Is 5.3.1 more stable than prior versions?
Stable in terms of what? All released versions are stable. When itās not stable they wonāt risk the big company losing a lot of expenses and work done. The way Epic pronounces it is they will use a āpreviewā word as the version which is still in experiment/testing which then afterwards will proceed to the stable released.
The bigger question here is the features each version has to offer and not the stability of the engine. The newer version has more features and improvements but it does not mean the earlier versions do not work. Otherwise, would you think that the big company that has hundreds/tera bites of development data took the risk of using an unstable version? Epic wonāt take the risk either.
Greetings @eldany.uy
All versions are stable as long as the computer specifications meet the engine requirements. Generally, I personally recommend using the latest version as itās the most up to date and includes any/all new features. But, it can be personal preference.
I used UE4 a lot and I feel UE5 versions are more buggy and I mean the Editor. Sometimes the editor insists to save a some non existent level or refuses to saves assets and I have to open the editor again and stuff like thatā¦I think biggest issues are related with file management. For example moving a map to a different folderā¦I had packaging errors and had to re edit project settingsā¦UE4 was a lot more reliable on that issues.
Thatās why I ask about more stable version because I still downloading the new ones the the problems stay there.
What do you mean by:
Project settings are dependable with .ini files. Did you use the proper asset migration pipeline? Itās very crucial to execute this migration process with the right procedure and techniques, otherwise, you will be facing a lot of errors and missing materials.
Also, keep note that some functionalities from UE4 has been deprecated in UE5.
I am not migrating from Ue4ā¦just trying UE5 from scratch and getting some buggy issues like the editor trying to save ābackupā levels that dont exists and things like that.
Do the levels that youāre trying to save have a postfix of ā_Auto1ā? If so, you donāt have to save them. The engine is trying to fix the failed save level and treat it as a new level. If you can save the current level then you can just uncheck those with ā_Autoā postfixes when youāre saving.
This is not a bug but rather a way that the Unreal Engine tries to save your data if you canāt save the current level that you are working with. Sometimes a simple reference mistake can cause an error preventing you from saving it.
Yes that is one of the problems in UE5 and not in UE4.
Normally SAVE ALL works but some times UE5 starts with that issue and you canāt SAVE ALL and must unckeck those auto files.
Should not fail to save a level for start.
Also happens that assets suddenly fails to save and you lose it because you must restart the engine to stop it.
I donāt find bugs on runtime or new features. Most problems are file management related.
That is a bit annoying and didnāt happened before and now is normal in all UE5 versions.
What is a āstableā version anyway? 
Itād be interesting to see a POLL about this. My vote would be 4.18 / 4.27.2 / 5.2. But responses to this would probably vary widely. And either way, thereād need to be agreement on what stable actually means. That isnāt so simpleā¦
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Stable = Few engine crashes (therefore less time is lost to annoying Editor / PC restarts, and therefore more work can get done instead of troubleshooting the engine).
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Stable = Engine releases contain carefully curated new features, so priority is given to shipping versions with the least amount of regression bugs or steps backwards.
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Stable = Long-term well maintained engine thatās super stable / predictable, with the highest amount of bug fixes, but naturally, the least amount of new features.
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Stable = Predictable easy to understand UI. So that features like Autosave work in a way thatās clear to users. Some devs love Autosave. But if youāve ever experienced an Autosave editor crash after running out of drive space, it can really sting! So should autosave ALWAYS be enabled by default on projects? If there was a POLL have to vote NO on that one. Autosave has never been properly documented either. Backup files in Saved can be copied over and used directly, whereas autosave files canāt. Why is this???
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Stable = Predictable easy to understand engine thatās super well documented, with lots of explanations and examples and help available, all getting regular updates. But the reality is, UE is complex and so most of the time youāre left to solve problems on your own.
2cā¦ If you want to try and achieve more āstableā, then keep multiple versions of the engine installed all of the time. As thereās always something going on. Some things get fixed, some things get broken (sometimes inexplicable glitches just occur on a rig on a random monday). But either way, its common for things to break or not perform as expected - when they used to. This is a complex topic in general. As some devs want physx / apex / tessellation and BP nativization back. Whereas others canāt live without lumen / nanite in unreal ālooks like real lifeā mode. Either way workarounds for disabling world partition right now are especially hacky.
Having multiple engines means more installs / marketplace assets / DDC too though. So more precious drive space gets eaten up. However, you can launch Unreal from a cheap external drive. So its possible to always have 4.27 and a couple of 5.x around minimum. With that, you can easily contrast versions, or compare whatās new and working, or whatās old and not. 
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this happen to me when i was learning ue4 few years ago, i guess it was just bad reference/coding/assets/compile fail etcā¦
It never happen to me since ue5 now, you can just disable AutoSave.
i say it a decent amount space (with min installation option) having mostly all version
my ssd nearly full T_T
Its hard to get by on 1/5 TB for sure. Tip: Buy cheap external drive. Try to purge Documentation + Source folders from all engine installs too (assuming you can live without those). Old plugins eat space as well. Plus purge all DDC folders, and let UE re-build shaders. DDC folders never get cleaned out. Often theyāre full of bloat from MP packs you donāt even remember anymore.
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So many versions? Why do you need so many versions installed? Unless you are a marketplace creator or you have multiple projects in a different version, I donāt think Epic consider this as a common case for the devs.
Also, purchasing a ācheapā external drive is very very risky for data corruption. First, because they are slow data handlers considering they are hdd (ssd are expensive). And, if your computer crashes during the development, the i/o connections for the ports will discontinue causing the high possibility of data corruption, and disk fatal.
I would recommend using external drives just to back up your data. For, the development, I would suggest using real-time cloud storage or just buying internal drives. Upgrade it.
