This AMA is all about Programming and Scripting in UEFN!
Submit your questions directly to expert members on our team – ask about feature insights, overarching development guidance, career advice, industry questions, and of course, what you’re wondering specifically about our guests!
Make sure to check out the awesome backgrounds and expertise of our special Epic developer guests featured below.
Do you have a question for us? Ask away by replying to this post!
The team will join us on 2023-05-24T09:30:00Z to answer questions. See you there!
MEET THE TEAM
Rodney Houle Senior Technical Designer. I have 23 years of game design experience, with six of those being a technical designer focused on game scripting and programming. I shipped my first game using Unreal Engine in 2008 and have been using it ever since. When I’m not in front of a screen, I’m enjoying the beautiful outdoors of central Oregon golfing, hiking, backpacking, stand up paddle boarding, and skiing.
Conan Reis Principal Engineer / Mad Computer Scientist with 30 years in all areas of AAA game development. CEO/founder of Agog Labs, where I created SkookumScript which was acquired by Epic Games in 2018. Since then I’ve worked on Verse (the programming language of UEFN) - and created and designed much of its control flow especially its concurrency model - sync, race, rush, branch, spawn, etc.
Ray Benefield Creative Tools Designer. I have experience as a Software Engineer and a UGC Creator. I was recruited by Epic directly from the Fortnite Creative community as I’ve been working in the tool since day 1. I specialize in game design and game logic. I stubbornly lean towards breaking the mold in terms of ideas and innovation. When I’m not working, I’m probably still working on some side project.
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Update (5/25/2023): Have feedback on this event? Share it here!
Would you like to see Verse morph into, or provide an option to use it as, a visual scripting system? (i.e - like that of UE blueprints)
How does Verse compare to that of Python?
Do you see Verse replacing C++ in the future?
How does one start a career in programming?
Do you prefer coding to Level Design/Game Design? And between the two, which one do you feel is the most challenging?
This question is for Conan Reis. Can you share one of your mad scientist stories? Would be cool to hear!
This question is for Rodney Houle. What is it like being a Senior Technical Designer?
This question is for Ray Benefield. What kind of challenges do you face as a Creative Tools Designer? And how do you overcome those challenges? Lastly if you could give any advice to creators who are looking to jump into game development as a career, what would your advice be?
Lastly, I really appreciate you taking the time to review my questions and I am looking forward to the event!
Idk if my question is relevant here but, will we have a roadmap or anything to track what is actually being done by the team ?
I’d love to have that in order to anticipate my developments, because I sometimes write workarounds that I could do without… (also it could prevent us from posting bugs that are already being worked on)
For creating a hub island and some other islands linked to it. What is the best solution for avoiding have to change it latter.
Better to use separated projects or can i create many levels inside the same project and build the islands from this same project just using different levels ?
Using the same project its easier to share assets, but i have this 2 questions:
Is it possible to have 2 different public islands for 2 different levels using the same project?
The memory available for island is related to memory used for project (with all levels inside) or there is an individual quota for each level ?
Is there a way for only the current checkpoint to be visible in a race setting?
Currently, on the first lap, all checkpoints are visible to players, and changing any visibility config on the checkpoint device will make it stop working.
What are the biggest architectural challenges behind implementing new features in Verse/Fortnite?
Do you see the API moving away from this device centric architecture into one maybe more like Unreal where we can control the game directly in Verse code?
My question for Epic is: What made you choose to create Verse instead of choosing to use a programming language like Lua or JavaScript or C++ like UE5 uses?
Are there any plans to directly inject code while a specific sequencer is running (so we can make tags within the sequence that Verse subscribes), or raycasting as an input so we can do logic such as track if the player is outside?
Lastly, are there any plans for the ability to mesh swap through verse? Essentially the ability to have verse control material collection parameters, or swapping textures/meshes.
What advice would you give to a CS college student who’s interested in pursuing computer graphics research on where and how to get involved in the industry?
Follow-up question: Is a PhD required?
How do I make my programming projects stand out to recruiters?
Are there any plans to extend Verse functionality across many other Unreal Engine features, such as Niagra Components and Level Sequences? Specific examples would be running functions in Verse code through Level Sequences Events, or activating/editing Niagra component values.
This is so cool! Firstly, thank you guys for dedicating time to this AMA.
If you had to give an estimate, on a scale of 1-10, how “complete” do you think Verse is as of this point in time. Specifically, should we expect new methods/classes/functionality or even modules to be added (Looking at you UnrealEngine.com/Temporary), or should we expect mostly small bug fixes/changes, and at what pace? Any hints as to what we can expect by the end of 2023?
1- Will be able to debug in VS code? is there an estimated time on when ?
2- Will be able to launch several clients to be able to test multiplayer features ?
3- Why not provide in the API at least getters for any property of an object in UEFN ?
4- Is there a performance difference using verse vs direct event in the UEFN editor vs Creative 2.0 edit mode ?
i get it was a bug and allowed the ability to use many more restricted actors
But why remove the one that allows you to model swap the vehicles even though you essentially had something on the roadmap already completed? (credit to mobile scrap on youtube for the image, i never got to use the ““bad”” actors
)
), or should we expect mostly small bug fixes/changes, and at what pace? Any hints as to what we can expect by the end of 2023?
