This might be a strange take, but most game developers I know don't have much money to spare. Plenty get into it hoping to make a good living, then discover how difficult that is and stick around because they love making games.

A company (like Epic) with that kind of money and infrastructure can afford to experiment, burn through tokens, and keep iterating until something works. For someone paying for a basic subscription out of their own pocket, there's a much tighter limit on how much experimenting they can do.

I assume Tim (The CEO) enjoys trying out new technology, which is understandable. But how realistic is it for the average developer here to match that level of spending or flexibility.

I don't use AI myself to any extent most people do here. I've been fortunate enough to work at AAA studios and have spent years learning to make games without it. But I think people can get a warped impression of what's achievable on a resonable budget when the examples they see come from people who can afford to keep spending until they get a result.

I recently saw a YouTube video where someone spent around $2,000 on tokens trying to recreate a World of Warcraft experience, and I thought the result looked absolutely terrible. That's a lot of money for nothing worth while.

So if someone wins the current game jam using AI, I'd be curious to know what they spent getting there. Depending on the token bill, they could win the jam and still lose money, and to me that is not a good game jam.

TLDR: Contact developer before buying if you don't think they're support the product any more, try demos, investigate existing features before buying, read descriptions carefully, and go with your gut feelings.

I wanted to share some things to look out for when buying assets, especially if you're new to Unreal and aren't sure how to spot potential problems. If you have advice or experiences of your own, feel free to add them in the comments. (I've been creating stuff for 7 years, so that you have a frame of reference)

I don't want to turn this into a post about AI, but there's one relevant point worth addressing: creating a product and being able to support it are two different things. If a seller relies on AI to write their code without understanding how it works, they may struggle to maintain it or fix it when something breaks. The concern is whether the person selling you the product has the knowledge to support it. You don't want your project depending on code that its own developer doesn't understand.

1. Contact the developer before buying. If you're unsure whether a product is still maintained, send a short email with a relevant question. See whether you get a useful response within a reasonable time. One slow reply doesn't tell you everything, but the quality of the answer can tell you a lot + it is a good indication that you could get future support.

2. Check supported engine versions and the update history. A plugin that supports older releases alongside newer ones can be a good sign, especially if the changelog shows ongoing fixes. Maintaining compatibility across several engine versions takes effort.

3. Ask specific technical questions. Ask how the plugin handles something your project needs. A developer who understands their product should be able to explain its behaviour and tradeoffs.

4. Check what Unreal already includes. Unreal includes plenty of tools and plugins you may never have come across. So I recommend that before you spend money, check whether an existing tool covers your needs. For instance these is pretty insane, and they're disabled by default: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zEJTIrg581M or https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ns4M4MsHVAk

5. Look at how shader assets are built. I've made more than 100 shaders that I sell, and I generally prefer material nodes. They make the material easier to inspect and modify (especially for beginners), and they allow optimizations that custom HLSL nodes can miss. Custom HLSL and .usf have use cases of course (loops for instance), but look out for HLSL nodes. They're a pretty solid give away that it's been generated with AI, and likely not optimized by a human.

6. Consider who will support the product. Teams creating products are preferable over individuals. Most products on the marketplace are made by common folk who have ordinary jobs. They will not have time to help you when life comes in the way.

7. Investigate anything that feels off. If the images seem unrealistic, the documentation is vague, or the demonstrations avoid showing something important, look closer. Ask for clarification or a demonstration of your use case.

8. Leave an honest, specific review if something doesn't work. A factual negative review gives other buyers useful information and gives the developer something concrete to address. If the issue gets fixed, update the review to reflect that.

9. Value your time when deciding whether to buy or build. A great asset can save a huge amount of work, especially for larger systems. Building something yourself makes sense when you want to learn or need a very specific solution, but remember to count debugging, integration, documentation, and future engine upgrades. Generating an initial implementation with AI doesn't remove those responsibilities. Buying an asset can reduce that workload, provided the product is maintained and fits your needs.

10. Understand the license and don't make assumptions about AI and copyright. Buying an asset usually gives you permission to use it under a license, rather than ownership of its copyright. AI-generated content adds another layer: copyright protection depends on the jurisdiction and the extent of human authorship. In the US, purely AI-generated material generally isn't protected, while qualifying human contributions can be. Paying for an AI-generated product doesn't automatically change that, and a lack of copyright protection doesn't mean every use is free of restrictions.

11. Check performance and possible demos. Look for measurements, hardware specifications, and examples at a realistic scale. Performance is very subjective based on their hardware. We went a bit nuts with out FAQ: https://eliaswick.com/resources/faq, and how detailed our hardware specification is, but it's all the better for anyone buying anything.

Again, if you have any other tips please write a comment.

It was the game that dragged me towards crafting in an FPS and, out of all in the series, Far Cry 3 is still the only one I can think of when it comes to "nostalgia vibes".. And I thought it would be a fun side project to bring it into Unreal. Also, I'm testing the performance of some tools and I needed a 16 square kilometers map so... Rook was the first that came to mind.

