I am opening a thread here in hope that the management of Epic will read it, and give us a sincere answer on what is going on regarding the future of Paper2d.
Hello everyone,
as you can see from my signature we are developing a Paper2d game that will be available for Steam(PC) ,PS4 and XboxOne.
We as a 2 man studio are very proud and honored to use such an amazing game engine as Unreal.
But on the same time we are terrified when we see months go by, without any improvements regarding 2d.
Everyday we spend valuable man hours to try to work around issues that solely exist because of underdevelopment. On one hand we have a game engine so powerful that allows us to do stuff that a few years back would need dozens of people to do, and on the other it does not do things that freeware 2d engines can do.
The reasoning behind thread is not to point out what is wrong with paper2d but to inform you that there are people out there that their success depends from awesome plugin.We need more tools, we need more features, we need to feel safe that you will always be there for us and not leave us hang out to dry.
Mr Noland is nowhere to be found and we start to fear about the future of our game. Everything moves so fast in all other areas of the engine that inevitably we are going to face compatibility issues soon.
Do you have any ideas on what can be improved on Paper2d? Because I was able to get my 3d Fighting Template became paper2d completely after a good amount of work.
I am currently happy with whatever Paper2d offers to me, so I would like to hear what else could be done? In the end it is just 2D sprites.
I think the only important think lacks is having no “Anim Nofity” -like system. I already figured out a way around and I kinda understand why it wouldn’t work so I ain’t blaming them for it.
I don’t think they are in “we don’t care about paper2d” though. 4.9 has some bugfixes related to paper2d too so I am happier than ever!
Strange. I got many sprites on my map and 2 characters that are having lots of animations as they are 6+ combined flipbooks though I don’t hit any performance.
Paper2d is perfectly fine for a very small and simple game.But things start to get real difficult for bigger projects.
As Kitatus said performance has much to be desired.It is just way too slow. Excessive amounts of ghosting (way higher than the normal LCD display produces), we cannot lock a layer (try creating levels in 2D without layer locking) making picking,selecting and moving things around a nightmare.
Try snapping something that is out of the grid to something that is inside the grid.Its a hit and miss.
Flipbooks do not work inside UMG.
Matinee opacity changes do not work with sprites.
Anim notifies… Oh boy… Just our hero has currently 22 animations. Now imagine all the possible SFX combinations. Multiply with flipbooks that have various animation lengths(one for example is 100 sprites and the other is 15.) and try to fire consistently an SFX by getting every tick the animation position.
Have i made it work? Yes. Should i have wasted all these days to make it work?No.
Physics?Just a big patch of “be thankful, is the best i can do right now without me having to implement a proper solution”.
I get depressed every time i try to use them. The plane lock simply does not work because it twists and turns every time it faces an non ideal situation. Where is Box2d integration?
I could go on and on for hours but that is not the point.
The point is that Unity is so far ahead at , that makes me sad as a proud member of family, that Unreal management fails to see the importance of 2D and all the awesome games we can create if combined PROPERLY with a super powerful 3d engine. Is it too much to ask for a company of hundreds, to hire one, just one super awesome and passionate developer that his sole job in the company will be to take paper2d to the next level?
There are a lot of things I’d certainly like to see from Paper2d: I’ve monitored the 4.10 build on the github and there is activity in the paper2d plugin stuff. Hopefully there can be more but I think the best way we can get paper2d a full dev support is by making more paper2d games and showing that we’re trying to make something more than just a small simple game.
I’m currently preparing a WIP thread for the game I’m working on which is a huge paper2d based game and hopefully that’ll garner more attention for it.
Show Epic that we want these changes because we’re making something Unreal, right?
If a dev does look in here: Animation Notifies would be great. Grouped Sprites improvement for procedural content (collision improvement, better access to the instances created for more than just transforms, removal of instances to work more robustly). Allow us to set Z-render layering (for transparencies) on render shapes inside the render geometry in the sprite editor (so we don’t have to make two of the same art assets with different Z layers and different render geometries and group them). Collision check improvements. Fix a weird bug that happens that if you collide with someone, collision works properly on both ends, but if a collision object collides with you, if you’re not inputting anything, all logic for collision is ignored. (seems to only happen with paper 2d stuff.) and that would be about it for my improvements list. I’m sure there’s more but for right now those are the things that force a really convoluted work around that should def be easier for implementation.
I kinda disagree with the way of thinking “We will upgrade X plugin if you guys only use it.” I mean, I don’t want to start a war Unity vs Unreal4, but Unity got way more things related 2D stuff compared to UE4. Myself will not leave for Unity at all, Blueprints are amazing. But if a Random guy decides to make a 2d game and searches for an engine, he might have it way better in Unity than he would do so in UE4.
