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Yeah, I had a similar issue with a plug-in yesterday. If you know how to run the bat file in command prompt do that and it’ll give you a specific error. Sometimes it’s due to not having the correct msvc version, or missing other files. Also I didn’t realize you need ms visual studio installed so you can download the community edition for free. I wasn’t able to get my plugin yesterday to work though. Maybe some don’t have the required components for you to rebuild? I’m not a programmer so it’s beyond me.

No. Once you've done the conversion and moved the plugin to your 5.4 folder, you don't need the 5.3 engine installed.

If it's emissive though it will show in the shadowed areas which is not how sparkles work. They are reflecting light so they won't be visible in shadowed areas. Making this with World Aligned textures would just be a matter of adjusting the Texture Samples into Texture Object Parameters and going through the standard World Aligned material creation. Here's a great tutorial on creating properly world aligned textures (the default nodes aren't created properly) : czcams.com/video/Cq5H59G-DHI/video.htmlsi=Ogg3L6WSOpL8puLN

@@TorQueMoD Yeah, but isn't this why you are multiplaying it by the "LightMask"? So only the parts in the light are showing? Maybe there is something I am missing but it looks to work fine in my project. I'm pretty much a beginner. I already watched the linked video and it went way over my head. I'll try to figure it out but I probably won't tbh...

I wouldn't call anything that Valve offers advertising, because that implies the amount of money you put into it can affect the results. Steam uses a popularity system, so the games that hit the front page of the store are ones that are selling well in their first week, and then Steam gives more exposure based on their purchase algorithms. This is why everyone says you want 10K wishlists minimum before launch. The sad reality is there's nothing you can do to control your exposure on the platform. If you haven't built your audience outside of the platform before it goes on sale, organic growth on the platform is all but impossible. They give you "marketing" campaigns that you can use to try to increase exposure, but they're all but useless in the sea of games released each year.

Yes, I do agree that steam has a lot of benefits, however, not every game will use all of said benefits. Also 30% for distribution alone is outrageous. It used to be that discovery was good because of the large user base, but now that there are thousands of games released every year, there is no benefit anymore.

@@TorQueMoD True, a lot of games simply won't be able to make use of a lot of the benefits steam offers. But if a developer really is in a situation where the trade-off is not worth it, switching to a different distributor might be a good option.

​@@TorQueMoD but you can still put your game on other platforms so I don't see your issue with that, if your game becomes successful steam will be the largest distro and in that case you would definitely be wanting to use those benefits that steam provides. fuck, you can even tell people buying from another platform lets you keep a higher share, some people will do it. in anycase you can have your game on many platforms so why not have the best of all worlds?

@@bnane42 But, as everyone knows Steam is the #1 platform and a lot of gamers refuse to buy games anywhere else. I wish Valve would implement a sliding scale royalty system. $1 - $100,000 you pay 10% $101,000 - $5m you pay 15% then they could charge more in the mid tiers like $5m+ - $20m 30% or whatever, and then when you break X barrier ($20m) you drop down again to whatever they charge the AAA studios. In the current system, indie devs are subsidizing the AAA company discounts.

@@defos8692c Well, some other platforms do charge less, so there really isn't a need to try to get them to change. I'm only singling out Valve because they're the big dogs on PC and they're the ones who started the industry standard of 30% to begin with.

Yeah, so the Flicker time is what determines the speed of the flicker (it's allowing you to make the game time faster if greater than 1 or slower if less than 1), so if you make a material instance (right click in Content browser and choose Make Instance) then you can adjust the flicker time for any instance. If you want it to automatically choose a random time you can either use the Per Instance Random node which will pick a random value for every copy you put in the world, or instead of the Flicker time, use "random float in range" and then set the min to be .5 and max to be 2 or something like that and you'll get anywhere between half as fast to twice as fast.

Really? I thought the whole point of a static switch was that it's static so it's not expensive.

