So I’m pretty new to Unreal 4 and I’ve been following the various video tutorials out there… I’m getting through them mostly successful but it’s clear that Epic’s not concerned about this when they make name changes to things… like the brightness parameter in light being renamed to illumination… come on really? many older basic tutorial videos are difficult to follow verbatim because of little (but significant) changes like this.
ok rant over… so anywho, all this got me thinking… with them changing fundamental stuff, does this mean that upgrading likely leads to broken projects? I figure if the tutorials don’t work to the letter, then this means things much break along the way…
Is it better to just stick with a particular version to learn with and then i guess get good and then update later on and deal with all the changes then? I could see going either way… on the one hand its annoying to learn from old videos… but then on the other hand why keep up with the latest version when most likely 99% of it is stuff that wouldn’t impact a beginner anyway…
I believe it is a good idea to stick with one version however, I believe I learned more about the engine when things broke from engine updates. It made me dig deeper into the settings and test almost every check box to find out what went wrong. Because of this, I had a lot of “Ah Ha” moments.
Sure if UE4 is a toy for one to play with but if your making a game for real then I think it’s a better decision on Epics part to release early rather than making us wait another two years for a polished engine just to start the process. Sure moving stuff around is a bit annoying but makes up by adding that one key feature additions that you need to make your stuff work.
What I’ve been doing is making note of the publish date of the tutorial (Epic and third party) and then installing the UE4 Engine version that was available in the launcher at that time, based on the publish date of the release thread in the Announcements and Releases forum. It does create some bloat on the drive, however in my case I feel like it is worth it, because then I don’t lose my patience and am able to focus. And if space were tight, I could just delete a version that I don’t need anymore and then grab it again later if need be.
In my opinion, the only reason to stick with a particular version is for actual development for release. And yes, upgrading can lead to broken projects. That is not written in stone and sometimes migrating a project to a new Engine version works fine and might even be better and improve performance. Yet with a project for release, at some point it is a good idea to just freeze the code for the Engine and then only add specific fixes and features from newer Engine releases if genuinely necessary.
When you update Unreal Engine, you can clone your project when you open it up for the first time in the latest version. That way, if you find your game is broken, you can still go back to the old version of your game, in the old version on Unreal.
That way, you can keep up with the latest developments, take advantage of bug fixes and improvements, and still have a fallback, if something breaks that you can’t fix.
Definitely take in the updates as they come. Better to learn each new feature and tweak incrementally than having it hit you all at once later on. And if one update breaks your program, better to find out now than later, because the more updates that roll out the worse it will be.
Of course, test your project out thoroughly with each new release before fully committing, just so you can be sure it is the program and not something new you added.
While learning or experimenting, it’s generally not a bad idea to update to the newest version.
While working on a real project, though, it’s generally a bad idea to update to new major revisions. And UE4 has been treating point-releases as if they’re major revisions so far, which is pretty normal this early in development. Of course, if you need a bugfix or new feature from the newest revision, you don’t have much choice in the matter anyhow.
