Recently continued playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I really feel overwhelmed by all the game systems it have and how to best optimize damage in battle. I might need to play something simpler first and then come back again.

Corrupted Blueprints can be a big headache. If you have to deal with one try sinply renaming it. The correct choice is always to fix the issues in C++, but if you don't have access to a programmer renaming it can fix its broken references.

Reviving by attacking is such a clever decision in Nightreign. Most design teams would discard this feature on the spot. Instead, this allows the full expression of combat to be used on the revive mechanic as well.

Visual Effects and Sound Effects are incredibly important for Combat Game Feel. Try to play your game with only animations but no SFX or VFX and you will feel what is really missing.

Do you want to learn how to create a Poison Effect using Unreal Gameplay Ability System? Learn how to do it here: youtu.be/2sCPqOlX81k

When working remote text based comunication is crucial. That is why it's important to not assume ill intent from peers. Messages in text can be interpreted in multiple ways, as they lose all nuance. When in doubt, simply ask for a quick call with the other person.

One of my friends has encountered a big issue with GPU Lightmass in Unreal Engine. If you have some time, please vote here for this bug to be resolved. It should only take you one minute. If you use lightmaps, let Epic know that you love them. issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-29...

Now that I think about it, Deltarune on Switch 2 means that @GameMakerEngine has support for it, righ?

I think we are gonna have to wait until Unreal 6 to have Scene Graph in main Unreal. Until then will have to look at UEFN and long for that and Verse.

If you missed this week's newsletter on achieving 1000+ FPS in Unreal engine don't worry. I have also published a blog post version. You can find the link down below 👇

Just tried Davinci Resolve's text-based editing and it really speeds things up. Select remove silences. Start removing all bad takes simply by removing the text. Suddenly you already have a good head start that you can further tweak. It's awesome!

I want to thank once again @daftsoftware for their blog post on Unreal Engine performance. It helped me to push even further of what I was trying with lightmaps and go one step beyond to get Unreal to have incredible performance: blog.daftsoftware.com/unreal-perf...

You are already 700 people who are learning from the Unreal Solo Game Developer newsletter! Thanks for being so awesome!

Are you enjoying the use of programmer art on my last posts? Do you think it helps communicate things clearly? More programmer art? Less programmer art?

Do you want to know a secret about GAS? One of its most powerful features often goes overlooked. Do you want to know what it is?

I have found the graph that proves that using the Unreal Gameplay Ability System improves team prototyping speed by 30%. The numbers are in a graph line, so they must be true. I started using GAS so many years ago and now I can not go back.

In Unreal GAS, if you learn about Attribute Sets, Gameplay Effects and Gameplay Abilities you will have almost 80% of what you need to make all the games you want.

Unreal Blueprint really is amazing!

If you are having trouble running CPU lightmass and swarm on Unreal 5.6 here is how to fix it: youtu.be/aJr4Xcx0r0c...

In GAS Custom Calculation Modifiers are so cool. If you need to modify an attribute but that modification requires some calculation it's the time to use them. I tend to create them in C++, but I think they can also be built using Blueprint.

I love using Float Curves to control many things: - Fade opacity for dead bodies - Knockback distances - Platform movements - Jump gravity So useful!

If you want to learn Unreal Engine fast here you have a list of really good Udemy courses that will help you. I'm happy to see that both @DruidMechanics and @CobraCodeDev seem to appear multiple times. www.quodsoler.com/blog/best-u...

Timerscin Unreal are so useful. Want to create a projectile that spawns explosions every 2 seconds? Set a looping timer for 2 seconds that spawn explosions on demand. For bonus points, save the time into a property and now you can congigure the time per instance.

When lifting weights, should I exercise the muscle to failure? Keep a few reps on the tank? Easy sets only? Hard sets only?

I love nature, but living in nature requires tons of car trips. The city is so convenient with public transportation and ease of life. But it has no nature. Decisions.

Work environmemts can be stressful, but I believe that in 90% of the cases communication can solve most problems. If you want to improve a team, start by improving comunication.

