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Other names | UEFN, Creative 2.0 |
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Developer(s) | Epic Games |
Initial release | March 2023 |
Written in | Verse |
Operating system | Windows |
Predecessor | Fortnite Creative |
Type | Game engine |
Website | https://dev.epicgames.com/community/fortnite/getting-started/uefn |
Unreal Editor for Fortnite, or UEFN is a specialized version of Unreal Engine released in 2023 tailored for creating and editing UGC content within Fortnite, a popular online video game developed by Epic Games. UEFN integrates the functionalities of Unreal Engine with aspects of Fortnite, allowing for a more comprehensive experience than it's predecessor Fortnite Creative.
With a GUI almost identical to that of Unreal Engine, UEFN gives developers a familiar interface and tooling. It defers from Unreal Engine by allowing users to enter a live 'edit' session, where other collaborators can load into the project via Fortnite and participate in development via the Fortnite Creative toolset. Changes made in the edit session by collaborators are automatically updated in UEFN, although changes made in UEFN must be pushed through the content service- a process that takes anywhere from thirty seconds, to several minutes depending on server availability and the hardware of the host. The most prominent feature is implementation of the Verse programming language to interact and interface with players, objects, game logic, and the spatial environment. The addition of Verse is the first time developers have had scripting ability, and has allowed for far more robust and unique experiences to be created than the Fortnite Creative toolset allowed. To the surprise of many, Epic chose not to include it's visual scripting platform 'Blueprints' that is widely used in Unreal Engine. Amongst the Fortnite community, projects made with UEFN are referred to as 'Creative 2.0' while projects created in the former are considered 'Creative 1.0'. [1] With the release of UEFN, Epic also launched it's 'Island Creator' program in addition to the previous 'Support-A-Creator' program, both creator programs allow developers to benefit financially from their creations through different methods- most of which, are not publicly disclosed as a precaution for abuse. Dubbed by Epic as the 'Creator Economy', the Island Creator program follows a similar model of its sandbox competitors Roblox , and Minecraft . As with other social media communities that allow user monetization, the Island Creator program has turned many into 'overnight millionaires' with the viral success of their projects- due to this, the ecosystem has caught the attention of prominent AAA game developers. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Many features in UEFN added capabilities for developers that were not possible in Fortnite Creative, or if they were possible- often had many problems. The logic, and event binding required to create complex games in Creative 1.0 can quickly become a programmatical disaster, for many reasons- lack of scripting ability, gamepad-centric user interface, lack of an outliner, lack of an 'Undo' or 'CTRL-Z' action, inefficient methods for naming actors and objects, and other platform instability bugs. There are new tools, as well as Unreal Engine tools available to use in UEFN that supersede development work flows in Creative 1.0.
Feature | Description |
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Verse | A scripting language developed by Epic for the ' metaverse '. Communicates with UEFN via proprietary VS Code extension and language server. The extension automatically lints, parses, and interprets code as it is written and then built and deployed by UEFN. This is currently the only way to work with Verse. |
Custom Assets | Compatible filetypes include .FBX (with or without animated sequences), .obj, .png, .wav. |
Sequencer | Multi-track linear media editor for creating and managing cinematic sequences, animations, and other scripted events. It provides a toolset for choreographing in-game events, cutscenes, and animations. It includes real time editing, event triggering, keyframe animation, camera control, scene management and animation blending. |
Modeling | Interface to model custom 3D objects and their associated attributes. |
Landscape | Tool's to paint and sculpt the spatial environment's landscape. |
Outliner | Browser GUI to perform various actions with actors present in the project. |
Details Panel | Previously limited in Creative 1.0, UEFN has a details panel for every actor, where attributes can be edited. |
L.O.D. | Referred to as 'L.O.D.s', UEFN has tooling for Level of Detail optimization by adjusting the complexity of 3D models based on their distance from the camera. |
Unreal Revision Control | Unreal Revision Control, or URC- was implemented to support collaboration amongst teams. Teams are created through the 'Creator Portal' (a web portal for creators to manage projects). Members of a team are then able to upload snapshots of a project for other team members to sync with their client. In a similar manner as other revision control systems, users 'check-out' the assets being worked on and then check them back in when uploading their latest snapshot. |
World Partition | A tool for optimizing an experience by segmenting the data into layers or grids, to be streamed to the end user rather than being always spatially loaded. |
Material Attributes | Unreal Engine 'Blueprint' styled GUI for editing materials and textures with node parameters. |
Output Log | A runtime status output and error reporting message log. |
In the first year of UEFN's beta phase, the 'Island Creator' program has paid an estimated $320 million to over 20,000 developers with published experiences. Epic has used the name 'Creator Economy' to describe the structure's ecosystem. [10]
In the Fortnite ecosystem, 'Discover', or 'Discovery' is the term used to describe the algorithm that puts UGC content in front of players in the form of playlists or 'rows' in the Fortnite lobby A Discover row consists of a thumbnail, title, and the current amount of players playing the experience. The addition of the public facing CCU metric was met with backlash from less popular developers, alleging it makes it harder to build a player base when potential users browsing Discover see no players in an experience and thus negatively compounding algorithmic bias against them. The specifics on how algorithm operates, and the data it uses to curate it's rows, is kept secret by Epic, although they have stated it is a weighted a mix of total hits, player engagement, player retention, and the amount of V-Bucks users have spent after visiting a UGC experience. [11]
With the release of UEFN, and it's new feature of importing custom content, Discovery was met with a wave of IP theft in its curated rows of creations, ranging from the public facing thumbnail, to in-game assets. These experiences were able to thrive in the Fortnite community due to poor internal content review policies and procedures at Epic. In a tweet posted February 23, 2023 the official Fortnite Creative account addressed the issue for the first time and although this content may sometimes still appear, it has been drastically reduced.
Another controversy that has troubled the beta stage of UEFN and the creator community is the use of requesting DMCA takedowns or action from Epic for experiences containing UGC created in Fortnite that is the same, or similar to other UGC created in Fortnite. Stemming from top creator TeamGeerzy filing an application to trademark "The Pit", [12] and subsequently requesting Epic to takedown experiences with 'pit' terminology in the title (a common practice in many UGC ecosystems). Multiple experiences were then taken down by Epic which lead to major community backlash ultimately resulting in the official Fortnite Creative X account to respond to a tweet where they addressed the issue and reinstating the offending maps. [13] [14] [15] [16]
A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term "software engine" used more widely in the software industry.
ZZT is a 1991 action-adventure puzzle video game and game creation system developed and published by Potomac Computer Systems for MS-DOS. It was later released as freeware in 1997. It is an early game allowing user-generated content using object-oriented programming. Players control a smiley face to battle various creatures and solve puzzles in different grid-based boards in a chosen world. It has four worlds where players explore different boards and interact with objects such as ammo, bombs, and scrolls to reach the end of the game. It includes an in-game editor, allowing players to develop worlds using the game's scripting language, ZZT-OOP.
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Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games.
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Verse is a static typed object-oriented programming language created by Epic Games. It was released alongside UEFN in March 2023 and was authored by a team of well-known programmers led by Simon Peyton Jones, and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. Verse is designed to interact with Fortnite Creative's existing devices system. As of June 2024, UEFN remains the only way to interpret, parse, compile or run Verse code; plans to implement the language into the release of Unreal Engine 6 have been discussed.