There’s a lot of small features or corrections that i need to add into Engine, i cant wait or hope that UE developers will add this features sooner or later. So i am thinking about download for example UE4.1.0 version and live with that untill game release, so i could upgrade that engine specially for specific game project.
Because if i will always try to use latest version 4.2, 4.3, 4.4… i will always have to convert projects from version to version somehow, plus, i will have to make all my Engine Fixes again and again. Anyway what can give me 4.2 version against 4.1 version? may be some new features, but still exactly the same ammount of bugs with that features, right?
So, what im going to do is, take current 4.1 version and stick with it, untill single specific game is done, 1-2-3 years. Good plan?
Or i should not change UE4 engine at all, only making new Game modules, and just use new releases everytime and upgrade Game modules to new versions if needed. And keep believing that release by release UE4 will become better and better and will cover all bugs and features ;d. Ideally this is much better choise, but on practice most obvious bugs never fixed and most needed features never added by engine developers ;d.
Use option (1) and change only Editor/Tools code, but right before game release try to convert all saved Data/Content to new version of UE4 for better renderring perhaps and some new effects on that moment.
In general, big projects stick with a version, and then dont update ( in the case there is a very wanted bugfix, they might merge it into their version).
Updating a project, specially if it has C++ code, is really painful, as the engine is under heavy development and every version changes the API, making you remake some things. For example, i had a project while in the Rocket beta that was multiplayer. When the 4.0 release was up, we went to update. All the multiplayer code changed api, ALL OF IT, try having to change the logic for all the multiplayer in your game just like that. Plus also other miscellaneus changes in some engine functions.
I found that updating UE4 builds is very hassle free compared to UDK. I would still update since many updates are incremental and don’t cause much damage to older code. When the time comes that you want a feature, the updates may be so far apart that you might have caused yourself a big problem.
You can install multiple versions of the engine on the machine. If your project compiles with the new version without much changes go for it else stick to the previous version
