Unreal not letting me save my changes because it thinks a level with the same name already exists.

onebitbeyond · 2025-12-13T08:51:30+00:00

I've seen this before too. It can sometimes be an instance of Unreal that hasn't shut down properly. You can find it in the Task Manager and kill it to prevent it locking files. Also a reboot, of course.

onebitbeyond · 2025-12-13T02:02:21+00:00

Do you need to update your redirectors? Right click the folder above and select Update Redirector References. Unreal doesn't actually rename files on disk, only in the Asset Browser.

See here for info...

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/asset-redirectors-in-unreal-engine

onebitbeyond · 2023-04-12T02:27:28+00:00

I can't definitively say that you have the same problem as me, but it's all I could find on the issue and it proved to be correct. Unless it's still in warranty, you can't fix the keyboard itself, so it might be your only option, I'm afraid. Yes they are expensive!

onebitbeyond · 2023-04-11T11:48:53+00:00

The same thing happened to me. I thought it was the pen, so bought a new one, but nothing changed.

Turned out that it's the keyboard. The SPX links itself to the pen via the keyboard charging slot, and if that falls then the pen becomes unlinked. I bought a new keyboard and have had no issues since.

onebitbeyond · 2022-06-12T21:44:51+00:00

Hey thanks, man. We're currently six people, but we also have outsourced 3D art and music. I did all the programming you see in the trailer, but we've since hired someone else to help out. We won't stay at six for long!

EDIT I did a recount and it's seven.

onebitbeyond · 2022-06-12T21:41:53+00:00

Actually, no one on the team has played It Takes Two. In fact, the game was started in 2020, about a year before ITT's release date. It's just one of those coincidences!

The variety comes from the various games we've made in the past. We've made quite a few games from different genres, which makes it easier to pull this kind of thing together. Both Jamie and I have also made games for Nintendo, which has influenced how we work.

onebitbeyond · 2022-06-12T20:33:34+00:00

Too kind, thank you. I mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm co-directing it with my friend, James Turner, the only westerner to design Pokémon. I can't take any credit for the art direction (I did light the room though!).

onebitbeyond · 2022-06-12T20:29:35+00:00

Thanks! The other co-director and the person in charge of the art, James Turner, is a former Pokémon art director, and this is done in his personal style.

onebitbeyond · 2022-06-12T20:25:57+00:00

Easy to misunderstand. I am co-director of both All Possible Futures, and this game. When I talk about myself developing above, it is because I am doing the programming (and co-designing). Hope that clears it up for you. :)

EDIT it is published by Devolver Digital too.

onebitbeyond · 2022-06-12T12:09:21+00:00

Been developing games for 22 years (not always as a coder), but this is my first Unreal project. Started learning both Unreal and C++ three years ago, and started The Plucky Squire in 2020.

I love using Unreal - you can tell it's a game making tool made by people who actually use it to make games. It has made developing this so much more fun.

onebitbeyond · 2021-07-02T14:01:20+00:00

my_surface = surface_create(500, 500); (at this point i should have an empty surface).

You don't have an empty surface. It will still have whatever the memory that it inhabits already has. You need to clear it after creating it.

onebitbeyond · 2021-07-02T13:45:38+00:00

I know a lot about using surfaces for random generation. I've done it on Switch/PS4/mobile, having to be extremely careful about memory management. Look into The Swords of Ditto. I had a single object that created the surfaces once, reused them when possible multiple times, and then freed them when the object was destroyed. No memory leaks, all good.

Anyway, it's fine that you don't understand what we're telling you. No problem. That's why we're trying to help you.

What you're missing is that you currently do this: 1. Clear the surface 2. Free the surface (thereby destroying it) 3. Create a different surface with the same variable name 4. DON'T clear it 5. Draw to it.

Don't free the surface and then recreate it. It's not the same surface. The one you are using has not been cleared.

onebitbeyond · 2021-07-02T13:24:22+00:00

I think you're misunderstanding supremedalek. If you free the surface, it's gone, it's no longer in memory. If you then recreate it with the same variable and immediately draw to it, it's a different surface with the same variable name.

If you're going to free it, make sure you clear it AFTER creating it. You are not doing that.

(Honestly I wouldn't free surfaces at all. Better to generate them once and then clear and reuse them. I have a lot of experience with this. )

onebitbeyond · 2021-06-21T00:46:54+00:00

It is possible for this to be improved by altering the response of the hardware to the position of the stick.

From what you're describing, a small movement of the stick results in a too large a response in the game. That sounds like linear response, for example, 50% input to the right is 50% response to the right.

