Can Developers Update Games To The Latest Unreal Engine Versions?
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- čas přidán 18. 05. 2024
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I work in the game industry. the last time I did this took over a month just to get 5.4 working. its not the engine fault its all the custom engine work and also the project. one of the major changes was C++ standard changes. and also any third-party library will cause issues. as we customized those too. so manually merging changes takes time. even when you do get the project to load it still may be broken. so fixing more errors etc. it can take about 6 months to fully move to 5.4
I bet it really has to annoy you when all the arm chair developers act like a developer can just upgrade with the click of a button and no real issues to address.
I'm a game dev that uses UE5.
The hardship vastly depends on what the versions differences entails and the project itself.
Project X might be updated from 5.0 to 5.4 quite easily, while Project Y might need a huge undertaking just to be updated from 5.2 to 5.3.
5.3 itself was a huge update, in some ways, a bigger headache for one of our project than updating from 4.27 to 5.0.
In short, it vastly depends on the project and versions, but it being trivial is mostly the exception than the norm.
My Sympathies!
I remember in unreal 3, each update would break absolutely everything if I decided I wanted to use a new feature.
Not sure if it's any better now but seeing gamers assume game development software is as seamless/easy as updating/working on a photoshop file between versions must definitely be frustrating.
@@Kdkjdjewerdnxa that's because gamers are ignorant about what's behind their games.
How do U think a game like Stalker 2 would fair?
Is that why some devs just do their own modifications on older versions instead of updating to the latest version.
Also a UE5 dev here. The update from 5.2 to 5.3 took much longer than most updates for two major reasons: Enhanced Input and UMG (their UI system).
Enhanced input (which was made default in 5.1 or 5.2) had a specific change that meant ALL our customizable inputs had to be looked into again (turns out it was simple but it still took time). But UMG was the biggest problem.
As an performance update, all UI events happen in parallel, meaning you'd have actual race conditions occur. It was really frustrating having to go one user intractable UI to the next trying to figure out if anything negative would happen. It seriously took us months to upgrade to it.
As a twist, the update from 5.3 to 5.4 was relatively easy for us but I know for sure that is not the case for everyone.
As a UE5 developer, how easy would you say it is to update a game running on 5.0 to 5.1/2/3/4?
this is the kinda stuff that I have Vietnam war style flashbacks to whenever I read a comment about how "developers should just update it's so easy"
Is that why some devs opt to do their own improvements and modifications instead of updating to the latest version.
Updating a finished game to a new version of Unreal: probably months of work. Third-party plugins and libraries probably need to be updated to the new version, but the biggest thing is that, in AAA especially, there have probably been some not insignificant modifications made to the engine itself, and those will have to be ported to the newer version (I was on a project where we made some changes to the base level streaming and static mesh classes which broke compatibility and made it impossible to just migrate to a new engine version, for instance).
Updating an in-progress game: depends on the stage of the project. In the early stages it's usually pretty easy to switch to a new 'point' release (i.e. 5.0 to 5.1), but there comes a point where you have to stick a pin in it and say 'this is the version we're sticking with.' At that point it might be possible to backport some features from newer releases into the version that you're using (like Ghostwire: Tokyo backporting Temporal Super Resolution from 5 into their 4.27 codebase), but major changes to the really low level systems (like the renderer) are really hard to backport without breaking stuff.
Did nobody at DF hear of Everspace 2? It's a very recent example of developers updating their game from UE4 to UE5. It takes a while but of course it's doable lol.
Everything is possible, it’s just a matter of time and money.
I think others did something similar
Satisfactory is doing the same, and I believe Hellblade 2 has gone from 4.x > 5.2 > 5.4 in its development cycle. DF never said it wasn't doable, just that it takes a lot of work and is especially hard with large and finished games. It's not something we'll be seeing most studios do.
This was a question I asked when talking about Stalker 2. Since Stalker 2 is Unreal 5 I wonder if they can switch/update to Unreal 5.4
Remnant 2 the 1st thing that pops in my head. Would benefit from that but that would be a big project for them maybe
Thanks for answering this one, DF!
(I also loved DF Alex's video, which I saw after asking the question)
As a UE5 dev: Third party libraries usually don't get updated quickly to support newer versions. And most big projects usually rely on a lot of those. That would be my guess!
Guess it would depend on how the plugins interacts with the engine. If they use custom c++ code behind the scenes with the third party includes macro then the changes might not be too extensive. I've found most plugins that I've updated on the unreal engine forum have been pretty hassle free so far.
We upgraded fairly easily, we build everything in modules which really saves us a ton of work and then put those into pak files with our own custom pak loader.
Very easy, just find and replace “unreal 4” for “unreal 5”
It's even easier. Just replace every 4 with 5. As a side effect you now have 5 levels in your game instead of 4 or 5 weapons instead of 4, etc...
just rename the folder😁
It's not about unreal 4 to 5.
It's about versions of 5.
@@colaboytje wooosh
Just set Power Management to High Performance and you'll gain 100 fpses.
It seems like nothing in AAA game development is a “trivial undertaking”.