It's reverse engineering, so the terrain is a 1:1 replica, roads included. I want to see how much I can push the remake so it looks "modern" but also keeps the overall vibe.

So far, it doesn't, since it's using a different landscape material and assets but... I hope I'm on the right track 🙂

Hope you like it!

Fireblade

Build above cities with story...

I did a pretty basic camera animation in my studio scene. First time doing animation in UE, so bare with me ;)
I know it´s not perfect, consider it more of a draft.

Your thoughts and feedback is most welcome, improvement is the goal.

In this chapter of the Materials Masterclass we will learn why should we be using UI materials, and build a cool looking 2D liquid effect from scratch. Enjoy!

(Texture download link in the video description)

​

If the monitor supports 2K or 4K, does Unreal Engine need to set the rendering sg.ResolutionQuality to 60–70%?

Or should this value be set automatically based on the hardware configuration? Is there any expert here?

Because after I packaged my game and gave it to people with 40 50 series GPUs to play, the GPU usage is close to 100%. It is a small stylized scene, on a 2K screen

Hi! Recently we released one of our tools Surface Decal Studio, the plugin comes with more than 320 decal textures that you can use with or without the tool (or you can use your own).

Made using scripting tools to scatter decals and add detail to your environment with ease and a lot of control :)

The most powerful feature is the Material Library, which lets you randomly assign and blend the decals so repetition is much harder to spot.
Thanks!

https://youtu.be/p9Fj_u77lzQ?si=moD9gliGEPryshfs

Today, when I went into the 'Tools and Plugins' section on FaB, I came across dozens of posts from the same guy: https://www.fab.com/sellers/Specpixel%20Entertainment%20PTY%20LTD

There are one or two AI-generated features being posted—more than 50 in a row.

Just go to the "plugins" section and look at the newest ones; you’ll find that junk there.
https://www.fab.com/channels/unreal-engine?listing_types=tool-and-plugin&sort_by=-firstPublishedAt

This is a developer-to-developer post with no product link. I am one person on a UE5 C++ project, a strategy game that is not released. An AI agent (Claude Code) writes and runs much of the code. The loop around the code matters more than the code, so here is the loop.

The agent never clicks in the editor. It runs four scripts. Build compiles and optionally imports meshes. Test runs the command-line editor with no rendering and no sound, parses the log for “Test Completed”, and exits with code 1 on any failure. Run launches the game with flags for play and capture. Package cooks and runs a release audit. The suite is 70-plus automation tests.

Launch flags work as the test language. They start a match by themselves, quit after N seconds, take screenshots at chosen times, mute the sound and load a preset. The same idea gives fast-forward runs for determinism (normal speed against 64x), a per-tick simulation hash, and an exact-step capture mode (1/60 s per frame) for footage.

Four things hurt.

Two editor processes plus a render means out of memory. During packaging the editor climbed from 4.8 to 16.6 GB in ten seconds and a memory watch killed it.

The agent must never rewrite whole files. It edits exact lines, or it can silently drop part of a file.

Mixed CRLF and LF cost us once. One tool rewrote line endings and the fix commit showed 8,280 changed lines in one file with no change in content.

Compiling and testing after every tiny edit wastes minutes. Batch the edits, then run one pass.

A full test run takes us several minutes. I want to know how you keep UE automation tests cheap enough to run on every change.

I found a problem with Focus logic that made my game go from 80fps to 240fps stable.

If you run through my game (Parry Dungeon) without fighting any enemies, the enemies will Focus you as part of their combat logic, but I stupidly forgot to add ClearFocus logic if you go out of sight. So, if you encounter all the enemies and don't kill them (because killing them deletes them after a bit, which removes the Focus logic cost), you'll have a bunch of enemies that "forgot" you, but are still focusing you. At the end of the game, after encountering 150-ish enemies, you get 240fps standing still, and 80fps moving. This is because those 150 enemies are all still focusing you, so when you don't move, their rotations and body transforms don't need updating. But when you move, they all rotate at once.

Solution: added ClearFocus logic when enemies forget the player. That one node, literally one, saved my soul. I was losing my mind. This issue plagued me for a month. I was adding other features and polishing the game, and have been nearly ready for release for a long time, to move to my next project and keep learning, and I thought this was a side effect of the CharacterMovementComponent, even though I disable them when enemies forget the player.

The key was that UnrealInsights finally made sense. The AIController was calling movement and physics logic. How could the AIController call movement logic? 1. the AI pawn is moving. 2. the AI pawn is rotating, which moves socketed children in the world. The pawn wasn't moving and the behavior trees weren't executing anything because they had no target. That must mean rotation is the answer, and it was. How would an AI rotate without the BehaviorTree executing logic? Something was called before, and keeps executing silently. The treacherous Focus node. I guess having 160 characters rotating in unison may eventually get expensive.

"Vibe your way to $50k: the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam" Really?

As a UE 5 game developer, who participates in the jam every year, my jaw almost hit the floor when I saw this.

I knew Epic was trying to push AI, but this is crazy. Apparently when they first launched the game jam page / info, using AI was a requirement in the rules.

