Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) is a specialized version of Unreal Engine released in 2023 tailored for creating and editing user-generated 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 its predecessor Fortnite Creative. On March 20, 2024, Lego assets and Metahuman support were added. On July 23 of the same year, assets from Mediatonic's Fall Guys were added, with support for publishing assets using these said assets were added on August 6.
Overview
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 its 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'. With the release of UEFN, Epic also launched its '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.
Features
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.
UEFN Tools
| Feature
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Description
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| Verse
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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.
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| Custom Assets
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Compatible filetypes include .FBX (with or without animated sequences), .obj, .png, .wav.
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| Sequencer
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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.
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| Modeling
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Interface to model custom 3D objects and their associated attributes.
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| Landscape
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Tool's to paint and sculpt the spatial environment's landscape.
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| Outliner
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Browser GUI to perform various actions with actors present in the project.
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| Details Panel
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Previously limited in Creative 1.0, UEFN has a details panel for every actor, where attributes can be edited.
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| L.O.D.
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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.
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| Unreal Revision Control
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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.
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| World Partition
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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.
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| Material Attributes
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Unreal Engine 'Blueprint' styled GUI for editing materials and textures with node parameters.
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| Output Log
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A runtime status output and error reporting message log.
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'Creator Economy'
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.
Discovery
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 its 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.
Issues with intellectual property and DMCA takedowns
With the release of UEFN, and its new feature of importing custom content, Discovery was met with a wave of intellectual property infringement 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", 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.
References
"Understanding User-Generated Content in Gaming". Pubnub. March 12, 2024.
- "Fortnite Creative 2.0 Supercharging UGC Creation Tools". Platform Aeronaut. March 22, 2023.
- "Not even Riot wants to try competing with Fortnite on user generated content". PCGamer. June 18, 2024.
- "Unreal Editor for Fortnite is now available in Public Beta". March 22, 2023.
- "Dive into Epics announcements from GDC 2023". March 22, 2023.
- "Alex Seropian launches Look North World studio and Outlaw Corral game for Fortnite". VentureBeat. July 18, 2023.
- "VerseMetaVerse". Github.
- Garst, Aron (May 9, 2023). "How Epic Games is revamping the ecosystem of Fortnite Creative to sweeten the deal for in-game creators". Digiday.
- "Fortnite Creative, Meet Unreal Engine 5". IntoMetaMedia. August 8, 2022.
- "Unreal Editor for Fortnite Documentation". Epic Games Developer.
- ^ Taylor, David (April 23, 2023). "Fortnite Creative Origins". Naavik.
- "Fortnite and the Revolution of User Generated Content A New Era of Gaming". Medium. October 12, 2023.
- "THE PIT - Trademark Details". Justia. February 15, 2024.
- "Your island is reinstated". X. March 28, 2024.
- "User-Generated Content". Copyright User. 6 December 2021.
- "We have to action DMCA". X. March 27, 2024.
- "UGC how Fortnite & Roblox are leading the next wave". GameDiscover Newsletter. May 10, 2023.
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