I personally find that it takes much longer to customize some starter kit than simply building it myself according to my specific needs. I do agree thought that a starter kit or some kind of template would be useful - you can take it apart to see how it works if you are new to all of this. Other than that - games are different and they each have their own setup.
I’m not asking them to force functionality onto, I’m asking them to make certain core functionality available for those who want it. The engine is already set up to easily be able to add functionality to your project as you choose through either code plugins or blueprint extensions. Not to be rude, but your argument doesn’t make sense as it’s not considering the system that’s already in place.
I completely agree with this sentiment Mons.
And guys, it’s easy for some of you to say ‘I just code that myself from scratch cause the kits end up not being exactly what I need’ but I’m trying to consider the community as a whole. Not is a great or experienced programmer. Not is a great or experienced artist. The kits really help those who don’t have programming experience (myself) and the art assets help those who aren’t as experienced with art. Sure some of you would have no need for a Menu system Kit or a Multiplayer Kit or a water functionality kit. That doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone who would. And I’ll admit that swimming in water is probably not a top priority of functionality. My point was this is a system that should be stupendously simple for the guys at Epic to implement but they haven’t for some reason. In fact, I think some of the problem is that the guys at Epic aren’t very good at seeing things from the perspective of someone new to all of this. It’s so easy for them to implement these features that they don’t even consider how difficult it is for others. They’ve all been working with these tools and different iterations of the engine for more than 20 years. Some of us have only been using it for a few months or years.
Look, if you think that it would be useful for Unreal to have example menu/GUIs, just like it has an example orange chair mesh, then nothing stops you from building it and sending a pull request on GitHub!
Or putting it up for free on the marketplace.
Darn. Wish I had thought of that. Thanks jwatte!
Can you describe how this would look to you? e.g. is it a " menu, page1,2,3" “options menu, options1,2,3” type deal, where you just have some preset shortcuts to change pages or show and hide stuff?
The reason I ask is that “we should have a template menu” is pretty vague, and I can’t actually imagine what core functionality it would have that can’t be done with an empty UMG just as quickly. As is, you just drag and drop some buttons on the page, then click the “on pressed” event and make that show/hide a widget, or open a new widget… or whatever. I honestly can’t imagine what you could template that would produce a time saving system. The button functions are mostly unique to each project, and anything else is usually just a simple visibility switching / animation triggering. The one exception I can see is the visual / sound settings. But the problem with those isn’t the lack of a template menu system, it’s their lack of easy blueprint access in general.
P.S. if you are just talking examples, then the more examples the better. But I was under the impression that the content examples had UMG stuff (haven’t really checked)
The UMG system allows you to build your own menu yes, but it doesn’t have any of the functionality coded in. Anyone who wants to have a menu system for their game has to build this from scratch. Core functionality would be as I outlined, The ability to remap keys - meaning when you set up your input commands inside the Project Settings, they should automatically show up on a pre-built “Key bindings” menu and allow the user to change them to whatever they want. The ability to adjust screen resolution and other graphics options such as AA, AO, Bloom, Vsync, etc. You know, the core settings you get with pretty much every game ever made. If you’re making a console game, then you should be able to check of a bool that only shows the relevant settings for your target platform. The ability to turn rendering functionality on and off such as shadows. The ability to adjust culling distances for any of the systems that are used by almost - Foliage, cascaded shadows etc. The ability to adjust the volume for different sounds (possibly through a simple tagging system). We have the ability to adjust all of this from within the Editor, but there’s no easy way to expose these options to the player in order to allow them to adjust the settings to suit their needs. There’s a lot more but I really don’t want to turn this into an essay.
If there wasn’t a need for such a template, then marketplace products like Quality Game Settings in Blueprints - UE Marketplace and Option Menu Kit in Code Plugins - UE Marketplace and Modular Menu System in Blueprints - UE Marketplace wouldn’t exist. This is what I would consider CORE functionality. Something that would benefit from and something that shouldn’t be behind a paywall regardless of how small it might seem. Sure $30 to $50 isn’t all that much money but if this is something that every game is going to utilize to one degree or another, it’s not something we should have to pay for. We’re given the impression that we get the engine for free and then all of a sudden we’re nickle and dimed to death through marketplace content. $30 for a menu system, $20 for a save system, $30 for multiplayer connection system, $30 for multiplayer chat system. $50 for a lobby sytem. And then we’re stuck with trying to figure out how to tie all of the systems together. Systems that we made by community members who have no idea what else is working on. Or worse than having to buy content from the marketplace, we spend days trying to implement the functionality showcased in 6 hours of tutorial videos to ultimately implement functionality that an Epic Team member already built. Yes, it’s fantastic that we’re learning but again, why do we have to learn how to implement functionality that should already be implemented? I’d rather spend my time learning how to script out gameplay systems using blueprint.
