Paper2d is perfectly fine for creating something “simple”. Problems start to arise when you try to do some more fancy stuff and when project starts to become too big and complex.
Creating a simple level is pretty easy here too. You just take paper2d template, import some assets and change main character animations. 10 minutes later you have a perfectly (but rudimentary) working side platformer.
Things start to become difficult when you try to mix and match physics,try to import huge amounts of sprites because none of skeletal programs have an import (with exception of Creature of course which by way rocks!) and fact that not all features have been exposed for 2d.
Having tried 2d engines (i started with construct 2) i can tell you with confidence that 3d engines that have FULL support for 2d are future. performance and limitless possibilities of mixing FBX/particles with sprites are just too to ovelook. Not to mention fact that your game is guaranteed to work with all game consoles.
problem with paper2d has to do with underdevelopment. It does not need a separate engine. Up until now it was ( is just my opinion from connecting dots) developed as a passion side project of one developer. If he resumes full time and exposes all award winning features of Unreal to us, like anim notifications etc then pretty soon paper2d will be considered only option for 2d development as well.
Why they still haven’t done ? Ask management!!
Whatever they are smocking must be super strong!
I work at a video game company in Japan. There’s talk of developing on UE4, but over half employees here are keen on 2d.
Unfortunately, I told higher-ups something I just found to be incorrect - that UE4 has robust 2d workflow/support.
I fully agree with 's comments.
I’m really liking UE4, but I must admit, 2d is weakest of links I’ve come across so far.
If 2d were more developed, it’d be easy for me to convince head honchos here to use UE4 over Unity if possible.
It’s saddening to see 2d section on Trello seems it’s been dead since almost half a year ago.
I’m finishing my first 2D projectwith UE4, and I love editor and blueprints because productivity and workflows are , great, nice!
But… for my next 2D project I decided to go with… (please, don’t laugh at me)… GameMaker!!
drastic decision was mainly because of 2D graphics performance and device compatibility.
Good question, trying to resume a long answer:
Believe me I did a deep research, reading, testing, comparing… and for my particular case of simple 2D games for mobile and following requirements:
Some mature engine with acceptable world editor.
Complete documentation. (Godot engine failed here
Scripting with OOP or something similar… (not component+behavior like Unity or Construct 2)
Can handle several 2D sprites with acceptable FPS (ue4 failed one)
Good list of features that actually works.
And acceptable pricing structure for little indie guy… (No subscription based)
finalist were Godot and GameMaker, but Godot engine with lack of documentation make me very slow to start implementing my silly game.
Unity would be recommended but personally I don’t feel good there when I have UE4 for everthing else: 3D, pc games. etc.
Construct 2 and Stencil didn’t satisfied me.
Then I learnt to use GameMaker in 2 hours, scripting is awful, I feel like programming in GW-Basic,
but everything works there, many functions dealing with everything you need for 2D graphics,
and mobile stuff (Google Play, IAP, facebook… ). performance surprised me.
forums are full of kids but it has .CHM documentation with Ctrl+F1, yeah, I love when everthing is in .CHM doc like in old times
And one of most sweet: You can see your project running in your connected phone in less than 20 seconds… that’s nice iteration.
If I want to make a bigger more complex 2D or 3D game for PC, I’ll use UE4. I love UE4.
My already started my Next GameMaker game without finishing UE4 one and I have nice progress in a few days…
(even sometimes I want to hang with my hands creators of GML scripting)
I hope or someone else will be assigned to Paper2D. It is a shame if something that cool was created and now will be just abandoned =/ Plus, there is no other alternative for making 2d in UE4
Paper2d will not be abandoned. has replied that it’s going to be supported by UE4 for a long time to come unless something drastic really happens with engine development. If you look at how things get implemented for engine, there’s a priority queue. Things that have highest priority are internal game projects or really integral engine components. If you’ve noticed work on paragon has been tossed back to us in a 4.11 update with all new hair/eyes/facial stuff. So as internal game projects shrink down to a skeleton dev team and more devs start returning back to engine, you’ll see more love for everything including paper2d.
There was recently a paper2d twitch training that happened and many questions were asked about paper2d to community peeps running twitch for that episode and they have confirmed that paper2d is on everyones mind and there are even end games that have already been considered for their performance and features. There is an upcoming paper2d C++ training stream that’s starting week( Feb 16th ) and I can’t imagine that would be happening if they didn’t believe in paper2d or want to support paper2d. (Showing what they have versus just ignoring feature.)
that being said, we need them optimizations and features ;D so lets just get together and make some noisseeee! (best way to bring something to attention, right?)
I think it would be a great idea to gather some good minds behind project. I wish I could contribute but I’m only a max 2 year C++ programmer with no idea how to do graphics programming. Yes Unreal would review your git submissions and you could always message one of unreal devs on twitter or directly message them on here to see what they’d recommend for submitting stuff for review. If you can get a group together to start improving paper2d lmk, at very least I’d like to test and provide feedback.
Well considering I made a small pull request (that wouldn’t take long for an epic programmer to look at) which hasn’t been pulled in, I don’t think they are taking community additions seriously. Even if we did pull together resources, there’s no guarantee that anyone would look at it or merge it into engine.
It takes some time to review PR’s because they have to verify everything. code might work, but what if it is quite performance hungry. Does it work under all circumstances? Is it written according to Epics code conventions? Unreal Engine is incredibly huge and it takes time to review everything.
Maybe. He’s aware of PR but he’s been assigned to other projects by epic so ultimately he’s not obliged to do paper2D right now. really its up to epic to assign resources to it. currently it seems there isn’t a need for it from their perspective.
Fricker said in recent 4.11 preview stream(around 01:08:45) that is currently working on Paragon and Paper2D is on hiatus but He’d love to work on it in (near?) future. He further said that they’d even assign more resources to Paper2D. Regardless of current state, they will of course fix bugs in it.
Please correct me if I got anything wrong from stream^^
Just looked at stream. It was almost like realized “wait he’s only one working on paper2d?” when he made comment of “we should probably put more people on that.”
You might want to consider my 2D Animation Tool called Creature. It does full on Mesh + Bone Skeletal Animation for 2D and a lot more (cloth, hair, dynamics, procedural animation).
It also has a that is integrated well into UE4 pipeline ( Blueprints of course! )
Website:
UE4 :
What it can do in UE4 -
Video 1:S01sZY8mTz4
Video 2: https://www…com/Koh8L03d9-A
