The jump to Unreal version 5.4
Added 2025-09-03 21:07:11 +0000 UTCIt worked!!!
Sometimes upgrading Unreal engine versions is super simple, other times it takes me a few days to fix things, and still other times it completely breaks things and I have to remake stuff. So making the jump from 5.2 to 5.4 had me a little nervous. I knew that there had been a number of code changes as well as system changes between engine versions and also that I was going to try skipping over 5.3 entirely. Luckily this time the upgrade went pretty smoothly. I tracked down where they moved the new classes to and changed up a few includes (I'm an artist not a programmer... my apologies to any programmers reading this!) then fixed the blueprints and updated my plugins. So far everything seems to be working!
And then I got back to work!
Crafting supplies, recipes, and table. Are set to go. This included the monastery content which is a bit sparse and austere but should let players mess around with the systems. As I start polishing or working on more areas I'll add more recipes and things the player can craft.
Save system updates!!! This was something I was also nervous about implementing but seems to be working pretty well. Previously the saves were all in pieces. Certain props would save only when the player would leave the area and would use an auto save feature. But then the player themselves used the normal manual save feature. Then other things used a hybrid approach. It was all pretty scattered and chaotic and was my way of figuring out what I needed to save and then how I could load that. But that's super janky and probably feels like things are just broken to the player. So I started unifying the save system. Everything will be saved and loaded when the player presses the save or load button. This is still going to take me some time to polish and find the major bugs but the core functionality is there for NPCs, placeable objects, containers, and crops. I still need to add time stamps and basic interactive objects like doors and stuff.
World partition updates! This was a big part of making the jump to 5.4. In 5.2 I kept trying to bake hlods to help reduce the frame rate and make loading the map faster. Pretty much everything I tried would break and digging around online it seemed like in 5.2 that the world partition stuff just had known issues. 5.4 it seems to be working and I'm still running tests. This is the 3rd screenshot above where I'm getting the feel of setting and adjusting the world partition layers and how those interact with the landscape and with environment assets like buildings. Once I get comfortable with a few more things I'll attempt to bake the regular overworld map.
Imp animations! This afternoon I just started working on one of her scene animations for the monastery content.
Oh and one other big reason to jump to 5.4 the 2.5d fluid sims look a lot more fluidy! The minotaur screenshot is showing the standard basic splash emitter without any tweaks or changes. It's still based on all the little pellets being shot out of the emitter but there's some shader magic going on that makes it much more fluid like. I'm going to poke around with this some more but I'm hoping to start integrating this into scenes soon!
Comments
Thanks! Yeah, I was super excited that the engine upgrade was pretty smooth. And lol, I mean I don't know if game dev is necessarily difficult but I think it requires a certain mindset and a whole lot of stubbornness. Nice, yeah a werewolf village is a very popular topic and a bunch of people have had really great ideas and suggestions. I haven't gotten as far as working on their design yet. First thing is the character 3d model, then the animations and the in game system to support the transformations. Then I think it'll be figuring out how to tie those systems into the overall world and lore. Which is mostly to say I havent' gotten that far yet! But yes, werewolves are awesome and really hitting on those core animalistic and unbridled drives really seems to be the theme people want to touch upon. So once I get further along and start looking at their design I'll return to this post and everyone's suggestions and see where the common threads are and then try to weave that into the world of Feign. Lol, also I've got a giant folder of werewolf reference and concept art which you have just added to. Thanks!
slaen
2025-09-10 22:21:40 +0000 UTCFirst of all, congrats on transferring from one version of Unreal to another. That couldn't have been easy. If game development was easy, everybody would be doing it! There's this idea I've had for a while of a werewolf village, and perhaps you will be inspired by it. This story location idea is under the presumption that being a werewolf *Grants immortality or a very long-life span. *That being a werewolf can be more than a killing machine. If werewolves have a bloodlust, it can be calmed. *A werewolf has more aggression that human does, on average. The idea is that a bunch of werewolves decide that city living isn't for them, for they cannot go on hunts or run off energy in an urban environment. This village is in the middle of a dense forest, perhaps close to some mountains. The smell of tree pollen is present throughout the year, as is the sound of wind rustling through the trees and the water running through the rivers. Since lycanthropy grants a long life, the residents are from older communities and current one alike, bound together by a shared goal to live with their lycanthropy. This doesn't mean thing are always serene. When there's disagreements, the claws come out and teeth are unsheathed, and blood is sometimes spilled. The few werewolves that're respected by the community are impromptu peacemakers, since the inhabitants are most receptive to their words in particular. The inhabitants of the village respect might and deed, but also wisdom and skilled oration. The social strata functions like this: to have others follow your orders, you must perform a deed with at least one witness. This witness will tell a gathered audience of your deed, and then the audience will judge if that deed makes your orders worth following. This audience gathers once a week to engage in revelry: a celebration of another week on being still alive on this earth, and unity for their shared enjoyment of being alive. The witness would present what they've seen before the revelry begins. The buildings here are disparate, having been constructed by carpenters from different places and times. Those times and their aesthetics are for you to determine, sir. In terms of how corruptions could factor into this location, I've had an idea. This idea I've had was that if werewolves have bloodlust, this bloodlust could be replaced by lust. Also, imagine a werewolf having a set of demon horns and perhaps spiky protrusions of bone. Here's some links to images of demonical looking werewolves: https://www.deviantart.com/x-vexxa/art/Commission-4-526733745 https://www.deviantart.com/rufinator/art/Can-I-Come-Over-712170793 https://www.deviantart.com/hodsnake/art/Werewolf-465550269 https://www.artstation.com/artwork/PmVk1Z https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Vygzq8 What do you think?
Oscar Wilde
2025-09-04 17:58:45 +0000 UTC
