Worried about new engine release

It is great that you keep adding stuff but I now have 3 version of the engine installed at the same time (4.6, 4.7, 4.9) and I will soon have the 4.10.

Each time a new version comes out I have to recreate each of my project from scratch and manually import everything from the older project.
Eventually something that was working before, will not work anymore.

This is really time consuming, the 4.9 was just recently launched and there is already a 4.10?

I suggest Epic to avoid as much as possible major releases and provide some automated mechanism to transform deprecated code into new working code.

EDIT:
This was a “Feedback FOR EPIC”, not for you guys, please DO NOT reply if you have nothing to say.
I just want for EPIC to take note about a problem that I have which is timeconsuming and if solved it could save me a lot of money. things like not always been up to the latest version makes no sense and are not an option. and yes it can be done, I’m not asking to go to the extreme like the .NET framework, but still, handling more deprecated code with an automation would be a life saver.
thanks

You dont need to upgrade your projects to every new release unless there is a new feature or bug fix you really need. And you dont need to keep older versions of the engine on your computer once you successfully convert your project to the latest one.

Actually it shouldnt be too difficult to migrate projects between versions. Unless you touched a part that has truly changed (mostly Blueprint stuff).
Fixing some minor glitches that come with old projects in a new version of the engine is something we all do.
You could stick with an engine version you started a project in.
If Epic would stop putting out new releases, how could the engine improve then?
All my stuff went perfectly smooth from 4.9.2 to 4.10.0.

Cant wait until they finalize the 4.10 and give us the 4.11 preview :smiley:

so everything that they are doing is useless, I should stick to the engine version that I started with?

That’s the point, since it never happened that a conversion were automatic and bug free, I HAVE to keep older version in case I realize I lost something on the way by manually converting the project.

if the size of the project is huge, those fixes are not “minor”.

and If you stick to the first version why do you care if the engine improved then?

I would prefer a 4.9.3 and 4.9.4 with everything included in the 4.10 but with retrocompatibility too.

4.10 is still in early preview. You don’t have to update yet. In fact you definitely shouldn’t until the stable release is out.

That being said, you really shouldn’t have to recreate your project from scratch with every new version. You can right click the project file, chose Switch Engine Version, select the new version and launch the project. This should convert your project to the new engine version. It’s highly recommended to backup your full project before doing this (but you should use source control anyway). After conversion there might be a couple of errors in your blueprints, but Epic is working hard trying to reduce the number of incompatibilities between each release and it shouldn’t take a long time to fix these errors.

if this is true than why is it called 4.10 instead of 4.9.3?

What do you mean?

It’s 4.10, because it’s a “major” release. A major release includes new features, and changes to existing features. The changes can break your project and you might need to go and manually fix these issues. But that doesn’t mean recreating it from scratch.

A “minor” release or patch would be something that fixes some bugs and while it might break your project, it rarely does.

Watching this since the 4.0 days; 4.10 is a beast absurdly bigger than what 4.0 was.
Been updating stuff from 4.0 to 4.1, 4.2, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 and 4.9… I noticed things became harder to upgrade after the 4.7 changes. Now is the time for stability and as amazing engineers as they are, Epic’s staff knows all you guys are saying and are already focusing on stability more than new features… For now. :wink:

exactly, that’s what I want to point out.

too many major releases that can broke my projects and too many manually fix required.

On average there is about one major release every 2 months. Nothing is stopping your from skipping 2 versions, and only updating every 6 months for instance.

or even better, I could NEVER update! in that way I would never have any problem!

It’s up to you. Big projects sometimes have an engine version freeze, where they just stick with the current version of the engine (and other software or components they’re using) until the end of the project.

And we are all posting our counter-feedback saying we like it how it is.

Keep up the 1-2 month updates is my vote. If you don’t want to update that often, then don’t.

but I am not saying that I want less frequent updates, I’m saying that I want to preserve retrocompatibility for longer time.
and btw, having “new functionality” that are still incomplete are not worth anything.

What you as is humanly impossible. They can’t take into account every little thing you might do in the engine when they update. The only solution to that problem is to never update.

There is a point to releasing incomplete content. Testing. Why spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make it perfect when no matter what it won’t survive first contact with reality(us). Better to get it out under field conditions with the caveat that it isn’t ready to go yet, and get feedback from people trying to implement it in real world projects.

Please, as I said this is a feedback for epic, there is no discussion to make.

This is a forum. There is always discussion to make :slight_smile:

General Discussion
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https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?26-General-Discussion

Feedback for Epic
Tell us how to improve Unreal Engine 4!

Then don’t respond. We are also providing feedback, and that feedback is that Epic is doing just fine.

You can’t gag people in a forum. If you don’t want anyone talking to you PM the devs directly.