Sure, internal drives. But this isnāt always an option. It assumes rigs always have free bays and devs always have endless budgets, which isnāt always the case, especially for laptop devs.
External drives for everything? Sure, not recommended. BUT thatās not the point! UE projects need lots of storage. So when devs are running low, what can they do? Fact is, external drives are fine for launching redundant copies of the engine, especially for bug regression testing.
Interesting to read thisā¦ It must be nice to live in an alternate world or reality where one engine version is all youāll ever need. UDK / Unity was like this maybe. But UE4 / UE5? No chance! For starters, it assumes the latest is always the greatest, which isnāt the reality for UE sadly. Happy to bet for most devs, having multiple versions installed is standard, not some kind of exception.
Must be nice to live in the year 2,100 in the Nordics or Asia or somewhere, where cutting-edge infrastructure is standard, along with unlimited bandwidth. In a world where thereās no more power outages or ISP downtime anymoreā¦ So lets see, anyone got any stats on that? Happy to bet Cloud-for-Development is riskier than external drives for most devs today though. Not that external drives are ideal. Theyāre not! They should be a last resort when dealing with lack of storage. So donāt ever use them for live production projects. But thatās not the point. Theyāre acceptable when you need to launch additional copies of the engine (temporarily), when youāre running low on storage. Engine folders are mostly Binaries after all, therefore no changes, so no corruption. But hey, keep a copy of engine INIās anyway. As UE can trash those sometimes.
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Everything that game_maker said and to add some context i lived in Mauritius and we often get maintenance ISP for undersea connection and also maintenance from CloudFlare(we get re routed to EU servers) so any website that using cloudflare either is slow or just doesnt load.
Data centres cloud servers are implemented mostly in well developped countries so am either not eligible(like nvidia cloud, playsation now etcā¦) or having restricted features because am too far.
For power outages, this happen often as well that why i have 2 UPS, one for pc and one for monitor+modem. 
I used multiple version of UE because i have different project version, especially cpp project where new version sometime affect my code. All my game dev friends also used different version, so when i have to test thier cpp project, i need the same version. 
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I have no idea why your sentences sound like you are offended. Your replies do seem offensive and sarcastic, even with the emojis I still think you are mad about something. Hereās my response:
In the game development industry when you are working on a project you want to ensure that everyone uses the same version to ensure unified updates, consistency and quality assurance. This is of course totally fine if you have personal preferences to have multiple versions to yourself. No, doubt about that, if you have a huge space of data, then go ahead.
Also, the engine itself is huge in data as it came together with the real-time HQ physic simulations and very important for the market is the rendering feature. The space of data is the price that they are willing to take the risk for the users. If you want good content then you will need a good amount of space too. Thatās why they listed the minimum requirements to run/install for just ONE engine and not the minimum requirements to install for multiple engines. Cause itās a minimum requirement to install one version only.
This is not something that does not exist. It does exist.
You can do real-time development in Unreal in the cloud by using a cloud-based remote desktop service. This allows you to connect to a virtual machine in the cloud that is running Unreal Engine. You can then use the remote desktop service to control the virtual machine and develop it in Unreal Engine as if you were sitting at a local machine.
The huge companies use this pipeline to address some causes including scalability, collaboration and cost. But of course, latency will be the only issue they might be facing sometime. The idea goes the same as cloud gaming.
Hope it clarifies stuff.
Sure, no worries dude. Youāre coming from maybe more of a first-world / corporate / big-studio perspective possibly. Whereas these being the Indie forums (vs UDN), thereās going to be more of an Indie perspective on here - or even struggling Indie perspective. 
Cloud can get pretty expensive quickly too. There are Indies working like you outlined though. So itād be interesting to get more on that perspective. Even see a POLL of which Indies opt to spin up aws instances versus owning dedicated rigs. How does that compare to forking out for a killer rig every 2/3 years and so onā¦ Especially as AI / Crypto pushes up costsā¦ Plus whatās the backup plan for weeks when thereās outages but also deadlines.
For Indies, always upgrading to the latest version is pretty risky generally imho. This has been discussed many times on the journey from 4.2 to 4.27, and now from 5.0 to 5.xx. So wonāt labor the point. But just to say for Indies, you can lose a lot of time and work from upgrading, just to find youāre stuck. As you donāt have the dedicated C++ team to go into source and fix whatever is messed up in that release. So the lesser risk is keeping multiple versions around. Also you donāt want to upgrade projects-in-place ever, as thatās even more risky. So you have to keep multiple older versions of projects / engines around. Thatās it really. So the challenge is, how do you do that, when so many rigs ship with miserly SSDās, and / or you live in parts of the world where import duties and depreciating currencies are an added killer.
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If you understand this, then we also should understand that we are merely a consumer/user of this Engine. We are lucky enough to be able to use this hq extremely powerful game engine for FREE. No payment is needed for indie devs. Also, itās open source so we can edit the code however we like.
Yet, we never be grateful and thankful for this, instead, we keep on complaining and blaming the engineās devs for the limitation. If itās just an unsatisfied element that we can fix it with a simple mouse click, then just do it. We donāt have to make such a huge deal out of it. After all again, they gave their hard work, time, sweat and blood to create this engine.
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True. Just talking strategy here. How to deal with uncertainty around such a large and complex engine. If anything said before sounded ācomplainyā, that wasnāt the intention (honestly). Just brainstorming ways of handling engine releases with what is such a complex piece of software.
True again. That said and trying to stay clear of seeing what you wrote as a bit preachy (mini-sermon)ā¦ Just to state the obviousā¦ Unreal isnāt the only engine thatās free and offers source today. Thatās a general industry shift here. But sure Epic was a key part of that change maybe.