Good morning everyone. I’m Not sure if this is the right place to post this. Before you buy an asset at the UE4 marketplace there are two gentleman on youtube I recommend for marketplace review Mindless Pursuit and The Under Network - Gaming. These two Man did a better job at giving reviews then the people leave at the assets review page.
For example,I was thinking about buying Jungle base Environment. Until I saw The Under Network-Gaming review(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nthNSqFNQs). Now granted The Under Network-Gaming had said some controversal things in the past but when it comes to reviews he spot on. Mindless pursuit also made a good review on the 50 plus vector particle(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OGd4BqJyPY). I really recommend that people watch their reviews. If they want to save time and cash. Until people start leaving detail reviews on the market place.
Feels like you are just advertising friends youtube channels,
Watched about 5 mins of it and I wonder how much the first guy has done level design…
Yeah, wow. These are some garbage reviews.
He keeps going on and on about how the jungle scene isn’t made for the default character height… there are so many easy ways to change it… lol. A few of his comments are accurate but overall it’s a very poor review. Someone with those complains has just never really done any game design.
This is a good indication of the reviewer’s ability to completely overlook the blueprint systems… He also did one ofr the Realistic Blueprint system here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXAwPVlHAr0
The author of the Realistic Blueprint System addressed his concerns here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci_Nc23m1Yg
I agree that, for the most part, people don’t leave good reviews on the marketplace. But use a bit of caution when approaching any review of a technical piece of software, such as game design modules, when the person has no proven history int he industry. Thats all. Youtube videos have no barrier to entry. Game design does.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I wouldn’t call them My friends. Since the former I mostly watch his video for his tutorial and reviews. And the latter I just saw his video 2-3 days ago.
Would you that these reviews are garbage(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fncjgL1I5Ps&list=PL4g86nVHyAEe1ICCs6eb5zXIhdjGNFppy). If you know anybody who makes good ue4 marketplace reviews. Please post them here. I’m interesting in buying assets,I’m still new to UE4 and i don’t want to buy an asset that maybe faulty or don’t work.
From what I know, there’s not many youtube channels that do UE4 marketplace reviews. Allar does osme, but most people dont really have the money just to buy assets sadly haha.
For what it’s worth - if an asset is flat out faulty/doesnt work, you can get refunds. But all of the assets reviewed by that first reviewer, his complaints really come mainly out of his lack of knowledge and lack of patience. I am 100% sure that if he contacted the sellers they would help him through his issues, but based on the comments he leaves on the marketplace pages, he just rages at them. This is just based on a few clicks worth of research - happy to be proven wrong if I am. But yeah - he seems to leave a trail of rage.
I see you do have point. But you can’t say the same thing about Mindless pursuit reviews(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4g86nVHyAEe1ICCs6eb5zXIhdjGNFppy). He does his review professionally and he is in the game industry as a consultan.
From the two I watched, that guy is definitely a lot better. It’s worth noting that, according to his channel about, he’s a consultant in IT, not specifically game industry (though he may elaborate on this in videos - I dunno). He tends to spend a bit too much time showing it off using the same demo content that the authors provide, and should, instead, demo using it himself IMO. But that’s neither here nor there. He’s a lot better than the first guy for sure. He does tend to make some assumptions about some things that we, as authors and sellers dont have control over, but that’s an ongoing conversation we have been having with Epic trying to enable us to have more control and say over how our work is presented and such.
I was thinkin’ about doing some reviews myself, if there’s interest.
I think a regularly updated source of reviews from someone who can demonstrate they know how to use the engine properly would be an incredible resource. I made a post ages back about getting a few people on board to make a channel for that but there was no interest, and I have neither the time nor money to do it all myself haha.
Hi! I’m the guy behind Mindless Pursuits and saw this thread so just wanted to pop in and address a couple of things. First, just to be clear: I’ve only been using the Unreal Engine myself for about 18 months and still consider myself a ‘newbie’ in that there are still areas of the engine I haven’t really touched yet, such as Matinee. My consulting is indeed outside of the games realm and is targeted at enterprise software development. I’m mentioning both of these just to keep it clear as I’ve never claimed prior game dev expertise. Game Jams are pretty much my experience to date (plus a larger project I’m still working on). I’m also a former teacher who love to teach, which is why I make tutorials as I go.
