Upgrading from SML 3.4.x to 3.5

The new plugin localization system is not totally ready for use. You may encounter issues with translation data not saving, and the system for importing and exporting translations to the community translation portal is not yet complete.

You might run into troubles accessing the new Unreal Engine repo. Please contact us on the Discord if you get stuck.

The Session Settings page explains how you can create your own Advanced Game Settings. However, their values are not currently saved with the save file. Session Settings still function correctly - their values are saved.

Although Unreal Engine 5 still supports some previous versions of Visual Studio, they have not been tested by the community and we are no longer supporting them. You should switch to Visual Studio 2022, and the 2022 toolchain, to avoid any potential issues.

You can find information on installing Visual Studio on the Dependencies page.

Even if you already have Visual Studio 2022 installed, you’ll need to modify your installation via the installer to add a new MSVC build tools component. See the Dependencies page for more information.

We have moved our fork of Unreal Engine to be inside the Satisfactory Modding organization instead of being owned by a separate github user. As such, the URL for downloading the engine has changed as well as the means of accessing it.

More information can be found here.

When generating visual studio project files for your project, you may encounter an error similar to the below:

Unreal Engine 5 includes updates to UBT to make it more extensible. As part of these updates, certain libraries have moved to other names or paths. For example, Tools has been replaced with EpicGames.Core. You may have to modify or add additional using directives to your mod module’s Build.cs file. In the case of this example error message, adding the following directives resolved the issue.

You may also need to remove or change some dependencies from the target list, such as PhysX because they no longer exist. Try using the example Build.cs from the C++ Setup page if you’re encountering issues.

If you are using BlueprintReadWrite or BlueprintCallable access transformers you will have to update their Class field to use their runtime class path. This means adding the prefix /Script/FactoryGame. to the class name and removing any Unreal prefixes like A or U.

For example, if you were previously using the access transformer:

You will have to switch to:

If you don’t update your access transformers messages will be generated in your output log explaining what needs to be changed, for example, LogAccessTransformers: Warning: Resolving BlueprintReadWrite AFGRecipeManager:mAvailableRecipes requested by MAMTips: Using deprecated class specification. The loaded class was /Script/FactoryGame.FGRecipeManager. Please update your AccessTransformers config file. This will become an error in a future version.

This change was made as part of a move away from using ANY_PACKAGE, which you can read more about in the Unreal documentation if you are interested.

Instead of being placed in the Plugins/ folder, mod folders are now located in the project’s Mods/ folder. Why the change?

Your saved editor setting for the UE4 option "Show Plugin Content" in Content Browsers does not carry over to UE5. You’ll have to turn it back on again.

Unreal Engine 5 has overhauled how user input and key bindings are handled. If your mod made use of keybindings, they will stop working, and the dead code will possibly prevent your mod from compiling until you change to the new system.

More info can be found on the Enhanced Input System page.

The SML configuration option has been removed because it was redundant and does the same thing as the startup parameter. See Logging for more information.

Some widget features (ex. Text Block element bindings of text to a value or function) no longer function correctly when your widget is a child of the player HUD’s widget tree.

In the case of text element bindings, the function will execute as normal, and return the expected value, but the displayed text will never update.

A fix for this example case is to call the binding function on tick and set the text element’s value to the function’s return.

UE5 changes the default Appearance of buttons to Draw As: Rounded Box, and it seems to have overwritten the selected properties of some existing buttons in the process. You may need to change them back to Draw As: Image (the previous default), or your previously set value, in order to get the same look as they did before.

You may also need to adjust buttons' Pressed and Normal paddings as those also seem to have been reset.

Changes to the Unreal Engine Online Subsystem have made it impossible to launch the game with a fixed username from the command line. This affects the launch scripts provided in the Testing/Multiplayer Testing page. Although this functionality has not returned at the time of writing, the page has been updated with an improved version of the launch script.

We’re looking for help resolving this - if you’d like to help, please contact us on the Discord and read this issue.

According to Ben from Coffee Stain, AFGProximitySubsystem::IsNearBase should be used instead of IsLocationNearABase.

If you are using features that look up classes or objects with ANY_PACKAGE filters, note that this has been deprecated in UE5.1.

Some alternatives include specifying the full class path or using the safe variants of the functions. More info can be found here.

The structure of the project has changed and Rider can no longer auto discover mod targets if you’re using the .uproject model. Furthermore, using the .uproject model will cause Rider to try and build the Engine, which files are not present for, corrupting the Rider project. The .sln model should still work as it did before.

You may encounter an error like this while packaging your blueprints:

This error is caused by Unreal now requiring increased specificity for things that look up classes via MetaData specifiers, such as the BitmaskEnum UPARAM meta specifier.

For example, if your code was originally this:

You can fix the warning by changing the BitmaskEnum to what the error message mentioned, like this:

More information can be found here.

If your project contains any Wwise stubs or assets, you may be greeted with a popup upon opening the project or opening an asset that references the Wwise asset.

You can safely cancel or close the prompt to take no action. However, you may need to delete any Wwise assets you have in your mod, or Wwise could block that mod from packaging with a vague error message.

Have you been holding off on implementing a MAM research tree in your mod because of how tedious it is? Wait no more!

The new Research Tree Editor allows you to create and edit research trees in a visual interface and provides basic error checking functionality.

To launch the tool, navigate to the SMLEditor Content/ResearchTree/ folder in the Content Browser, right click on the ResearchTreeHelper asset, then select Run Editor Utility Widget. Hover over elements in the tool to see tooltips explaining what they do.

The Example Mod has been updated with a complex research tree (created by the tool) to demonstrate and explain some important research tree concepts. Explore this tree, and the base game’s trees, to learn more about how research trees work.

SMLEditor now provides a custom Blueprint node for sorting arrays that does so in a much more performant way than a sorting algorithm implemented in Blueprint. Provide an array of any type and create a function to be used as a comparator. The comparator should return true if item A is less than item B.

Read more about it on the Blueprint Interface page.

ExampleMod has been updated to include some examples of correctly adding multiplayer functionality to your mod. The Multiplayer page has also been updated with more information and tutorials.

Access Transformers, everyone’s favorite neighborhood superhero of accessing things that weren’t intended to be, just got better. BlueprintReadWrite and BlueprintCallable access transformers will now be hot reloaded in the editor as soon as you modify the .ini file.

Session Settings are a feature similar to the base game’s Advanced Game Settings that allows mods to store configuration information on a per-game-save basis.

Read more about it on the Session Settings page.

Widget Blueprint Hooks can be used to add your custom widget into one of the existing game widgets. If you’ve previously been using Bind on BPFunction 'Construct', this system may be a better fit for you.

Read more about it on the Widget Blueprint Hooks page.

See the Example Mod and SML itself for examples of how to use this system.

Blueprint Simple Construction Script hooks allow adding modded Components to any blueprint-based actor.

Read more about it on the Simple Construction Script (SCS) Hooks page.

See the Example Mod for examples of how to use this system.

There are two new launch flags to assist with debugging C++ mods. You can read more about them on the Debugging page.

We have started hosting our own Tolgee instance that makes it easy to crowdsource and contribute translations to the modding toolkit and to mods.

Read more about how you can get started on the Localizing Mods page.

This feature has not yet been documented in detail, however, the Example Mod has been updated with its own custom level that properly registers itself through the Custom Level system and demonstrates many custom level concepts.

You can now provide a data table for registering items for the Resource Sink to be put on the Exploration track. The only base-game item on that track is the Alien DNA Capsule. See the Example Mod for an example of how to use this system.