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Update Notes - Easy Game UI v3.0

Update 3.0 for Easy Game UI marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter! This massive, free update brings improvements to every aspect of the pack with multiple goals: Making it easier to use, more performant, more modular and all that also with some cool new features!
This update took a long time to build but today is finally time to fully reveal it to you, with the hope that it will be helping you build your dream game without having to worry about UI anymore!

Note on upgrading from previous versions

In an effort of improving all the systems of the asset and preparing them for the future, this update brings significant structural changes to most of these systems. This means unfortunately that there is no “drop-in” upgrade possibility if you already have set up a previous version of the asset.
This new version will require a full clean reinstallation of the asset, feel free to reach out to me if you need assistance with the transition.

Going forward this process should be much simplified, a lot of changes in this updates have been made with upgradability in mind to allow smoother updates in future!

Want to take a look at the update by yourself? Check out the update Demo Build!

Since this update is incredibly massive, I won’t be going in depth on every single change as it would be quite long, in this change log I will be summarizing most of the biggest new additions and changes introduced with this new version!

This new version is available for Unreal Engine 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8*
*Initial testing was done on 5.8 Preview without any major issues detected, full testing pending official release

Core System
  • Brand new UI navigation system
    This update features a massively improved ui navigation system, it is much more powerful, easier to implement and with a smoother player experience! A large amount of logic that previously had to be hardcoded for each widget is now fully handled automatically by the system, allowing massive simplifications when working with complex widget stacks!
  • Code cleanup, bugfixing, simplification
    The entire codebase of the system has been cleaned up to fix many issues, bring signficant performance optimizations and be much easier to understand and expand.
    • Most systems have also been reworked to be much more indepedent from each other, this now allows for example to swap any widget of the system by a duplicate or an entirely different widget, which can be useful to make modifications to existing systems while keeping an intact copy of the original widget!
    • Many Quality of Life features & changes have been added in direct response to all of your feedbacks and difficulties when working with the asset!
    • All the assets have also been cleanly reorganized and renamed to better reflect UE naming conventions.
  • Better Main Menu flow
    The introduction flow (Intro credits, press any key screen) has been split from the actual main menu to make them easier to manage independently depending on the needs. I also added a method to play "intro credits" with the built-in modular credits system
  • Common Widgets & Global Styling improvements
    Various improvements on all common widgets for an easier setup and exanded customization. Styling & Config have also been expanded and streamlined with new features like system widgets switching, and more granular control over each system
  • Amazing New Demo Content
    The Demo Content has been refreshed with amazing brand new maps to better showcase the features of the asset. A huge thanks to Marco from FluidFury for building these (check out his awesome game Quantic River)!

Note on localization

Starting with this update I made the unfortunate decision to no longer include any built-in localization for multiple reasons: UE major bugs with Localization Tools since a few versions, complexities with fab uploads, the large time consumption of making the localization itself and the overall limited usage of it.
Regardless of that, the options menu still has a built in system to switch between localizations if you implement any in your game.

Options Menu
  • Brand new settings management system
    A new object-based system has been developed to centralize each setting in its own “manager” object, allowing a much more modular approach with much greater control over what the setting does and how it does it, fully independently from the options menu! These changes bring massive simplifications to the options menu and the handling of all settings!
  • Unified settings for all systems
    All the systems of the asset now share a unified settings system with a single set of widgets for all scenarios: Options Menu, Photo Mode and any other widget of your need. Combined with the manager system, this allows to effortlessly set up settings that can be modified and accessed across many systems!
    This also allows any system to now have all the advanced settings features that were previously only supported by the options menu settings widget & system
  • Brand new key rebinding system
    With the move to 5.3+ exclusively, I had the occasion to entirely rework the key rebinding system to include many long-time requested features and improvements.
    The system now supports secondary mapping slots for MNK, “locked” keys that should be displayed to the player but not rebindable, expanded conflict system to support cross-IMC conflicts, input modifiers consideration and more!
  • Much simplified handling of settings associated actions (like disabling a setting based on another setting value) with a brand new tag system and easier handling of graphic presets
  • Many QoL additions such as a much simpler way to remove/disable settings, remove tabs from the options menu and much more
Save System
  • Expanded save capabilities
    The system can now natively save Game Instance variables as well as Actor Components variables, with the possibility to easily expand this to any custom non-actor objects with a new blueprint interface. The system can now also easily save your own save objects on demand.
  • Better support for world partition and sublevel saving
    Persistent Actors that are unloaded during gameplay as part of world partition or sublevels can now reliably be saved by the system without any additional work!
  • Added support for save “profiles”
    Save slots can now be grouped under a save profile to allow multi-users saving! The feature is disabled by default and currently no UI is associated with the feature as the implementation of such a profile system can vary widely depending on the game needs.
  • Saves Debug Tool
    Brand new debug tool to preview and easily understand the content of any save file directly in-engine. Very useful to debug save/load issues!
  • Many small improvements and QoL changes
Input Prompts System
  • Simplification of the setup
    All the configurable variables for input prompts now live in two dedicated structures for styling and keys definition, which allows for an easier set up with clearer variables and logic for all old and new functionality
  • Expanded “Multi Input Prompt” capabilities
    The Multi Input Prompt widget is now able to display effectively independent keys each with their own dedicated parameters. This allows for example to have a dynamic keyboard key shown as “Hold” at the sime time as a static gamepad key shown as “Mash”, which wasn't easily doable before
  • Many layout and performance improvements
    Many global improvements were made to the system, just to name a few: Faster method to search keys associated to inputs, simplification of the layout and animations handling with materials, smarter logic to detect device switch with more fine grain control over the key refresh process
Photo Mode
  • Complete rework of the photo mode handling
    The system no longer requires pawn possession which makes it fully multiplayer compatible and allows a much simplified management of the actor
  • The photo mode ui has also been significantly improved to be much more independent and overall management of inputs/navigation when switching between modes has been streamlined

That's it for this quick sneek peak at the largest changes of the update, there have been toushands of changes in total that you should be seeing when working with the asset in a way of simplified set up processes, expanded capabilities for any given feature and an overall better package to work with!
If you are wondering about any specific changes or anything that wasn't listed here, feel free to contact me and I will be able to give you more details on those!