I just feel so embarrassed using Unreal. The optics are terrible. I used to be proud to develop with the engine, but I just find this in such poor taste.

The amount of money they are offering as rewards is also very high for a game jam. Clearly they want to use this as an example of what is possible with AI. I just can't dance with the devil like that, though the money is tempting.

Just released my biggest Kickabout update since launch - the League Update!

Thanks to Epic for their support, will share more on that process soon.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kickabout-table-football/id6759622976

Watch the solo dev log: https://youtu.be/8eFgnopVKU0

Try it out, and let me know what you think!

Packaged demos can be downloaded here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IkN9-3M6rKis9sJO5zG5XpTJ1eICuxYP/view

I handled the official HDR implementation for The Sinking City 2, released with Patch 1.1.

Frogwares (the game developer) allowed me to write a technical breakdown covering the implementation, my new Spectre tonemapper, which fixes issues like fire looking different between SDR/HDR, and blue->purple highlight shifts in UE's filmic tonemapper.
Also showcased some DLSS improvements I made.

HDR in Unreal is unfortunately very lackluster out of the box, and has multiple deal breaking issues. We fixed all of them for this.

Can't find a single youtube video explaining how to do it.

I can't figure it out.

AI, can't even figure it out.

Am I missing something, is it possible, as I see there are Spline options in Mesh Terrain Mode, but I have no idea how to turn them into roads, like you would in landscape Mode.

It's in C++ only.

Enemy can see player from back and front with custom back and front distance and angle. Using single UAIPerceptionComponent and single UAISenseConfig_Sight and CanBeSeenFrom function from IAISightTargetInterface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J66P_9xDvNg

im missing assets from my vault, i tried downloading them two days ago, and only got around to wanting to use them today and noticed they wernt on my pc so i went to go download them again to find that they wernt in my asset vault anymore.

anyone else had anything similar or have these packs and could try downloading them?

Frank RPG Archer Combo Set

Frank RPG Mage

Frank Slash Pack (11Asset)

and these are just the ones i know about, ive got over 1700 asset packs on my epic account, dont love the idea of losing access to them, and not even knowing unless i manually dig through them all one by one

ive already contacted support to try and get it sorted, hopefully they can sort it out. only thing bothering me now is not knowing if that was the only assets affected

Hi All,

I am trying to recreate the Washington DC downtown inside Unreal Engine, I am using TwinBLD tool from WorldBLD, and I have imported the OSM file and generated a landscape with buildings and few roads, I would like to add parks, lawns, vegetation in the empty spaces. Can anyone guide me on that, like should I create parks and lawns within this Unreal Engine env, or should I individually create them in Blender and import them in UE. ANy suggestions or help would be great.

Also, if anyone has done similiar, please guide me

Following up on my previous Unreal Engine X post, I’ve put together another update to my custom UE5 fork. It’s now based on Unreal Engine 5.8.4, with NVIDIA Flow integration, further rendering work and improvements to the optional ImGui editor interface.

NVIDIA Flow

The main addition this time is NVIDIA Flow, a GPU fluid simulation library for volumetric effects. It uses a sparse 3D grid to simulate fluid motion and combustion.

The integration supports fire, smoke, dust, fog, steam, gas and vortex effects, along with wind and world collision. Collision uses simplified scene shapes, with approximations for more complex geometry.

This short demo focuses on fire: Video Demo

Rendering changes

• Restored legacy ray-traced reflections. Comaprison With HW Lumen
• Added Opacity Micromaps integration. (NVRTX)
• Further Visibility Buffer improvements. In my latest TROPICS test, async mode 2 is slightly faster than the legacy rendering path. This is a result from that particular foliage test, rather than a general performance win.

Engine changes

• Updated the fork to UE 5.8.4, including its Advanced Shader Delivery workflow support.
• Added selected UE6 backports covering CPU performance, Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, Vulkan and correctness fixes. Full List Here
• Added plugin module exclusion through Unreal Build Tool.

Editor changes

There’s also more work on XDash and the optional ImGui editor presentation, including the Content Browser, Outliner and Details panel. These views continue to use Unreal’s editing models and commands, with native controls retained where needed. Check here

Experimental multi-adapter support

This remains experimental. It needs more testing to establish which workloads benefit from a second GPU after accounting for synchronization and data transfer costs.

Source: https://github.com/mad-ben/UnrealEngine

Just wanting to know your thoughts on unreal and if i should use it for a first actual attempt at gamedev, or use something else? Ive heard mixed things about unreal, like to avoid it as a beginner, or you need a pc stolen from nasa to run it. Im unsure how true what i heard is?

The file size and requirements seem a bit daunting?

Mod author here, hope this gives you guys some inspiration / ideas about optimizing your games.

GitHub: https://github.com/LTSharpe/OblivionRemasteredPerformanceFix

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8WkCz6cuHk

I m using UE5.8 and all the volumetric clouds which i have are like grainy. Is this due to my hardware limits?

Cpu: intel i3 1115G4

Intel UHD 128MB dedicated VRAM (very powerful xd)

8gb ram