Is Unreal Engine for game developers or for engine troubleshoothers?

General Feedback & Requests
62

Learning how to make games does take years. Sorry if that’s a bummer, but UE4 isn’t going to do that learning for you.

Now if you have specific questions, everyone here will be happy to answer. Stuff like “how to load a JSON file in UE4” can be answered through a 10-minutes search. Specific questions about Blueprints, UI, rendering will be answered as well. You can even go to the unofficial Slack channel for UE4, or the UE4 reddit, or AnswerHUB or this very forum. Hell, I made 70,000 lines of C++ code available to UE4 users needing guidance. People will help you.

You will however also need to help yourself.

63

Well I thought this industry was supposed to be a bit more helpful when people get stuck with the engine, but I didn’t mean that by being helpful, that I wanted to get more lectures. Oh well, anyway I asked about how to read a text file in the blueprints. I don’t know that yet.and how do we narrow the Game Camera Screenview so we have room to put the widget in.

Does unreal have a dialog editor that allows you to also add in also animations and sound audio into the dialog? and update quest or items flags?

For thousands of lines of dialog, I thought there would need to be some kind of utility you can load your script file in as my script file is over 154 thousand
lines long and it just reads and extracts the text and builds all your dialog from the script file into some kind of table database file which you can then tell Unreal to read from to get the speaker ID and Flag value and it should also beable to read my %flags% as a flag, as I used alot of environment variables in my script for the flags.

Yeah, the reason why I ask for help to specifics things I wanna know is because in the Unreal Documents, I don’t understand some of their Jargon that they use to describe certain out engine functions. so I ask people to explain where I get stuck.

I got the dialog now working with triggers in the level, but not the choices input dialog part yet, as I’m not sure how to set up dialog choices. I’m still new to blueprints.

64

You need to create all these things, with Blueprint or C++. They are not parts of the engine (nor any other game engine, really).

For example black stripes would be achieved by creating a HUD with two UMG brushes on top of it, a dialog system is something that you can create quite fast - you just need to show a dialog line and a list of possible answers with buttons to select them. It’s probably something you can do overnight. Those are easy things, to be honest. A quest system is more complex (having worked on one myself).

Now since my trying to help you is “wasting your time”, I’m done here. Good luck with your project.

65

Yes, the game engine doesn’t have a fully working comprehensive dialog editor although i thought with al these changes being made, the engine would provide one. but I think you have to get it from marketplace… Fair enough, I guess I need to show a little more patience with the other coders, sometimes I forget people work under these team company structures, as I’m not in a company team so I don’t know a lot of things of the engine as a result…

The Quest system shouldn’t really be that hard to do if you use a flag as a switch to turn on all the quest-related text with your NPC’s that are involved in it and any item flags to update the quest. That’s how I did it in my own script and it worked for me. I simply used a flag as a switch to turn the quests storylines on or off. its more fun when you can use arrays in your quests to determine rewards and stuff…

I guess then If we put two UMG brushes to create those black bands across the screen then it prob don’t matter if it covers up part of the main screen. The only thing I had issue with was having to create all these many hud blueprints just to show each dialog segment of text up in the hud because you had to also remove it from the hud with a timer because there’s no add new page option to the canvas yet in the hud editor to store the text on to call it that I can see of. That’s how I was trying to do it. I saw this being ok for doing just a little bit of dialog, but not if you had thousands of lines of dialog. So I knew there had to be some kind of text table file for doing all that dialog.

There’s also the option to also load in custom jpg with the dialog text if you want those nice looking custom made dialog windows… I still to create the Menu Hud screens. there’s a lot of work to do in the hud.

66

@Gwenn Just wanted to say thanks on releasing the source code for HR. Forked it and just now started to review…

teak

67

Oh guys… I’M EXHAUSTED!

Another bug here!

I’m programming a FPS game.
The grenade is supposed to explode after X seconds I throw it.

On 4.10 if I throw 5 grenades, 5 grenades explode.
On 4.12 if I throw 5 grenades, 3 grenades explode.
On 4.13 if I throw 5 grenades, 3 grenades explode.

WHAT THE F**K !

But… I mean… SERIOUSLY?

