I have been editing the landscape on an open world level that comes in one of the templates. I have discovered, to my dismay, that editing this level applies the changes to the same level across all projects. If I create a new project, and create a new open world level, the edits I made to the level are kept from another project. This is also happening if I create and save a new level within the same project. Shouldn’t creating a new project create a new level without edits? And shouldn’t creating a new level do the same? What am I doing wrong? I think this started happening with a recent update, I’m on 5.7.2, and I don’t remember it happening before. Thanks!
Hello @involv3r1 ,
From what you’re describing, that the Landscape edits persist even when creating a new project or a new level, that is not normal behavior. A new project should always start with a clean copy of the template.
The only thing I can think of is that you might be editing content that lives inside the Engine rather than inside your project’s Content folder. In Unreal, there’s an important distinction, everything under your project’s Content folder belongs exclusively to that project, while anything under /Engine/ is shared engine content and affects all projects using that same engine installation.
(You need to make sure you’re only editing content that lives inside the green section, meaning your project’s Content folder. That’s the only place where changes are isolated to your specific project.
If you want to use something that comes from the Engine, the safe approach is to duplicate it into your project’s Content folder and work on that copy instead. That way you avoid modifying shared Engine content and prevent changes from affecting other projects.)
If the map or the Landscape you’re modifying is located under /Engine/Content/…, then you would actually be modifying the base template asset itself. That would perfectly explain why the changes appear in new projects, why newly created levels already include those modifications, and why it feels like the change is “global.”
So then, if you can confirm that you’re not editing anything inside the Engine folder, does the same thing happen in other engine versions? If you can detail the repro steps, including how you’re creating the project and where you’re saving it, we should be able to identify more precisely where the issue is being generated.
Hope it helps!
1 Like
Wow… Okay, so I have been editing a level in Engine Content. It lives in All>Engine>Content>Maps>Templates. It’s the basic OpenWorld level. I was just thrown off because I’ve not encountered this before, in the past I could do things as expected with that same template map, and presumably I was editing maps in Project Content, maybe it got moved from Project Content to Engine Content with a recent update? Like it just seems like things must be organized differently than before? Well, now I know why those edits persist. Thanks so much for your thorough and thoughtful answer. I’ll definitely be mindful of what lives where in the future. What’s the best way to restore that Engine Content level to it’s original state?