Actually, I looked into it further and this isn't true. Static switch parameters as the name suggests are static so they're compiled and don't affect performance at all during runtime. They can cause you to need to recompile shaders in your project if you switch the master material's default and it affects everything down the line, but it has no performance cost during runtime. Here's a Reddit post where they discuss this. www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/16devik/is_it_a_good_idea_to_staticswitches_in_material/

@@TorQueMoD Wrong. This is even explained on the official manual -On the other hand, a new version of the material must be compiled out for every used combination of static parameters in a material, which can lead to a shader explosion if abused.Try to minimize the number of static parameters in the material and the number of permutations of those static parameters that are actually used.

@@Pix256 lol Double wrong. You're quoting from the documentation and leaving out the part mentioned literally one sentence above where you got your quote from where they say that Static Swith Parameters are compiled and therefore free at runtime. I'll quote it here too. "This parameter is named static because it cannot change at runtime; it can only be set in the Material Instance Editor. Static Switches are applied at compile time, not at runtime. This means that whatever branch of the Material was dropped is never executed, so static switches are effectively free at runtime. On the other hand, a new version of the Material must be compiled for every used combination of static parameters in a Material, which can lead to a massive increase in shader permutations if abused. Try to minimize the number of static parameters in the Material and the number of permutations of those static parameters that are actually used." Yes, they can cause your shader compiles to take longer "If abused", but it does not affect runtime performance. Also, notice the "If abused" part. They don't say not to use them otherwise why would they implement them into the engine? They just mean don't create a giant nest of 30 switches which should be obvious because material parameters exist for a reason. I used one static switch in a material function. This will not affect anything adversely. dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/material-parameter-expressions-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.1

​@@TorQueMoD What ? You are lacking essential shader knwledge. Yes they are compiled into different permutations. Thats why you get more shader permutattions with static switches. Sorry but you are really ignorant on this topic, this is basic stuff

In what way? Take a screenshot and upload to imgur so I can see.

Yeah...My video is about not using casting, just a quick alternative in this specific instance. Tags are faster/more simple because it's not class specific. I'm planing an updated Interface tutorial at some point.

No, it just does a compare if the name of the tag matches, which is very cheap. Also, the casted class does not get loaded if it is not used.

@@tmdquentin5095 thanks

It's not like get actor of class. It's literally just checking to see if the tag is present inside the overlapped actor, and if yes, it passes the check.

Thanx for the info good to know

You're right, I totally missed that :P

Two options: there’s a Per Instance node that you can use to make the time different for each instance, or you can just use a “random float in range” for the time multiplier and set the min to something like 0.9 and max to 1.2 and each one will flicker at a different speed.

I didn't notice that! Awesome :)

Photoshop is not a vector image editor, so no.

Yeah it is. I'm less concerned with myself than other devs. I just used my own game as an example because I didn't want to drag anyone else's project under the bus with me :P But thanks for your sympathy.

No, an asset flip is not reselling an asset on a marketplace, though yes, that does happen. If you think that's what an asset flip is, why would people be calling out games for being asset flips on Steam? What you are describing is as you said, a copyright violation, but that's not an asset flip as it relates to games.

I've never heard of modifying an asset to re-sell as asset flipping 🤔 Theft sure, but not asset flipping

I'd call this a pretty harsh "um, actually" backfire, but the reality is one of the main things people seem to do over time is redefine words. So even if you are right about what something means today, that's probably not going to stay that way as time goes on. Arguing over semantics is ultimately a waste of time in this context

Interesting. Clearly we’re both interested in similar subject matter

Good. More people should be talking about this :)

I don't have Jack's video, but you don't need it. Just replicate everything shown in mine and you've got the same result, but better because I made it into a material function.

@@TorQueMoD aren’t there any custom nodes in Jack’s video?

Thanks. What is it that you were looking for?

@@TorQueMoD Was looking for how unreal engine handles the 'On Hit' event for objects and actors, what can set it off, how to modify it. It's surprisingly hard to find documentation on specifically. I've found most people just write their own events in a similar way, but I was wondering why, and why not use something specific to the engine? Eventually I ran across UE's documentation for the overall events of actors, and found a quick reference to it. I still don't understand why it's not used more often, I suspect because it's triggered by anything if you don't use a tag, but I'll figure that out eventually too, I'm sure, hehe. :) Anyway, thanks again! Keep up the good work!