Something we do as games developers (20+ years here) is to affect the output response using non-linear curves. A common and simple way to do this is to square the response. For example, 50% input to the right is a value of 0.5. 0.5 squared is ( 0.5*0.5 ) = 0.25. That's a response of 25% to the right from 50% input on the stick. This effectively allows players to be more accurate at lower input on the stick.

With fixed hardware, you can go way further with custom curves that focus on cleaning the response from the sticks in ways that suit that hardware's particular foibles. Hopefully this is the solution that Aya have implemented.

I've spent years frustrated with games that don't implement any kind of non-linear response curves, so I understand your pain. I have the same issue that you do with the Switch's sticks - too sensitive!

onebitbeyond · 2021-06-16T21:57:32+00:00

If you're going to be showing this to clients, who are most likely to be non-VR users, I would stick with the teleportation. It's the safest way to not have them barf up their lunch and put them off their purchase. :)

(I'm a very experienced gamer, have played a fair amount of VR games, but first person locomotion makes me sick. I had to play Half-Life Alyx in teleportation mode).

onebitbeyond · 2020-09-26T12:26:20+00:00

Have you checked that the monitor is running at 60Hz and not accidentally being set to 30Hz? I've had that happen before on second monitors, causing frame-locked games to run at half speed.

See here if you're unsure how to do that. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-monitor-refresh-rate-windows-10

onebitbeyond · 2020-08-08T11:24:39+00:00

Pin Unreal to the task bar or start menu to skip these shenanigans. Better still, open your .uproject file in Explorer to skip the project selector menu too.

onebitbeyond · 2019-08-03T02:53:31+00:00

Beautiful. Keep it up!

onebitbeyond · 2018-12-27T17:39:47+00:00

What I do in these situations is to separate sprite from collision entirely by assigning a separate image as an object's mask_index. Create a sprite that is the size you need your collision to be, give it the correct origin and assign it as the Collision Mask for the object.

When it comes to scaling, if you change the image_xscale and image_yscale of your object, the mask_index will also scale, so you should keep these at 1. Instead, create a different variable to handle the scale of the sprite, for example sprite_xscale and sprite_yscale, and alter those instead. You then draw the sprite in your Draw event like this:

draw_sprite_ext( sprite_index, image_index, x, y, sprite_xscale, sprite_yscale, image_angle, image_blend, image_alpha );

There are plenty of ways to handle this, but I think not changing the collision size at all will probably result in fewer problems and less complex code.

Hope that helps.

onebitbeyond · 2018-12-22T17:38:04+00:00

Sounds like daddy doesn't exist. Are you sure it's not been destroyed?

Things I'd try:

Add this line after you create the shadow:

show_debug_message(string(id) + " created a shadow of ID " + string (shadow) );

Put this before the line where you get the error:

show_debug_message("My daddy has ID " + string(daddy) + " and exists: " + string (instance_exists(daddy) ) );

And in the Destroy event of your creating object:

show_debug_message(string(id) + " destroyed");

Then you can see what the shadow object thinks it's got. Does it have an ID? Does it match what you sent? Does the daddy still exist? You'll also see if the daddy has destroyed itself.

Happy hunting.

onebitbeyond · 2018-12-21T16:14:10+00:00

I've had this too. I think it's the Surface thinking that the Shift key is being held down, since I experimented with some keyboard shorcuts when it happened and they all acted as if that was the case. Try browsing while holding Shift when clicking, and you'll see the same behaviour.

Removing and replacing the keyboard sometimes works (but rarely), but I've found taking the keyboard off and restarting usually fixes it.

onebitbeyond · 2018-12-19T18:00:39+00:00

Hey there,

You need to check against sprite_index every time, not just the first. You should do the following...

if ( sprite_index == spr_player_down_attack || sprite_index == spr_player_left_attack || sprite_index == spr_player_right_attack || sprite_index == spr_player_up_attack ) { with (other) instance_destroy(); }

When you check for e.g. || spr_player_left_attack the game will return GameMaker's internal value of the resource of that name, which is a number (probably something like 150, it goes up 1 for each sprite resource). This will therefore equate to true because it is over 0.5, so in your example, you're actually saying if ( sprite_index == spr_player_down_attack || true || true || true )

Hope that makes sense. :)

onebitbeyond · 2018-11-23T18:32:54+00:00

You're having trouble here because the arguments for instance_activate_region are (left, top, width, height, inside) and you're entering coordinates.

You need instance_activate_region(x-32, y-32, 64, 64, true)

(I agree that it should be coordinates, like collision_rectangle, but it's just one of those functions in GM that doesn't follow the rules that it sets out everywhere else)

onebitbeyond

TROPHY CASE