I hope that MGS Delta will use the new lightning for vegetations, since it would be very useful for this game
Remant 2 . immortals of aveum , robocop should be updated to 5.4
but i suspect there will be 5.5 version to fix stutteing issue.
It's usually best to just stay on the version you're already using until it's time for the next project.
Most of the time whatever feature being added isn't worth the hassle of upgrading.
Heck, I'd be interested to see how many UE5 games actually use Nanite or Lumen. For most at the moment, you might as well just stay at 4.27
Which is what Mortal Kombat 1 did, which worked wonderfully well!
As someone who did quite complex stuff with the Unreal Engine I think updating from 5x to 5x is feasible if you maintain your project regularly. But from 4x to 5x can be really hard, especially with much custom stuff, most of the time not feasible with given resources.
I guess the console version of the City Demo is not updated?
Satisfactory upgraded ue versions _twice_ and both times it took months. And tbh both times I thought they’re crazy to attempt it.
The Finals needs that sweet 5.4 UE performance enhancements 😂😢
Love seeing comments from devs, so much insight! Know that we appreciate all the hard work you put in!
As a huge FF7 fan, I’m one of those (ignorant) fanatics, that’s hopes when the RE trilogy is completed.. they’ll re-release the game on the latest iteration of UE on whatever console we’re on by that point..
Hey someone smarter than me, just how realistic/feasible is something like this given the scale of those games? (Assuming the third follows suit with the first two).
Yeah there are reasons you dont see devs just bumping the engine version mid development often.
What version will Hellblade II be?
They probably have their own custom version of UE5 with many optimizations for their specific needs, who knows how up to date is their version compared with the oficial UE5 but as they say in the video, is not an easy task to make changes to the engine you use once your project starts to get big
Probably 5.1 or 5.2 with some customizations and backported features.
matrix awakens needs a update to support 5.4
Not too sure about the big companies, but the developers of Truck Simulator: The American Dream will be updating the problematic Unreal 5.3 to the latest 5.4. Yes, this trucking game has both performance and quality (RT) modes with 40 fps support.
So basically, early, unreal 5 games are kind of trash, and it would take a decent amount of effort to update them to be better, and probably shouldnt have been made with that early engine because it wasnt really ready in terms of where the engine should be. Early demo unreal 5 games.
Everyone knows it’s as easy as saving all the files with .ue5 extension, duh!
How easy for assets from proprietary engines to be update them for UE5? Very.
Multiple studios are cancelling exclusivity in order to make them part of UE5.
That is the controversy to the gamers that are not programming, modding or even creating assets themselves.
The high cost is for those to gain access to those very assets and the games in UE5 and that is what people are understanding when they buying into these next- gen consoles.
That the console era has been internationally the most chaotic era and is what sparked the companies in unison to make gaming and all medias easier to create and access through UE5.
The downside is that anyone would’ve already done that a long time ago, but people trust the money far easily than the people to even care to make those very possibilities real years ago.
reading the comments here are more interesting than the video keep it up dev commentors
I love playing the Matrix Demo on my Series X, it's sad that they don't let me update that to increase performance.
Did you make it??
@@michaelmonstar4276 make what? It's not available anymore in the Xbox store, so they don't let you update it there.
from UE4.18 to 4.27. could not make it to UE5.
Is it even worth the time. Everytime Unreal Engine updates the grand claims of better performance never materialise.
SOCOM ps5!!!!
Over🎁 🌼😄
Was Fortnite the only game who did that?
Not sure why it’s called 5.4 if it has breaking changes like that. May as well call it UE 6.
If they went with that route we would be sitting at Unreal Engine 54 right now
@@Navhkrin that’s their problem
man you dont know how versioning works.
@@jacobpipers there’s no standard to versioning. If UE uses semver versioning which they obviously don’t, then breaking API changes would require a new “major” version.
It’s not about marketing or the complaint of “oh then we would have UE 54 by now”. Anyways carry on, dweeb.
Let's get it done Tarkov!
Tarkov is an Unity game and no amount of engine updates can fix utter incompetence.
@@JBHurtmann "Well that's just like..your opinion man."
What for?... They don't deserve support and they wouldn't even improve it if they could.
Idiotic.
I use UE5. My goal is avoid NVIDIA graphics card.NVIDIA is Mega Trillion dollar company. They can do amazing photorealistic graphics and can model 3d object faster than 3d modeler. My Goal is use UE software emulation or megascans.. Trick people's eyes and use Assets. Not getting caught by gamers.
Not snake oil or snake oil free asset graphics.😂 Save company's money.
I'm not fan of using UE 4.... Why Triple A companies use UE 4? Less computer crashes than brand new UE 5.
So, I assume, the more UE advances, and the less additional C++ code you need to write by yourself, the easier it should become to update to a newer version, right?
no.
@@jacobpipers could you explain and elaborate?
Should be quite easy. Based on the same engine and that was a literal big selling point coming from 4 to 5.
The gaybox series x and gaybox series s are holding back the industry. Closing down studios because gaypass isn't meeting those numbers 😂😂
Are u having a stroke?
forgot "gaystation" and "nintenhoe" feel like reading a comment from grade school smh....
are you 12 lmao
blud is literally 10 years old
nickname check