth of our time. He won’t create great content if he’s that lazy.

The biggest problem is: if you could simply upload modified editor to Steam, it’s lot easier to set up your own modding scene and provide updates.
Or maybe I’m wrong ? Maybe after initial setup your free to update your community’s editor through launcher without any hassle?

18

They’ve specifically said in another topic that they want all custom editors to be downloaded through the launcher, because… no reason.

19

I mean, why restrict it to level BP? Yeah, its “simplified” compared to just having access to BP, but its a terrible idea to force all the logic into the Level BP. I would have been more on board with it had the simplification been to just about any other prominent BP class - such as gamemode.

20

So say the stripped down / client editor is added to the game directory. When launching the client it forces you to login with your epic account (and thus accepting the EULA). This way there is no need for getting the Epic game launcher. That would be fine right?

Next thing I think is reasonable like suggested to have some BP classes like gamemode available for edit. I guess the main idea is that you don’t want the client to have the game as if its open sourced, where they can just copy paste the whole project. So perhaps a way for the developer to grey out or hide certain content from the client so they can’t steal everything.