I’m new to Unreal Engine and have encountered an incredibly strange issue in UE 5.4 that has already sucked all the juice out of me.
The gist of the problem:
In the editor, my project, including all UMG widgets, works perfectly. However, in the packaged build (Development or Shipping - the result is the same), something inexplicable happens: when I try to access variables inside my widgets (for example, a link to a TextBlock to get/set text, or even a link to the Button itself inside the event triggered by that button), that link turns out to be None.
This happens when I try to read or change these variables inside widget events (like OnClicked) or functions called from the widget.
What’s weird and what works:
- The event handlers themselves, such as OnClicked for buttons, are triggered. This is confirmed by the Print String
- If I log the value of a variable (e.g. text from TextBlock) every frame through the Event Tick of the widget itself, it can be displayed correctly. But as soon as an event is triggered (like clicking a button in the same widget) and I try to access the same TextBlock variable inside that event, it suddenly becomes None inside that event. The same thing happens when calling functions inside the widget.
What I have tried so far (to no avail):
- Complete cache cleanup (DDC, Intermediate, Saved).
- Adding Delay nodes before any variable accesses (although I realize this is a crutch).
- Checking that all required UMG elements (TextBlock’s, etc.) are marked as IsVariable.
- Using Event Dispatcher to call functions and events in the widget
- Upgrading to UE 5.5 (problem persisted).
- Significant reduction in graphics settings for the build.
- Recreate textBlock’s.
I’ve spent about 15 hours on this trying to find the cause, but it feels like it’s some fundamental problem or my total lack of understanding of something obvious to experienced developers.
Has anyone had a similar situation? Maybe there are some build-specific settings or peculiarities of how UMG works that I’m not aware of? Any ideas or suggestions would be incredibly appreciated, because I’m already just desperate.
Willing to provide logs, screenshots of blueprints, or any other relevant information.
Thanks!