They should upgrade Paper2d alot, make it better performance wise, have more options etc so people can start using it MORE. =)
I agree with your sentiment. people should go to unreal first for all their needs and epic should be working hard to make paper2d as first class as possible. the reason thread exists is because it feels like they’re not, so my statement was more of a rally to start raising some smoke(where there is smoke, there is fire :p). I’ll rephrase with more action statements of what we should do: Take the forums, take to twitter, take to facebook. Start showing off our paper2d stuff. Post something daily about paper2d. show them that it’s active, show them that it’s wanted, and more importantly show the world unreal and what the capabilities are. set the expectations for 2d game making (even if certain things have to be faked :o).
Either way, I think we’re going to get some upgrades next engine update. At the very least I’m hopeful.
Yep, that’s the way people supposed to think about.
Here is also something terrible related to Paper2d and it’s “Bind on Finishedplaying”.
Despite the fact that Bind on Finishedplaying asks for a flipbook component to check, the event link is global. So, if you linked an event to A Flipbook’s FinishedPlaying, the event will trigger when ANOTHER Flipbook ends aswell. So what do you need to do? You need to have an “Unbind all events from FinishedPlaying” everytime you call an event related to animation. is really unpleasent. There shouldn’t really be an Event Binding. Why is there no simple event to call when a certain Flipbook animation is over?
Also they backburnered “Anim Notify” system for Flipbooks so I think we are out of luck for that. It’s a real shame.
I see Devs answer all sort of questions in the forums, except ours.
The paper2d thread is dead for months. How do you expect newcomers to join Paper2d when their questions stay unanswered for months?
Is Mr. Noland still head of the Paper2d plugin?
C’mon guys.
Give us something so we can start smiling again. Just a sign that everything is ok, that way we can stop worrying about the future of 2d inside Unreal.
They still answer on answerhub when it comes to Paper2D. They just don’t have to answer to every post in forums. Doesn’t mean they don’t read it though.
Paper2D is still strong. I just think they don’t have the manpower to work with 3d and 2d simultaneously. I am sure they will do things better evetually for 2D too
I am talking about engine developers not staff members. Like Nick Darnell is responsible for Umg ,we had (have?) . He was rocking the paper2d forum, all day ,everyday. Not anymore, leaving me to speculate that paper2d is headless.
Although i really enjoy your positive energy in case i cannot agree with you, and give them a free pass. We cannot stand still and wait months for them to decide when they will resume development. I am not their accountant but i find it highly unlikely that Epic cannot afford to hire one more developer. I believe that we are in unfortunate situation because of management decisions or negligence. Lets all hope that they will acknowledge how serious and dangerous (for people like me that our game is more than half finished) whole thing has started to become.
Just chiming in to show my support for Paper2D as well. I check the main Paper2D thread every week and it’s sad to see how it’s dwindled into nothingness
Hopefully Noland gets back to work on it as he seemed to be making great progress and was a real help to the Paper2D community back when he was responding.
I just started writing a demo with Unreal Engine and Paper2D a few days ago. I came across thread while searching for Paper2D information on the forums and am now dismayed.
Should I be putting my effort into Unity instead, before I get too into Unreal? It sounds like they care a lot more about 2d games.
I say go a little farther and see if it is working good for you.
Unity is better for 2d games… But If we make games with paper2d… Epic might give it more attention.
And you could always switch over later. (But we have Blueprints…)
You would lose everything Unreal 4 offers though. I still love Blueprints and how easy the material creating etc is. Everything is quite flexible and well, it’s all free. Plus with source code. I am sure 2D will eventually get love.
Give both a try, I wouldn’t leave UE4 personally no matter what, for being free and well, blueprints. Give them all a try.
I know probably won’t happen, but what about allowing the use of another scripting language in conjunction with BP/C++, like LUA/Python? That would bring in more of the 2D crowd. C# of course;)
and epic should be working hard to make paper2d as first class as possible. the reason thread exists is because it feels like they’re not, so my statement was more of a rally to start raising some smoke(where there is smoke, there is fire :p). I’ll rephrase with more action statements of what we should do: Take the forums, take to twitter, take to facebook. Start showing off our paper2d stuff. Post something daily about paper2d. show them that it’s active, show them that it’s wanted, and more importantly show the world unreal and what the capabilities are. set the expectations for 2d game making (even if certain things have to be faked :o).
