Paper2D

Well, is there anything going on in Paper2D development?
There doesn’t seem to be any update since 4.8

I recently got into Paper2D and it is a real mess to work with.

I have some suggestions that could improve Paper2D:

Animations:

  • Implement State Machines / Sprite Animation Blueprint

  • Increases Reusability since it creates a template how Animations are coordinated

  • AnimNotifies for Flipbooks!

  • The Flipbook should decide whether it loops or not, not the Character/Blueprint the Flipbook contains

Rendering:

  • Let sprites automatically face the camera(toggleable)

  • Allow custom Sorting

  • Sprites are usually facing the Camera. In a Birdeye view, Sprites Facing the Camera may clip into obstacles(3D) that are behind them

  • Material for single Sprites is useless, since it gets overriden by the Flipbook(and you can’t use a single Sprite in a sprite component, only flipbooks )

I’d like to read some feedback from Epic regarding Paper2D

There are several threads regarding the state of Paper2D. We are not actively working on Paper2D, we will continue to maintain it, but no feature development is occurring. If users would like to see it improve, please submit pull requests for it and we’ll try and integrate them.

Does it mean UE4 is getting away from 2D completely ?

Looks like it. I guess many people are better off with other engines.:frowning:

Search the forum for “Scissor2D” and pray he doesn’t stop development, or else you will be better off looking elsewhere for 2D.

Can’t really have it all in one engine. I think 2D (besides UMG, which is only good for UIs, IMO) was never a strong suit of UE4.

Except that Paper2D is advertised as an engine feature.
It’s literally a punch in the face to advertise something as a engine feature although it is incomplete and not developed any further.

But no feature in game industry is ever complete. There are only features “in development” or not :wink:
There’s no word about 2D games on the official Overview website. At least it’s not easy to spot it.

And Epic doesn’t say “we gonna develop 2D tools in our engine”. And they admit it few posts above.
It’s enough to compare release notes of Unreal and Unity. Where every release of Unity add some great tools for developing 2D games. And Unreal features are all about 3D games or 2D/3D games, but almost nothing exclusively for 2D.

The engine is open in that if people want to continue the development they can… I do not like Unity, but if I was going to make a 2d game, that would be the engine to use.

teak

I’m thinking there might be a good way to setup this initiative. Kinda spur the community to come together and have a mission statement. Especially those who would love to kinda get started with some engine type development(component or otherwise). Maybe creating a specific private channel in the forums with the guide lines for PR’s and Code guidelines. Some get started kinda tips/tricks or videos that can be practiced and watched. Some sources to read for education and development. That way anyone who’s serious about taking this on has a place and people they can mingle with to move forward. Nothing Game Dev related but Paper2d development specifically related.

My advice would be a discord server, or a slack server and a forum thread here asking people to join who want to contribute.

You could then fork the engine on github, and send pull requests based on development branches from some coordinated fork. Would love to see a small group in the community get behind advancing some portion of the engine they’re super interested in (like Paper2D).

It seems that these guys have a pretty solid grasp with Paper2D.

Spartan. An epic 2d platformer powered by Paper2d! - Released Projects - Unreal Engine Forums!

I wonder if they could lend any help to this cause.

Se puede hacer un grupo para mantenerlo y agregar cosas nuevas.

I would love to see this and help in testing since I’m not that clever in code tweaks

I would like to see Paper2D to develop too, because people will start using other engines like Unity or Godot Engine.

Also voting for more paper2D support. It’s a trendy thing to do especially on mobile games. In fact, if there could be something like live2D in unreal, it would be the go-to engine for mobile games.