I mean you have to consider the fact that we’re giving royalties to Epic for using their engine and as such we’re ultimately all paying customers if we release a commercial product. As I said, the engine is fantastic, but there are some features that I’m confused as to why they’re not a part of the whole package. Maybe it’s because I come from a modding background but I’m used to a more fully implemented system that we can build off of.
Same goes with a framework for a save game system. Same goes with a framework for multiplayer. These are things that just seem strange to me that they aren’t already fully implemented.
unless VERY special occasion, free is not a thing on the marketplace.
Actually, I tried to release a content pack for free and it was rejected by Epic as being too small and yet I see other functionality that essentially does the same thing but they’re charging $9.99. Now we get stuck in a situation where Epic doesn’t want to step on the toes of their marketplace members by adding free content that does what others are charging $10 - $50 for.
I’ve submitted a free plugin and they did accept it; but it’s around 10.000 lines of C++ or something close to that…
I understand that managing Marketplace costs them money so I expressed it would be fine if the free package got rejected because it is free.
In contrast, I’ve seen rejections here in the forums before because “there’s already too many of these assets”.
Good to know that they ARE accepting free projects but as I said, I think mine got rejected more because they didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes and not solely because it was free. I love Epic, I don’t think they’re doing anything shady.
Oh, that’s another feature I don’t understand why it’s not implemented already - an Automatic Landscape Material. Why on earth should people have to create this from scratch? Anyone who uses Landscape would need a material that’s already set up with distance scaling, details textures etc. Epic should just create one Master material where you can plug in your own textures in a material instance and be ready to go. The fact that there’s a marketplace item for this that sells for $150 is crazy. It’s as if they decided to stop working on the landscape system before they finished it. In what case are you ever going to create a landscape without a material? Heck, the Landscape demo (hang gliding) that’s available to download in the Learn section doesn’t even use a proper landscape material. The creators even mentioned this in the associated video saying “We probably should have shown them how to make a proper landscape material that’s not specific to the landscape. Ahh well.”
The core functionality of things like menus are always the same, whether that be the game play menus or the configuration/settings menus (including parameter loading and saving).
And the majority of games utilize similar user interface objects that we have all come to recognize such as buttons, menus, check buttons and option buttons, sliders, accordion controls, tab controls, etc.
This type of base functionality should be in the engine.
And then each individual developer would simply code up their own layout (a layout editor would be even better) and skin it with their custom game look.
I was doing work with Epic and other game developers on UE3 when they changed from the Terrain actor to the Landscape actor.
I wrote most of the UDN documentation on both of those actors for that engine and for 2.5.
There was a lot of outcry from most of the licensees regarding the design and functionality of Landscape.
And numerous promises by Epic to make some of the design issues right.
I had hoped that with UE4 they would have revisited Landscape and actually fixed a lot of it up.
It was probably just left as-is between engines because no one wanted to take it on.
That’s some interesting insight. Again, like I said, I love the engine and I love Epic for making it available to us at the price it is but it does feel like it could use a lot more attention in certain areas. If I only had the means to help I would. I am attempting to put together a universal landscape material that I plan to release for free. Here’s hoping I can get it approved for marketplace distribution.
Ehhh… that sound like the UMG we alreasdy have.
I refer to Post #29 for my point as to why it’s not.
Epics resources are limited. They have to prioritize what they add to the engine. My guess is that most developers prefer features that are difficult to implement yourself and there are a lot of such features still missing or in need of more work.
Also, even for something as seemingly universal as a settings menu, there are so many different needs depending on the game you are doing. A built in more high level system would end up fitting just a few of them, most would have to build one from scratch any way.
That said there are some comparably low level features relating to configuration that is missing, for example an easy way to configure inputs using blueprints. Even using C++ it is surprisingly complicated.
What you are describing is not “buttons, menus, check buttons and option buttons, sliders, accordion controls, tab controls, etc.” but specific controls for each setting.
sorry to say Luos but that isn’t even half of what we had for udk, i think you know the bits we’re missing from that.
to keep the line of the thread i think we need to define whats considered a requirement and whats excess bagage
whats the issues with market place content :- my issues
- are no try before you buy - eg paying for content that looks/sounds good but is bodged (just like lots of games) so that it works but is hard to put into your project
- content which isn’t kept up to date