I agree with that.
What happens when you have multiple characters? What happens when the character is destroyed? 
I would say (especially for terms like Actor and Pawn) that changing them is not really an option because then you are just confusing a whole different set of people. Honestly, I’ve used so many different systems over the years, I’m used to just simply remapping names and concepts: it’s often the first thing I do.
That said, a well-maintained glossary with references and links to usage examples would not be amiss.
Also, , I’m not sure mapping Service to Query is a good plan, since the latter is more of a use-case of a Service rather than its explicit purpose. To me, Service makes sense, as it is a process which is active while that particular subtree is in effect. I do agree on Decorator though, as it really is only applying a filtering operation as opposed to any other purpose, so a more specific name might be better.
Persona has always confused me. It reminds me of everytime.
Which isn’t a bad thing mind you, But it always throws me off when I read it! 
I think usability is important, but a bit of “soul” won’t kill software 
I like subsystems with unique names like Niagara, Cascade, Persona, Matinee and etc - it’s a little more enjoyable for me, however I was confused with Matinee description:
“…a list of Matinee objects(?) to open with Matinee Edtior(??)”, " if I click at button I will create a “Matinee Actor(???)”
I think there should be at least description/name based on activity of subsystem + cool title, because with only cool titles you can’t realize at first glance what exactly piece is doing. Like “Cinematic Editor - Matinee”, “Animation Editor - Persona” and etc.
Actor, PlayerController, Pawn - They make perfect sense to me and I’d say that are very well named.
Actor is everything which plays any role in your map.
PlayerController controlls Pawn.
Pawn is just a pawn. Moves on your map.
i dont get why people have a problem with actor, pawn, character, playercontroller ect
the difference between them is obvious, for example an actor is something that has a presence in the game world.
extended from that a pawn is an actor the player can control by possessing it with a playercontroller or ai with an aicontroller, it could be anything you want to control from a rolling ball to a flying lamppost.
then extended from that is character, which obviously is some kind of character like a guy running round or whatever and has functionality that helps with that.
i doubt epic would start renaming these anyway as they are (and have been for a long time) part of the unreal engine, if they do it would be a stupid amount of work for nothing.
persona on the other hand, that could literally mean anything. i kept seeing it in the hype but had no idea what it was supposed to be.
why not call it animation editor, because thats what it is (apparently)
I guess the problem with understanding the objects and maps ect. is raising if you don’t look at the game as a fps game. Especially the player starts and its default usage is more than confusing. Same goes for “maps”. If you want to build a chess game or some little more complicated version of a Multi player board game you will get confused very quickly. I still have to hack my player system in some weird way. Assigning “Players Pawns” is another kind of nice mind wrap that didn’t come easy.
From the fps point of view there is nothing really confusing about the engine, nothing.
Thank you so much everyone! We already gathered a lot of useful feedback, but you can still answer the survey if you hadn’t yet.
Cheers!
@Wolfsblut
I suppose because UE4 mainly is I believe first/third person shooter engine.
For me just matinee was a word I didn’t get what was it about right away, once I read about it I thought, “oh, it’s the cut-scene editor”.
In regards of actor, pawn, character, player controller, game mode I didn’t get it right away but once you read the description and start creating your first game, then everything makes sense. So no need to change the wording on that since they represent the concept very well.
It’s weird though that a bullet should be a class of Actor, any object that can be placed or spawned in the world is an actor… that’s the only thing that wasn’t so straight forward to get… I found pawn and character accurate and didn’t have to spend too much time understanding those, I guess that actor and character does not differentiate too much in terminology, so renaming actor to something like Game Object could be easier to understand.
By the way, what’s the difference between game state and game mode. When would we want to create our custom Game Mode, Game State, Player Controller and Pawn Class. I still have to learn that, so if you could point me to a tutorial or documentation for that I’ll really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Check out section of documentation .unrealengine/latest/INT/Gameplay/index.html
, definitely, but you can build any single player game type you can think of right now. When it comes to a multi player game it looks different. We still wait for the first one on one, say chess game example…and the missing features that provide such a game-play out of the box. Anyway, i can’t get the BPs loose anymore, whatever (yet) is missing.
@Wolfsblut
But that’s the whole point. You cannot have terminology which fits every imaginable type of game.
UE4 is first/third person shooter engine (mainly) and terminology used in it (code wise) reflects it.
, I would not say that. You can. It’s not easy, but possible. Did I say that I love the engine anyway?
“Actor” was a bit confusing at first because I didn’t realize every object in a game (including props) uses the actor class. The word “actor” suggests an agent that performs actions and has its own AI. I realize that other names might be too long (e.g. GameObject) or vague (e.g. Entity).
Also, I’m probably in the minority here, but Pawn bothers me because I tend to see things in a game as autonomous agents rather than puppets for the player or developer to use. is not an, though, as I can make a subclass of it that uses a different name (“avatar” in my case).
Pawn, Actor, PlayerController - not exactly sure why there are 3, and I would like the differences to be spelled out in the documentation (is the controller just physics? Nothing more?). From previous UE versions I think Pawn is specifically a player or NPC Actor instance, so that makes sense. It’s a gameplay context term not engine, but I think that’s actually better like it is. Now that I’m a bit familiar with the whole Epic flavor of design I don’t exactly want to change anything.
In the FirstPerson sample, I didn’t easily learn that the Blueprint functionality extends the c++ class - it’s an of presenting the key points of what happens and how, I think.
Local/World space is again something that would be better explained visually for brevity. Havok does a great job of using the right image when introducing skeletal local/world spaces in their documentation (the Biped picture). For non-mathematical readers, bone pose local/world space can intimidating, but that picture had me understand it in a snap. Unity has picture: ://docs.unity3d/ScriptReference/Vector3.Cross.html
Please stop naming each your editors like they are pop stars. Hard to remember.
What is Niagra ? If it edits particles call it Particle Editor.
What in the hell is a Matinee ? Is it a cinemetic tool ? The call it Cinematic Editor or Track Editor.
Why PHaT ? Why Blueprint ? Just call it Visual Scripting/Flowraph Editor and the other one Physics Setup/ Editor.
The less complication the better it is.
Also +1 to the comment above. I am going through the Introduction to Programming tut but not sure why all the different creations required.
Thanks.
Wow … can’t actually believe there is a thread like . I for one think the names are cool … gives the tool character. 8-}
Anyway … Happy Holidays everyone.
It would be useful for beginners if we have a document explaining the symbols/icons/colors of nodes and variables. Its really helps to read the sample blueprints.