Map Development General Questions

Development World Creation
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Question 1: I’m working on a UE project. Base on other digital projects I’ve worked on, not Game Development, but primarily Graphic Images, Photoshop type stuff before. As I progress I tended to duplicate what I was working on and keep the last version as a fail safe incase I screwed something up.

For Unreal Engine is this a standard procedure or no? When working on a Map, is this a standard practice having a map v1, v2, v3, as your work progresses just in case some calamity, these copies of the map would allow you to easily jump back if needed?

Hopefully I’ve made this next part clear what I am trying to do.
Question 2: my current project includes a single map with Landscape Layers. When I paint on the map, there are Shared Asset files for that map, associated with the Material you are using that records your progress.

I think I’m running into issues where if I duplicate a Map and give it a new name say Map V2, everything works and looks the same as on V1, but the problem I’m seeing (perceiving?) is that Shared Asset files are still linked back to the V1 Map. Yet it seems to paint ok, but somehow I wonder if I’m screwing up the V1 Map or something else?

I’ve noticed when I set this up for the first time, the Engine auto creates a Shared Asset folder and offers to put the Shared Asset files there.

I hope there is a way when duplicating a map, and then changing it’s name, that a new Shared Asset folder and files would be created for the new version of the map, but I’m not seeing that. Instead, it appears that the Shared Assets are still pointing back to the shared asset files in the V1 map.

I’m using the same material for both versions o the map. I tried to duplicate the Shared Asset files, and place them in the new Shared Asset Folder I created for the new version of the map, but I have not discovered a way to make the Materials Layers, start writing to the Shared Assets files associated with the new version of the map.

Any ideas or is there a better way to do this?
Thanks! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hey @Fantam_Mayfly!

As far as Question 1 goes, absolutely! In fact if it’s assets you can export it into a .fbx file and store it anywhere you want (typically another drive, in case of storage failure). If you have the room, backing up the entire project regularly is HIGHLY recommended, and is standard for development.

And Q2, what you’ll need to do to keep yourself from having to change all references:
When you duplicate, change the name of the copy, not the original. Then archive the copy. Or is that what you’re doing and it’s trying to point to the copy?

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Regarding Q2 I’m trying to keep sequential maps as their own entities, and my impression is that if 2 maps share the same shared assets files, example a V2 and V3, it might lead to complications, if you start doing things in the later version like edit/changing the material, if you then want revert to V2? Is that the case or will the engine be able to keep track of the two different map versions using the same shared assets files? What I have been trying to do is keep a separate shared asset files for each version of the same map. So if this is sound, I’d want a version 2 and 3 maps to have their own individual shared assets files.

Now that I am thinking about it with a name like “shared assets” does this mean these layer files are intended to share across multiple map versions?

That said, I realize if I change the material, that if I want to preserve the earlier version as is, that I should duplicate the material too so that the version of the material used in V3 is separate from the material used in V2.

I don’t have much experience with exporting .fbx files. If I take a project and export the entire project, what part of the project do you select to tell it to export as .fbx? And once it is exported, will it still open as a project, or must you do something to it to resurrect it as a project?

Or wait a second, should I be thinking of the build data file for the map as where this info is kept, and not shared assets? :thinking:

Thanks!

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Hey again Fantam_Mayfly!

So when I say “Backup” I mean taking the entire project folder, in Windows, and copying it somewhere else as a theoretical “Save Point”. Exporting things doesn’t take the project, it just takes things out of the project to be imported again somewhere else (or back to the same project.

Honestly .fbx is typically just for models and such. Maybe it’s not as great of an idea for this. If you do regular backups of your project you can easily migrate things from a backup to your current project. That’s simply a “Migrate> All dependencies> Select root folder for project you want to migrate to.” Granted, that would still require fixing references and such if you want to keep bloat down and not have multiples of the same texture.

Most things can be used by multiple other things. Such as Materials, etc. Those maps can have as many things like that as they need to. You don’t need 51 door BPs for 51 doors, you just need a single door BP referenced 51 times to create/destroy doors as needed. You see what I’m saying?

And don’t second guess yourself there, you had it right. Build data is for things like baking lighting and static meshes and such for the outgoing build, not assets mid-production.

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Thanks for answering!

I realize I could just duplicate the entire project and save that, but this starts to take up a lot of storage, so instead, I’m trying to duplicate a level, and the parts of that level such as layers and materials, which are also easily duplicated, but all of the source material is still available.

quote: You don’t need 51 door BPs for 51 doors, you just need a single door BP referenced 51 times to create/destroy doors as needed. You see what I’m saying?

