In UE we lack at least the following:
The above is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good starting point to improve the engine seriously. I hope you guys agree.
Cheers,
Pino
I agree.
In the meantime you can use Paper2D with the normal 3D assets. Paper2D comes with a tileset editor, but it’s not super advanced.
A camera can be configured in 2 modes (perspective, ortographic). Currently there are some problems with ortographic but it gives the view that most 2D games have.
There is a plugin for 2D sprites which acts as a state machine, just like the animation blueprint asset for 3D skeletons.
For physics, I can recommend implementing your own movement component in c++ which is either entirely new, or inherits from one of the simpler movement components (not character movement component, but floating pawn or even simpler). In its most simple form you can make one supported by a Pawn that has 0 default movement / physics and 0 pathing logic in it. I like that because the more complex ones especially the character movement component are filled with things your game will probably not use. It’s not possible to make a single movement / physics component that fits every single project. I figured it all out here:
Pawn movement, what am I missing? - #6 by Roy_Wierer.Seda145
Here I made another topic about 2D games and what a proper implementation in UE could be like.
[UE5.2] 2D level building, but it's not grid / tile based. Implementation question.
Hey @Roy_Wierer.Seda145 ,
Yes, I’m already using those, but it’s a real pain in the neck 
We used Unity for all 2D and UE for 3D. Now moving everything to UE is proving me why we had all on Unity 
We will stick with UE as a single tool for all we do, but I would really like to see the engine evolve its 2D side 
Cheers!
Pino
Of all I’ve heard it seems that EPIC is not interested in 2D development anymore. I don’t know if Paper2D was made by EPIC but possibly you could contact one of the creators of such plugin to ask for a roadmap / future interests or you would likely have to do it yourself :). The 3D lighting is not all bad, I’ve seen some beautiful modern looking implementations of that but of course if you don’t need it for your style it’s just a performance hit. You could ignore the lighting system fully and do a shader based implementation, It depends on your style. For example, you can set up a shader which does not process lighting (unlit) and instruct the shader to add color / play with saturation / brightness based on input data like world location or by a texture you create from locations of “light sources” (think of a heatmap, you dynamically create some sort of minimap of light data yourself.), you can fake that all and get a Crypt of the Necrodancer style lighting. Works even as post process shader. For something more advanced like use of normal map textures / shadows etc you use the lighting system.
