So after a brief break from unreal engine, I decided to tackle a project that I was working on. But now when I open the file, and I’ve tried with both 5.5 and 5.6, I get this error message:
“The package ‘/Game/ThirdPerson/Blueprints/BP_ThirdPersonCharacter’ was saved with an older version which is not backwards compatible with the current process. Min Required Version: 214 Package Version: 0”
I don’t get why this happens when I open my project. And this also happens with the backup copy I made. Not only that, but all of my levels are just gone. Not that they’re not in the content browser, but nothing happens when I click them and there’s just a void of black. I’m really worried that I’ve lost all my progress on my project that I’ve spent a lot of time on.
Can anyone help me out? Why does unreal engine have to be so unoptimized and an absolute nightmare to work with? Yes, I am looking at other engines right now, but I’ve spent a lot of time learning blueprints and I felt like I could at least make something small with unreal. Extremely disappointing.
That’s a terrible situation for your project, let’s try to figure this one out. Checking around the community, the error you are receiving means that the .uasset header is corrupted, so the engine is unable to read the internal version number (which is why its showing as Package Version: 0). The file is treated as invalid, skipping all loading processes, resulting in the black void you are describing.
As for “Required Version: 214”, that should be the expected value for UE 5.4. Meaning, the first step is to try said version of the engine, as per your post, you tested 5.5 and 5.6 so far.
If the problem persists, we can check for other available backups. Check your project’s route and explore the following locations, as they could hold working copies of your levels and blueprints:
\Saved\Autosaves
\Saved\Backup
\DerivedDataCache\
Finally, if all fails, the remaining path, although difficult, would be to check your files with a hex editor. The worflow would go like this:
Open the corrupted .uasset file in hex
Look at the first few lines to check the file header and/or version info
Then, compare it to a working .uasset file from a fresh UE project
If the corrupted file shows garbage data at the start, that file header is confirmed to be corrupted
From here, you can attempt to manually fix the version numbers in the header (a hard task, but it’s worth a shot)