Guys I’m super angry.

Why is every freakin’ update ruining my game?

You know what? Stop updating your API! You only add troubles on troubles breaking our code!

Now the challenge is finding the reason of this.

I just asked for making a game, this is going to take me to the hell!

BIG THANKS EPIC GAMES!

VIDEO

68

Wow that’s a big thread and right up my alley. I too would prefer if they stopped adding new features and rather focus on improving the existing engine. However I understand throwing out new features is what makes their living. Games aren’t like an application that controls rockets. You throw something together that works, you don’t care how it looks under the hood and if you can make the game console kiddies go “wooow, ey woow ey, dat shlt is WHACK” then you have a winner. Games usually don’t have a long shelf life. You sell them for a couple of months until you churn out the sequel and that’s it. That’s the sad truth about game development and anybody who thinks otherwise is delusional.

I have recently posted that I would love to see better documentation but I know too that this is not going to happen. Because it cost manpower that could be used more profitable by adding some new features that make the list of “new features” in the next release note even more impressive (aka longer). I have seen this with other engines before I came to Unreal, so it’s nothing specific to Epic. It’s simply the shark mentality out there based on the vulture capitalist culture that fuels those companies with money. These moneybags that bankroll big companies don’t care about software engineering or good documentation. All they care about is a new release every six months that washes more money into their koffers.

Unreal is a pretty good and stable engine IF you stick to a set of functionality that is old, proven and has been fixed in the past. My application basically has static and skeletal meshes in a world, lights, uses the navigation system on a per character basis and thats it. I don’t use the fancy new stuff because I don’t even understand what it’s supposed to do. Of course that’s no option for the poor people who have to make AAA games, because those games live of the optics and not content. But they have million dollar budgets and can deal with Epic on a whole different level (I doubt they are even reading this because they probably have priority access to Epic).

My advice is: Be modest, stick to simple stuff and try to make a game with content, not with optical gimmicks, then Unreal is a real fine engine and editor system. And if you want to minimize the chances of update related bugs: Update to a new engine version only when they are working on the next version so that you get the latest patch. Let the people who want the latest gimmicks deal with the bugs.

69

4.13 is even worse than 4.12, man this engine starts to be on par with Unity and their sloppy updates. Since 4.11 this engine is going downhill… Crashes, editor freezes, constantly changing the API, breaking things/features that worked fine before…

Assertion failed: !Obj->HasAnyFlags(RF_NeedLoad|RF_NeedPostLoad|RF_ClassDefaultObject) [File:D:\Build++UE4+Release-4.13+Compile\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\CoreUObject\Private\UObject\UObjectGlobals.cpp] [Line: 2305]
Attempting to replace an object that hasn’t been fully loaded: AISenseConfig_Sight

This engine is so unstable now… And they are already planning 4.14, so we have to wait another 2-3 months for fixes that were supposed to happen 2-3 months ago… bah

70

So agreed.

They should definitely STOP adding new stupid features no one is ever gonna use and think more about making their engine decently stable!

71

I haven’t checked 4.13 yet and I don’t intend to do so until the last moment. Like I said, the sad reality is every new update introduces new bugs and unfair as it may be, I rather let others deal with it, which is a sad consequence of Epic’s policy of churning out update after update because they want to get new features in instead of fixing old bugs. Sad.

72

Something makes me think that when the Engine was fee-paying, it was **waaaaay **more stable than now.

73

Not necessarily. The small fee they collected before they made it free would hardly pay one developers salary I bet. And the high prices for AAA companies they charged before that may or may not, but then we wouldn’t have the engine. I rather have something not so perfect available for a decent price than something that works perfect which I can’t afford.

Let’s face it: UE may be buggy for some people depending on what they do, but it is still the best thing around. I tried out several other engines before and they cost me years of my life, because they were, quite frankly shlt. Unreal has allowed me to get something going within a year that is way more advanced than the previous versions I made with Ogre and the C4 engine in 6 years. Of course there is lots to improve here and I think we should continue to pester Epic to set aside some people to work on bugs alone and to improve the documentation, but I don’t think paying a few bucks from some little guys like us is the answer. They have probably dozens of people employed with millions of dollars budget. A few bucks from us won’t matter to them.

