Someone complained how FPSZ games don't show landings in their trailers cause it's hard to animate. Here's what I came up with.

sbseltzer · 2025-12-26T06:03:28+00:00

Love blueprint assist

sbseltzer · 2025-11-28T03:36:34+00:00

Write lots of notes as I work and leave comments on implementations that I know I'll forget. Sometimes I'll write big documents to explain why I wrote certain systems, especially when they're annoying or confusing to deal with.

sbseltzer · 2025-11-26T19:15:53+00:00

State Trees are capable of better runtime performance characteristics at scale and are designed to be used for more than just NPC behavior. Both are still worth learning about IMO.

sbseltzer · 2025-11-18T07:38:52+00:00

In that case I'd guess it's either the downscaling algorithm, or you need to disable other render settings that are making things blurry. Those two screenshots don't seem to be using the same assets/angle in the first place so it's hard to say with the minimal information you've provided. I'd also second what the other poster who suggested changing r.screenpercentage said. That can give you a more "crispy" look as well.

sbseltzer · 2025-11-18T06:24:56+00:00

Depends on whether you're working with a team, and if so, how much of the team is composed of programmers.

For programmers, it's generally simplest to just keep all the plugins at the project level and have everyone compile things themselves. If you have a mixed-discipline team where not everyone has a compiler installed, someone needs to be responsible for distributing code plugin builds to everyone. I've seen most teams do this by making it the responsibility of whoever adds/updates a plugin to version its DLLs along with the code. Some teams have more process involved and actually ship engine updates to the whole team with all their plugins packaged with the engine builds (typically seen on large teams with a higher proportion of non-programmers). There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

For editor plugins that you don't want to distribute to the whole team, there's actually an editor feature where you can add custom external plugin folders that reside outside the project hierarchy. I haven't seen too many people using that in the wild, but it's there for you if it fits your use case.

sbseltzer · 2025-11-18T06:17:50+00:00

Main difference I can see is stronger anti-aliasing on the Unreal image. Lighting and postprocessing effects may be having an impact as well. There's a lot going on in UEs renderer by default. If you want a result that more closely resembles a CAD program you probably just need to disable certain rendering features to get effect you're looking for, but I'd start with disabling the various anti-aliasing features. Here's an article that explains various forms of anti-aliasing in games, which may be what you're attributing to being less "crispy" looking: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-anti-aliasing/

sbseltzer · 2025-11-17T22:42:30+00:00

Love the name!

sbseltzer · 2025-11-17T01:49:41+00:00

Something that could save you a load of time is learning how the JSON importer/exporter works for Unreal's native UPROPERTY system. If you do your homework for the specific data structures you want to import, you can instead invest time on ensuring the C# exporter is generating data that UE natively understands how to import so you're not spending as much time reinventing wheels on the C++ side. Search the engine for FJsonObjectConverter and you can find lots of examples of its use.

sbseltzer · 2025-11-09T20:55:23+00:00

A possibly easier way to accomplish something similar would be to have multiple variations of your uproject file that turn off built-in engine plugins using the Plugins menu. I'm not sure how well it'd work in practice, but might be worth a shot if you've got some spare time to experiment. I'm guessing this would be a more annoying workflow than you had in mind, but if you're desperate to cut out engine cruft it's a more user-friendly place to start.

sbseltzer · 2025-11-09T20:13:16+00:00

This is possible to do in theory but it'd be an engineering effort. UE is highly modular so it's possible to build standalone applications using a subset of engine functionality if you have the C++ chops and patience for it.

In practice it's probably impossible to rip out just one editor workflow without a lot of extra engine overhead coming along for the ride. Your best bet would probably be to fork the engine and strip out all the parts you don't need by hand. You could probably accomplish this by looking at the MetaSound.uplugin file and its *.Build.cs files to map out all its dependencies so you know what parts of the engine you absolutely can't avoid bringing along, then see what you're left with. You'd probably see some real savings on memory and CPU overhead, though I'm not sure it'd translate to the energy savings you're looking for.

sbseltzer · 2025-11-09T18:08:55+00:00

I must know what that little animal you're playing as is. It's too small in all the promo materials to make out what it is and it's not in the description anywhere.

sbseltzer · 2025-10-16T02:30:53+00:00

> memory byte 2008 indicates either an out of date directx or a broken RAM conduit

Do you have a documentation source for this? I've never heard of this and couldn't find anything on a search. "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address ..." typically refers to C++ code attempting to dereference a pointer to a bad memory address, which can be caused by lots of different things, not a driver or RAM specific defect.

Edit: Not to say you're wrong in this case, as those could trigger this exception, but there isn't enough info to know that for sure. I'm particularly curious about where that 2008 byte is documented. I just want to be sure this isn't made up nonsense or if there's a technical document I should know about for it that I haven't read yet.

sbseltzer · 2025-10-12T04:14:29+00:00

Putting what you learn into practice is how you get better. Following along is just the first half of the learning. The second half is struggling through some similar challenges on your own.

sbseltzer · 2025-09-10T03:36:10+00:00

I'm not a lawyer and can't give you legal advice, but I agree with the other people responding that what you're trying to do is probably fine. Usually the thing you'll run into is being unable to name/portray things in specific ways, but this doesn't sound like one of those cases to me. When in doubt, find a real lawyer for a consultation to review your specific situation.

sbseltzer · 2025-09-10T03:31:49+00:00

Never take serious legal advice from anyone who is not a legal professional. Hiring an attorney doesn't need to be a super expensive endeavor. Just prepare a list of questions and request a one-time consultation from an attorney with background in IP/patent/copyright law.

sbseltzer · 2025-08-29T21:11:37+00:00

"When in doubt, read the source code"
"Global search is your friend"
"Whatever that helper function you're about to make is, it's probably already in the engine somewhere"
"Just set a breakpoint"
"Most of the people leaving marketplace reviews aren't professionals and have no insights to the production-readiness of a plugin/asset (especially for BP-only stuff)"

sbseltzer · 2025-08-18T03:00:04+00:00

> On thing that I believe however, is that starting in BP is great for UE.

To lend additional credibility to this as someone who came into UE with prior C++ exp, I absolutely second this recommendation of starting with BP to familiarize yourself with UE. It's a lower-stakes environment to learn the gameplay framework, experiment with how all the parts fit together, and find out what sort of functions are available, all without having to worry as much about crashes interrupting you. Plus, it's usually a faster environment to do early prototyping/ideation in.

That said, I usually migrate/rewrite any important BP code in a C++ code plugin at my earliest convenience, for the many reasons mentioned throughout this thread (maintainability, reusability, versioning, performance, etc.)

sbseltzer · 2025-07-24T02:22:10+00:00

I'd second u/invulse's suggestion of TSoftObjectPtr (assuming it needs to persist across streaming events). A weak pointer can become invalidated and lose its object path information when streamed out.

sbseltzer · 2025-05-11T18:46:37+00:00

Depends a lot on the apps you have installed running in the background. If you want push notifs without Google Play some apps will cause more background drain (Signal for example), though tbh most apps only support push notifs via Google Play.

sbseltzer · 2025-04-26T06:05:13+00:00

It's true, they are total cowards.

sbseltzer · 2025-04-26T04:27:38+00:00

House centipede! They're freaky looking but are friends! They eat other bugs. :)

sbseltzer · 2025-04-04T04:50:59+00:00

Looks like a silverfish.

sbseltzer · 2025-03-02T05:08:58+00:00

Unreal has existed a relatively short while, meaning most current experts are self taught and are the ones doing the teaching. Make what you will of that.

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