So is this is how a shared asset file works? It seems like it’s created and tied to the map when you create the layer info, but I could be mistaken about that.
I do know if you duplicate the map, it will keep it’s references to the original layer info, which prompted this question: If you want to have 2 viable maps, that are progressions of each other, that you could revert back to if you had too, should you have separate shared asset files for each map?

Here is my example:
So I duplicate a map, old map is v2 and new map is v3. Map v3 is using the Map v2 shared asset files. I know this because the new map shows that the layers for the applied material all ready exist, and reside in the map v2 shared assets folder.

Should I want to establish separate shared asset files for the new renamed map? And if I plan on changing the material, I might want to duplicate that too for any changes I make to it.

OK, so I duplicate the shared asset files for the V3 (as in version 3) map, but I find in the new v3 map, for layers, it still points back at the shared asset files for the v2 map.

I’m supposing this is not ideal if I ever want to revert back to the V2 map, because wouldn’t those shared asset files will have been changed as I update the V3 map?

Or can shared asset files keep track of what is happening is the two different V2 and V3 maps?

And if I should keep the shared asset files linked to their associated map (V2 versus V3 maps), how can I tell the map to start looking at the shared asset files I duplicated and want to use for the V3 map?

Thanks again!

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Oh my gosh I’m so sorry. There’s been a misunderstanding and I didn’t realize it until you quoted me. You mean the SharedAssets FOLDER. I thought you were meaning assets that were used by more than one thing, in general!

You are fine. Your SharedAssets is something used by UE5 to do yes, exactly what you were saying. Here’s the thing. Everything in UE is given a (hidden) ID#, and ALL things have a 100% unique one per project, including duplicated things! This is something that determines how the sharedAssets act. There’s only one SharedAssets folder, you’re good :sweat_smile:

You can modify your multiple landscapes separately and it will in no way affect the others, as long as they are duplicates and not children, which you’d know if they were.

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Sorry for dragging this discussion out, but I want to be sure I understand the mechanics of UE in the circumstances I am describing.

I’ve noticed if I duplicate a map without layers painted on it. And then apply layers (by way of a material) , each new map will produce it’s own Shared Assets files for each layer in a folder named after the map. So maybe the way I am approaching this is not the best way, short of duplicating and archiving the entire project. Is there a better way? Or is the better way duplicating the entire project?

Anyway, If I duplicate a map that already has layers applied, v1 is the original, and v2 is the duplicate. The V2 map will still rely on the original Shared Assets Folder. I’m just not sure how good of a situation that is.

The idea behind me duplicating the map is for progression of the project and I want to keep the original map so I can revert to it if I need to. So both of these maps seem to share the same shared asset files.

Now in v2 of the map, I decide I want to alter the material, so I duplicate the material, give it a new name, and then apply the new material to the map v2. Then I proceed to alter the material and paint layers in the v2 map.

So the shared asset folder being used by both maps can distinguish between what I’m doing in the 2 different maps? I think I’ve observed with what I am doing by duplicating maps, altering a material, then add a layer to that material, you could end up in a situation where a map might be relying on 2 different Shared Asset folders. At least that is my impression. :smiley:

If for some reason, I want to revert back to the original map, is there a point by virtue of both of these maps relying on the same shared asset files, that something for the original map will be screwed up?

Maybe it would be better if I just duplicate the entire project and archive the older version.
Thanks!

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Hey again @Fantam_Mayfly!

So something I would suggest is:
Try a few of these things out and see what works for you.

  1. Find your level and export it, which should include the terrain. Much less storage than the whole project. Test this by making a dummy blank project and try to Import the level to that.
  2. Backup the entire project. Delete versions which aren’t deemed important regularly to make room for new backups.
  3. Just keep going. Like I said, it SHOULD be fine but trust is hard to come by when you work hard on something :sweat_smile:
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Ok, I guess this was staring me in the face and I did not see it. :upside_down_face: I’ve found that if I want to duplicate a map, simply duplicate it. And if it has levels, go to the shared asset folder for that map and duplicate the levelinfo files, create a new equivalent folder “New Map Name- SharedAssets” folder, and move them over. Now when you launch the new map, when you look at the landscape levels, there is a place by each level where you can select which leveling files, you want the new map to reference. These will be the ones you moved over.