[christoph]

I have a feeling you may have been approaching this problem in UE4 the wrong way. Adding a double jump can be done in numerous ways, but one simple way is with Blueprints. See below link where the exact functionality is implemented with a really simple blueprint.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hFAr7gYV1rA

[skohan]

Oh I am certain I was not approaching the problem in the UE4 way. But the issue is that the way UE4 expects me to do things is not the way I would like to approach game development.

UE4 has a strong bias about the way things should work. If I am making something which is fairly well aligned to that bias, then it's fairly easy to make it work. But if I want to achieve something which is quite far from what the engine expects, then I have to invest significant effort undoing or circumventing what UE4 already does before adding my own functionality on top. I would greatly prefer to start from a blank slate, and only add precisely the behavior I actually want.

So basically this experience with the double jump just gave me a window into the level of complexity I would have to work around in terms of realizing my own goals.

[phreack]

I know what you mean. One of the first things I looked into when trying out Unreal was Version Control. The amount of hoops I had to jump through just to get things on git made me reach the exact same conclusion you did.

[ohgodplsno]

UE4 works hard to make you not edit its source code, yes. But the biggest reason for this is allowing you to update through versions, with no struggle.

Games like Valorant are using their own modified version, and from their own admission, every version bump must be carefully considered and takes upwards of a month to reintegrate their changes in a painstakingly slow process.

[skohan]

To me this would be an argument against a tightly coupled monolithic engine like UE4. For instance, imagine if Valorant is only interested in a new version of the engine for new post-processing effects introduced into the renderer. Why should they have to migrate gameplay code to get benefits which have nothing to do with gameplay?

[ohgodplsno]

They actually _are_ changing things like the renderer, hence their need to take a long time for migrations. Basic gameplay code is written with blueprints, base classes are in C++ but do not replace the core code.

[skohan]

My point is not about what Valorant is doing specifically, it's about the drawbacks of a tightly coupled, opinionated system