Grievances about user friendliness in the editor

General Feedback & Requests
1

I have spent some time poking around the engine and I noticed that there are some small annoying workflow issues I have stumbled upon quite regularly.

So I decided to write down some “nice to have” I believe would improve the overall experience when working with the editor.

As well as some ideas for potential features.

If any of these features are already available or there are good workarounds I’d love to hear about them.

Set favorites in world outliner

Sometimes you work a lot with the same actors on a level and it would be nice to be able to favorite or pin them to the top so they don’t drown in the list.

This could be a part of the world outliner or a separate window.

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Recent results in quick search

Remember recent results in the Ctrl+P quick search. Making it easy to get back to assets you were just working on.

Jumping to results with keyboard shortcuts might cause an issue but hopefully that can be worked around with modifier keys.

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Tabbing with materials active

It seems that when Ctrl+Tabbing on materials there is a Preview Material in /Engine/Transient that becomes a part of Active files. This means that if you Alt+Tab + Alt+Tab you get “stuck” on the same material.

It also seems Ctrl+Tab activates the dialog while Shift+Ctrl+Tab does not. Even though Shift+Ctrl+Tab works within the dialog itself to move up/down in files.

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Performance info on blueprints

This is probably a pipe dream but it would be nice to get some information on the bundled editor blueprint nodes about the performance impact they have.

Where 1 bar would be “don’t worry”, and 5 bars would “keep this out of hot spots at all cost”.


Trigger blueprint diff externally

It would be really nice if there was a way of initiating the editor externally with an argument and a path to the file you want see the history off. That way you can jump right to the diff from your source control.

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Sane defaults for suggestions

Currently it seems like the suggestions given for some node types are a bit off. I would assume an integer + integer action would be more common then a vector + int action, so it would be great if int+int was the first suggestion.

Even better would be if the editor could learn from my habits and adapt the suggestions based on the frequency of my previous selections.


Auto focus likely input

Similar to the point above, I feel it would make sense on quite a few nodes that when dragged out, the editor should focus the most probable (or even first) input automatically.


Maintain connection flow on node deletion

When you have a connection between two nodes and drag out a “print” from the first one UE4 currently automatically inserts the print in-between the nodes and then fixes the connection flow.

It would be great if the same could happen when the print node was removed, but in reverse. At least for simple 1:1 flows. Especially for when removing reroute nodes.


Extended slider

Would be nice if variables that have a set range could use the empty space to the right in the details pane to show a bigger slider where you could also click to set the value.

I believe this will make it a bit easier to experiement with values. Since you know relatively where you are clicking, the value set is a bit more intuative then just dragging.

Another potential solution would be to make the current input into one big click/draggable slider.


Scrub location and scale in a transform

Not sure why this is the case but it would be nice to be able to scrub location and scale values, same as rotation.


Copy entire detail sections

Currently you can copy location/rotation/scale one by one. But it would be great if you could just copy the entire transform section and apply that to another actor. Stuff like lights also could get a lot of benefit from this.


Reroute nodes in materials

Same as the one available in blueprint editor.


And lastly

  • Having the ability to move the “Recompile Game Code” keyboard shortcut to “System Wide” instead of “Level Editor”
  • If you are working on two blueprints that depend on each other, compiling one should compile the other so you don’t get link errors.
  • Making the pin-sockets in blueprints bigger and easier to select and drag out. Far too often you end up just moving the node instead of dragging a line out.
1 Like
2

Some very thoughtful ideas here, I particularly like the idea of pinning outliner elements. Scrubbing location / scale values also makes sense to me as it’s something I do in Maya pretty often - there you can use ctrl+middle mouse to scrub rather than a separate UI element.

3

I agree with pretty much all of these, especially the sane defaults and auto focus.

4

Could you create Italian UE 4, or a documentation of name function of blue print comand?

5

TECHNICALLY you could create a Favorites folder in the outliner. I know it’s just a workaround but it’s something.
Also, I might be mistaken, but recent search results already does what you describe, no?

6

[=;473874]
TECHNICALLY you could create a Favorites folder in the outliner. I know it’s just a workaround but it’s something.
[/]

That is true, but it would “ruin” the overall structure of your project, as well as not being per editor (in case you work with other people).

[=;473874]
Also, I might be mistaken, but recent search results already does what you describe, no?
[/]

Ctrl+P for me doesn’t show any recent matches, I just get a list of all assets available in alphabetical order.

I added a new point, “Tabbing with materials active”. Which makes jumping between open files a bit annoying.

8

Hi mape,

I read through your post and have entered a few feature requests:

“Favorites” in World Outliner UE-26939
“Recent searches” in quick search context menu UE-26940
Allow extension on sliders in details pane UE-26941
Option to scrub all transform values UE-26942
Copy Details section/Details pane UE-26943
Defaults for output pins UE-26947
Auto focus likely input UE-26944
Maintain connection flow on node deletion UE-26946
Multiple blueprint compile UE-26945

In addition, the reroute in material nodes is already a feature request in our system, UE-6882, and I’ve updated the request with additional information. Finally, the tabbing through active materials is a known issue and has been reported in our system as UE-15706. Unfortunately at this time I do not have a timeframe of when it will be addressed.

9

Thank you for taking the time to go though the post!

10

could you resolve my problem?

11

[=;474596]
could you resolve my problem?
[/]

Hi ,

I am looking into what the status of additional language support is and will post here once I have more information.