I know that Perforce is the industry standard for AAA games. But it would be awesome for Unreal Game Sync and all other Unreal day-to-day tools to work with other Version Control systems like Git.

I love having both wireless mouse and keyboard, less clutter! But having to remember to charge them once in a while feels like a downgrade, specially if they "die" at an important moment.

Of you set a gameplay effect Period to greater than zero that meams both its modifiers and executions wil run em every period. You can also enable for them to run them moment the effect os applied. This is for Infinite and HasDuration effects.

If you want to learn about new Unreal features don't be afraid to experiment. Create a bew empty project and break things! And if you want to undrstand how it all works, the source code is available to you.

Kingdom Hearts 3 data battles are really amazing. But there is still something about KH2 gamefeel that makes it special.

Sometimes the simplest bugs can be the most difficult to find.

If you are still in Unreal 5.1 there is a potential memory corruption in TryActivateAbilitiesByTag. It can happen if an activated ability grants a new ability thus resizing the array. I recommen backporting the fix Epoc did in newer engine versions.

In combat animation the most important things are posing and timing. I know that this applies to everything. But specially in combat, that can be the difference between a game that feels good and one that does not. The difference between enemies being fair or being frustrating

If you need o use an object pointer as a key to a TMap use FObjectKey instead. When TMap are UPROPERTY the garbage colletor nay set those keys to null if the object gets destroy. And that means a map with multiple nullptr keys, an invalid map. Same goes for TSet.

This thing truly is a torture machine. It feels like trying to find a bug that somehow manages to eludes you all the time.

You can watch the Animation Blueprint graph in real time while you control your character. Instead of "Preview Instance" at the top select the character you want and you will be able to see the graph update in real time. ( If you don't see the option, click on the >> icon )

If you have a UPROPERTY raw pointer in Unreal and you don't know when your Garbage Collection pass happens, please, use ::IsValid(<ptr>) to check it before using it. When objects are destroyed, UPROPERTY pointers are not nulled until Garbage Collection happens.

I just recently learned about Microsoft Power Toys and where has this been all my life! - Always on Top - Custom Layouts - Focus Mouse Location And many more! Does Microsoft also hide som more cool utilities that I don't know of?

I've seen time and time again Unreal developers introduce crashes by not managing memory correctly. If you create an UObject, you better put that into a UPROPERTY container or pointer or at least manage it yourself. It's a very common mistake in Unreal C++.

Once again, I ask you to remember to add UFUNCTION specifier to your timer callback functions. Of course, remember to clear the timer properly, but with the specifier, the function will not be called if the Object has been destroyed.

In Davinci Resolve you can press Ctrl + T to add a default transition to all your selected clips. If you want to change the default transition, simply right click on it and set it as default. It really handy for fast editing.

It's so cool that Davinci Resolve is free to use as a very complete version. If you are an indie developer it can help you with your trailers a lot. I really love that if I understand correctly, it fully integrates what before was Eyeon Fusion as a compositing framework.

Don't focus on: - KPIs - Lines of Code - Number of closed Jira Tickets Instead, focus on: - Fun - Player expectations - You having Fun creating your Game

Who is your favorite GameDev youtuber or streamer? What do they do?

Releasing a game without automated crash reporting can mean your doom. We were able to react very fast on fixing horrible crashes when we released Lords of the Fallen in 2023. So many issues that happened only with specific hardware/drivers combinations.

Shipping-only optimized memory crashes are the worst. You can not even truat the C++ code as the compiler may have optimized everything away. Undefined Behavior is a dangerous beast.

Game Artists! Yeah, YOU! Know this: You are simply amazing!

When we created Killsquad at Novarama the whole first fully playable version was all Blueprint. You could play online, but we found out the amount of lag our action game had. It was at that point that we discovered GAS in its early experimental state. It changed everything.

I still remember the first time I tried Blueprints and I though: "This is literally Unreal C++ but visual" And that is powerful. As many people got into programming by trying out Blueprints first.