After about 3 months of learning, creating models, rigging and animating, creating music and sound-effects, I’ve crafted a little zombie shooter that works absolutely perfectly in the editor. So far cool. The game was supposed to be a birthday present for a buddy who is a big fan of the series “The Walking Dead”. I was lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that there were indeed no problems in the editor.
Now the game should be exported as a pack for Windows. The export worked, the monsters spawn, but they don’t chase the player. They stand there like piles of ■■■■ and that’s it. Another week of Google searching brought no help (yes, I found the article that recommends simply replacing the “Nav Mesh Bounds Volume” - that didn’t work either), trial and error attempts also failed, as well as complete different blue-print setups for seeking the player.
In sum: over three months of my time flushed down the toilet like ■■■■ because Crap-Engine is incapable of compiling something that works perfectly fine in the crappy editor.
Take Home Message: Compile your game regularly so that you realize early on when Crap-Engine fails, then you won’t waste any more time than absolutely necessary working uselessly to nothing.
For my part, I’m out, I’m certainly not going to invest any more of my time in this piece of dog ■■■■, I’d rather stick to real coding in Processing and at least have the slightest chance of finding and eliminating bugs.
There are some things that work only in editor (or rather are tolerated in editor, but stop working in packaged game), editor tries to make it easier to develop, however you as developer should test if everything works in packaged game.
It is not engine fault that you are inexperienced.
“There are some things that work only in editor (or rather are tolerated in editor, but stop working in packaged game), editor tries to make it easier to develop, however you as developer should test if everything works in packaged game.”
Editor has whole system designed to debug and make development of a game stable (ie. not crashing), for that reason it gracefully handles multiple “mistakes” that can be done during development. All while same stupid mistakes done in C++ would just crash whole editor (sometimes even BSOD and computer reboot).
So normal life of developing under unreal:
you make prototype in editor
when getting to milestone, you pack it, cook it, and test on desired platforms
you fix bugs
repeat until your project is polished or just ragequit.
I don’t know what you use to write your code, but if you use something like VisualStudio, Processing or Python, I’ve never experienced a crash that forced me to restart the corresponding editor or even the entire machine.
What I actually get is feedback. Something like “there is a problem [specification] in line xy”; if UE crashes because of an error, that is a problem with UE that has long since been solved in other software. In UE there is no hint, no feedback, nothing that could serve as a starting point for any troubleshooting.
And I don’t code here - I use BluePrints. If these BluePrints are not able to generate working code, that’s a bug too, not a cool feature. If those Blueprints are not returning any indication of a problem, this is a ■■■■■■■ bug.
Now we export that as game.exe - again, no feedback, no hint, nothing that would help you identify the problem. Nothing to indicate that something that works in the editor still couldn’t be exported because of [meaningful information].
And you say “editor tries to make it easier to develop”. Sorry, but that’s just stupid.