I have been using UE for 7 years and are massive fan, but like many other blueprinters i often hit the wall where blueprints ends and cpp starts.
When you read through the forums there are alot of post that from frustrated blueprintes with no CPP skills that just need a few variables exposed in BP to get on with their projects, but these request are not picked up by Epic and ends as closed posts with no solutions other than cpp.
I have always found it strange that in a forum with many very skilled cpp programmers that there is no organized way for non-programmers to request exposure to blueprints.
What i think is missing here is the options and place to request a variable, function or whatever exposed in BP. Then everyone else that also support this exposure could throw 5/10/20 USD in the award to get this exposed. When the award becomes big enough then any cpp programmer could get the job done, take the award and the expose would be implemented in the next engine release.
Thanks for your insight Getting Epic on this might be a long shot, but i could easily find 20-30 exposures needed just to be able use the full potential of several core features that has been in UE for years. You do prove my point by being a cpp programmer that would be interested in this, because then we got both a buyer and a seller, but just no organized place to do business.
I like the idea and would be one of the Programmer who would like to do that but I don’t think you get it organised or this question is picked up by anyone. Maybe in the Forums would be a better place. If it would get some traction, I would also sponsor a portal to organize this micro jobs and payments. But just to be said, I guess you talk about thirdparty plugins/libraries not Engine Modifications, because this is a thing epic is quite picky. I mean look at the pull requests on github…sad…sad…
You just need to hire C++ programmer, exposing is easy task or else feature is being weird have different root class and need creation of editor like Slate. Considering lot of them operate hourly you could get somebody to expose few thigns in one go
And don’t be scared C++, exposing is something you can start with. All you need to do is make UBlueprintFunctionLibrary with static functions that call functions. Just remember that API in blueprints are almost exact same as C++, i mean most nodes are direct bindings from C++
I completely agree and i do use cpp programmers when i already have defined what i need to into cpp.
Where i think there is a gap is with core features where alot of blueprintes hit a wall and have to dig into cpp and visual basic to get access to basic functions just to get a prototype up and running. Instead of all of them pay each 1 programmer or start learning cpp to get access to these general features we would be better off by getting these exposures added to the default engine.
I’m not sure you even need to involve money for this, it could just be a platform of joint feature requests and development, which results in PRs and forked branches, and everyone can just merge these into their own engine build until they are accepted by Epic.
There are many of us already committing a lot of improvements to the engine without expecting anything in return, and I don’t see a reason for it to change. Having a board of doable feature requests, organized by vote count, extended with a discussion board for developers to discuss the best way to achieve it, etc, sounds good enough to me.
As soon as you involve money, it changes the community-driven idea into a business to sustain, with money handling, legals, privacy, taxes, and a bunch of other issues.
Anyways I also believe Answer Hub is not the forum to discuss this topic.
I agree that keeping money out of it would be to optimal, but that also might be the reason why there is simply no way to add a general request to the default engine (paid or unpaid).
I do find it a strange choice from Epic if this is true. The indies today are often the game changers of tomorrow and for them to take 10-20 requests per release in the scope of “Exposing to blueprint” would be a pretty easy task.
Im glad to hear that you got no issues here, but please keep in mind that “just” expose it yourself might not be a complete left hand job for everyone here…
I think it’s a totally different reason why there is no public feature request repository. Simply, Epic isn’t currently interested in what do indies need, they have a totally different focus. We can of course create our own, which is a great idea in general, but I don’t see it likely that someone in the community wants to deal with the burdens of all the legal things which are implied by being a digital money handler.
I don’t see a problem with exposing, that surely does not need a portal to connect developers with other people - just expose it yourself, create a Pull Request, and done. They usually respond faster for smaller changes, like exposing useful functionality. Alternatively, you can ask people on the forums, projectgheist for example has implemented many requests from the community.
Just ask yourself - where is the money. In an indie studio making a few percent of revenue after month or years of development, or deals with big players of the enterprise and film industry which ask for cutting edge features. where would you spend your employes time to integrate features you’re not being payed for or would you spend the time in doing consultant and contract work? Why is there different licensing models and support for UE…
Getting Epic on this might be a long shot, but i could easily find 20-30 exposures needed just to be able use the full potential of several core features that has been in UE for years. You do prove my point by being a cpp programmer that would be interested in this, because then we got both a buyer and a seller, but just no organized place to do business.
but I don’t think you get it organised or this question is picked up by anyone. Maybe in the Forums would be a better place. If it would get some traction, I would also sponsor a portal to organize this micro jobs and payments. But just to be said, I guess you talk about thirdparty plugins/libraries not Engine Modifications, because this is a thing epic is quite picky. I mean look at the pull requests on github…sad…sad…