74

Engines change though and new ones are coming too, at the same time. You might go for another engine, the same way you moved to UE4.

The only thing keeping me personally from using UE4 for any semi-serious hobby project is the lack of some crucial features and the fact that there’s no scripting language to work with.

75

You could make a source build and only incorporate the PR’s that you feel are necessary to the development of your game… Epic does give us quite a bit of control on what is in the engine. At least we have the source.

teak

76

G’day all, here to share what we just went through.

We’ve been doing a lot of AI related work on Ground Branch lately, as people have really responded well to the cooperative mode vs. AI controlled bad guys.
We recently came across a very odd bug that caused all of the bad guys to no longer target anyone.
Turned out to be an absolute nightmare to find.
In case it was related to something we’d done, I began updating and/or outright replacing any of our code relating to AI and teams.
Meanwhile, @zoombapup did the annoying debug work and after some back and forth from one of the programmers at Epic, tracked down the problem.
And so it got fixed.

It sucked and cost us several days… but that’s UE4 baby :slight_smile:

And now some words of advice:

  • When a new version of the engine comes out - don’t upgrade.

Skip a version (or two).
Ground Branch is currently using UE4.11.2.
Before that, we were using UE4.9.2

  • When a new feature is added that you really want/need - don’t upgrade.

If you were getting along with out it before, you can get along without it now.

  • When a bug is fixed that you needed to be fixed - don’t upgrade.

If it is a vital fix you, see if you can patch the fix in yourself.
It can be tedious sometimes, but its doable.
A decent comparison program works - I personally use Beyond Compare.

  • If you must upgrade - don’t upgrade.

Wait a week or two - there is usually a hot fix (or 5) on the way.
In the mean time, go over the change list and make note of any key things that may affect you and also check out the latest latest transition guide.

  • Once the hot fixes are out - don’t upgrade.

At least don’t upgrade the main build that your team work out of.
Create a branch (or what ever your version control system calls it) that you can use for upgrade and work in that.
Once you’ve had time to update the underlying C++ and core Blueprints that have been affected, work on content.
Once you’ve got content out of the way, check it.
If its a multiplayer game, check it online.
Then - and only then - consider merging back into your main branch.

We learned these lessons the hard way.
Hopefully this will prevent our mistakes becoming yours.

As far as where we’re currently at, now that 4.13 has dropped, that’d be the “waiting for hot fixes” stage.
I’ve gone over the change list and checked out the transition guide for 4.13.
I’ve even begun checking out individual functions that are important to us.

Once hotfix 1 drops - no doubt within the week - I’ll create a branch and begin on the C++ changes.
Wish me luck :slight_smile:

77

Why does this thread exist? I’d like to request a mod to close this, not constructive at all.

79

Kinda why I was here in the first place - to make sure it the thread had not degenerated into personal attacks or similar.
If that happens, we (moderators) will no doubt receive several emails informing us of the fact.
Until then, there is no harm on letting it progress.
It does demonstrates the direction some of Epic’s user base would prefer their product to head.
Additionally, some usefulness may also be gleamed from some of the user posts.

80

That is an absurd insult to everyone working in games industry.
If you don’t respect games as a medium I don’t know what the **** you’re doing here or why you’re even involved with game development.

81

Most if not all who developed their own game engine before will be very grateful with UE4 kind of licensing and ‘open source’ code of stuff… This is totally unheard of 5 years ago, and most people were just simply drooling back then because the license was simply UN-affordable.

Now back to the point of ‘game engine developers’… yes because they know precisely the hard work that get into creating one. And UE4 just make things so much easier (well, comparatively speaking) that any bugs/difficulties encountered should just be dealt with strategy like do not upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. Possible workaround should be adopted where necessary, cherry picking code changes which solve your woes, and stick to the features you have. Well probably that is true why some people are not suited to game programming - things are naturally not that easy, and lowering the barrier of entry (as UE4 does) still does not change the reality.

82

Latest biggest “Indie” title (No man’s sky) showed that most of the hard work is spent into marketing and hype just to get the initial release sell as much as possible.