For reviews, I’ve done some ‘let me do more than the demo’ in things like the Forest Fire Pack reviews, but it’s just too time-consuming to do that. The reviews aren’t meant to be tutorials but rather just the opinion of a Marketplace consumer who would use the product. For actual use, I started (then had to stop for a while) a livestream series called the Marketplace Playground where I work with packages without real prior experience with them, to try and create something that shows how they work. The best example of that to date was the one I recorded on animated chests and chest/door sounds. So what I’m more likely to do than to create psuedo-tutorials in reviews is to look at something int he livestream, then do the review, and then tie the two together so others can see what I was doing with the package to gain experience. I’m open to suggestions.
The one thing I don’t want to do is really dive into anything that is primarily blueprints in any sort of demos, because I don’t feel I have any right to expose their code. So for those I’m sticking with a more overview-style and how well I think it works, as I won’t be able to do those in livestreams.
I’d love to see more reviews, Joe. Go for it. 
ETA: I registered earlier today to become a marketplace seller. I’m interested to know the other side of the coin, and then I will adjust my approach for some of the review content based upon what I learn.
Well as someone who has done a fair number of level designs I’ve found a fair number of the environment and map prop assets to be off as far as relative scale goes. Some kits the base epic character can not even get through the door way until the asset is scaled up which is a rather time consuming process if all assets from the kit has to be scaled up as well which defeats the number one reason to buy it in the first place.
To save time.
My argument is perhaps maybe the creator does not know the requirements as to making a game ready asset as far as the up scaling required as a percentage to the view port so that even though the scale is relative to real world measurement the asset has to be upscale to 10-15% larger than the real deal to at least look visually correct and pleasing to the eye.
This review for example put a positive twist.
The problem is at to true world scale the hallways and main travel areas are so narrow (stairs and hallways) only allows for one player at a time to travel in both direction. As a single player option = OK but as a FPS type of environment would not get played due player hooking.
It should also be common practice that no back face holes should be allowed due to real time lighting that causes improper lighting and rendering artifacts.
Overall the review is 100% accurate as to pointing out problems with the asset that if taken to heart the asset creator could easily spend his time/effort to prompt their brand as a reliable provider.
The solution to their problem is to acknowledge that there is a problem in the first place and fix the issues in a few days and as luck there are a few art developers who do this as part of their development of building a better product and build trust in their brand.
Hey there. Great to hear you chime in! I just wanted to clarify that my point about you spending a lot of time on the same demo content the author provides was entirely my opinion (hence the IMO in the original statement). And yeah, adequately showing the content in use is not a quick and easy task.
Great to hear you are joining the ranks of authors - Epic have promised to clear up a lot of the issues we’ve had, such as the inability to choose whether our content is “make new project” or “add to project”, our inability to edit details, etc. so hopefully you’ll have a much smoother ride than a lot of us have had haha.
By all means though, keep up the reviews!
I’m not going to argue that I think the author shouldn’t have resized the meshes appropriately. I just don’t think it’s anywhere near as big a deal as the guy makes it out to be in the video. Also, the invisible faces are because that mesh is intended to be used like that (based on the author’s own use of the asset in their demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5gEtT6F2WM) and having those faces be blank like that saves on rendering. However, again, the author should have spent the extra 30 seconds to ensure they were correctly obscured. However, none of the points that the review raised are points that warrant anything close to the reactino the guy gives in the video and I would argue do not warrant him telling others to avoid them. Make a review and say “these are my issues with it” but to slander the author for 15 minutes and say that the pack is a waste of money and the like is honestly way over the top. If you watch any of his other reviews, you’ll hear the same exact things over and over “i spent 12 hours on this…” etc. and when authors try to address him he completely ignores them and such.
I’m never going to tell people not to raise issues or suggest improvements, but the manner in which this guy has done it in his videos is entirely unproductive and damaging to the marketplace.
Another one: MidnightInvader - YouTube
Some people will always try to control what you buy, what you eat, what you say, what you do… and nowadays even what you think.
I feel like everything you’ve said here is down to your inexperience. The UE4 template character has nothing to do with anything. Not everybody builds off of that, and even if you do you probably end up changing the scale. Just figure out what scale works for your character and scale stuff up/down to that.
The “back face holes” should “not be allowed” thing is just nonsense. It’s common practice to only put polys where you need them, and it doesn’t cause any issues with lighting if the user knows what they’re doing.