Lyra Starter Game – Experience selection overridden by DeveloperSettings

Development Programming & Scripting
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1

Hi,

I’m studying the Lyra Starter Game to better understand the Experience System and how Experiences are selected at runtime.

I noticed that even when launching a map with an explicit OptionsString, for example:

/Game/System/FrontEnd/Maps/L_LyraFrontEnd?Experience=B_LyraFrontEnd_Experience

the log sometimes reports:

Identified experience B_LyraDefaultExperience (Source: DeveloperSettings)

instead of using the Experience passed via OptionsString.

I understand how the mechanism works when OptionsString is used correctly, but I’d like to clarify the intended design:

Is it expected that DeveloperSettings can override OptionsString during certain phases (PIE, early boot, FrontEnd)?

Is Lyra intentionally not designed for runtime Experience selection driven by UI before FrontEnd initialization?

Is the recommended approach to keep the FrontEnd Experience fixed and branch only at the Gameplay Experience level?

I’m not looking for a workaround, just to understand whether this behavior is by design.

Thanks!

2

Hey, welcome to the forums!

If you provide an experience definition in the developer settings, it is supposed to override the experience for any game in PIE.
(The reason being it should be a debug tool to enforce a specific experience)

Any other experience can (and should) be selected dynamically via the UI when starting a new game, or read by an existing session when joining one.

FrontEnd Experience can remain untouched as it already lays out the entire front end of lyra.
(but of course you can change and modify it, just note that this is purely for the front end and not gameplay)

Meaning the “usual” workflow would be to add new game features and create custom Experience Definitions for your own gameplay and User Facing Experience Definitions (for displaying them in the experience selection screen).