12

[]
Reroute nodes in materials
[/]

All of the requests are nice. Though this one particular might be hard. As I heard the dataflow is different compared to blueprints so it would take alot of time to make it. It sounds funny to me but hey, I am not a coder.

Many people asked this before and thats what they got as response, hope for the best though. I would like that myself aswell.

13

[=;473810]
Could you create Italian UE 4, or a documentation of name function of blue print comand?
[/]

We are looking into expanding the languages we offer but I do not have any specifics on which languages or when they might start to be available.

As for the Blueprint documentation, is that different than what is available at the link below?

14

I agree with everything :slight_smile:

also,

[=mape;473625]

  • Making the pin-sockets in blueprints bigger and easier to select and drag out. Far too often you end up just moving the node instead of dragging a line out.
    [/]

you mean this]. I requested it 5 months ago, still hasn’t been addressed :frowning:

15

Quite like some of these. I too have requested reroute nodes for Materials. But then I use material functions quite often so don’t run into too many problems.

‘Performance’ evaluation for Blueprint nodes would be extremely hard to do i think, perhaps impossible. To really assess performance you’d have to run the code, and in varying situations. ‘Get All Actors of Class’ is cheaper the less actors in the scenario for example. In other situations it may be terrible. Things like that are best left to the profiler IMO, though it would be interesting to see ‘execution’ times when you’re debugging breakpoints. Some kind of dynamic SCOPE_CYCLE_COUNTER perhaps? Tricky to do though.

Scrubbers on Location / Scale - Do want. Wanted for ages in fact. Copy transform? Do want. Copy transform components separately? Do want.

Also, I believe holding one of the modifier keys when deleting nodes in BP maintains the connection. Works in Material Editor at least, I think. I feel like it’s something I use a lot without noticing.

16

Blueprint AutoConnect pins

I am still learning and as I am switching between C++ and BP I really like the drag-and-drop visual workflow over C++. Although its either my lack of understanding the flow of Blueprints or some feature requests coming up. :wink:

What I’d like to see in the Blueprint Editor is to be able to drag more than just variables directly from the left editor panel onto pins. I am still learning but my intuitive way to interact is to drag a function onto another execution pin so it gets added after. Its the logic flow habbit from C++ coding.

The editor should also try to connect more pin types at once between nodes on a modifier key (Alt+LMB). Like after you dragged in one node, right click on an empty spot and setup a new execute/set node. If its in a certain area behind the last node it automatically gets connected to the execution pin or (configurable) to all possible pins with matching types of the last node. The last node was automatically marked as selected after dragging it into the BP. Node are selected if no others are in the BP.

Here is an animation how it should look like. At least I heavily vote to have this Editor beahviour

17

Favorites in world outlines - No, this would bug me to be honest.
Recent results in quick search - I guess this might be nice
Tabbing with materials active - Yes
Performance info on blueprints - No, this would mislead a lot of people, and cause confusion. Plus, this sort of thing can’t really be measured.
Trigger blueprint diff externally - I don’t see why not
Sane defaults for suggestions - Yes
Auto focus likely input - I guess
Maintain connection flow on node deletion - No
Extended Slider - No, waste of space
Scrub location and scale… - Meh, I wouldn’t care for it, but it wouldn’t hurt.
Copy entire detail sections - Maybe
Reroute nodes in materials - Of course
Ability to move the recompile game code shortcut… I guess
Automatically compiling two dependent blueprints - Absolutely not, this would cause lots of problems on my end
Making pin sockets larger… IMO they are fine how they are, but whatevs…

18

[=MaSe87;477461]
I am still learning and as I am switching between C++ and BP I really like the drag-and-drop visual workflow over C++. Although its either my lack of understanding the flow of Blueprints or some feature requests coming up. :wink:

What I’d like to see in the Blueprint Editor is to be able to drag more than just variables directly from the left editor panel onto pins. I am still learning but my intuitive way to interact is to drag a function onto another execution pin so it gets added after. Its the logic flow habbit from C++ coding.

The editor should also try to connect more pin types at once between nodes on a modifier key (Alt+LMB). Like after you dragged in one node, right click on an empty spot and setup a new execute/set node. If its in a certain area behind the last node it automatically gets connected to the execution pin or (configurable) to all possible pins with matching types of the last node. The last node was automatically marked as selected after dragging it into the BP. Node are selected if no others are in the BP.

Here is an animation how it should look like. At least I heavily vote to have this Editor beahviour
[/]

Dragging a function onto a node, yes. Auto connecting the print string based on it’s location, nope.

19

Reroute nodes is really goofy. I honestly don’t understand why they did that. If they wanted, a BETTER solution would be

  1. Reroute nodes (no change)
  2. Pin nodes (new)

Reroute would do exactly as it does now (be this big honking dot)

Pin nodes would be little dots with no extra stuff. Just used to tidy up your blueprint.

First thought “Would there be confusion…” No. Although you could still tidy up a schematic with reroute nodes, a pin node would be smaller and less obtrusive.

Second through “Why add extra stuff…” It’s only “extra stuff” if you like your Blueprints looking like a ball of string. It doesn’t hurt to give us MORE tools.

Third thought “But the code…” yes, the code already exists with reroute, but cleaning up your blueprint needs something a little more light-weight. Pin nodes would do that. All they do is pin lines. They don’t do comments or anything else. Easy peasy.