Unreal Engine 4.1 Bringing Linux Support

Unreal on Linux

A tweet from TechCrunch today alerted me to Epic’s Unreal Engine 4.1 Update preview. There are a number of changes, but the big news is that the Unreal Engine has a native Linux (and, by extension, SteamOS) built target.

This is another huge development for the burgeoning Linux gaming community, and its great to see full-features engines support Linux and the new Steam Machines.

Unreal Engine 4 Gets Support For Making Linux Games http://t.co/vn9y8j4U0s by @grg

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) April 3, 2014

New Features

The update preview lists the following upcoming changes to the Unreal Engine in 4.1, coming later in April:

NEW! STEAMOS/LINUX SUPPORT

• You can now package your games and deploy to SteamOS and Linux!
• Note: For now, you’ll need to grab the source code to compile and test on Linux

NEW! FLYING AND ROLLING PROJECT TEMPLATES

• There are 2 new project templates that demonstrate simple flying and rolling character movement!
• The Flying templates (C++ and Blueprint) feature simple flying movement.
• The Rolling templates (C++ and Blueprint) feature a physics-based rolling ball as the player character

NEW! SCENE OUTLINER FOLDER SYSTEM

• It is now possible to organize actors in the Scene Outliner using folders
• The create button will create you a new folder containing the currently selected actors.
• Visibility toggling on folders affects all their contained actors.

NEW! ASSET DELETION ASSISTANT

• This feature makes it easy to delete assets by helping you interactively inspect and repair references.
• Allows graceful cleanup of assets still being referenced on disk or in memory
• You can click on any referenced asset to navigate to it and fix it up manually.
• You can Replace References, formally known as “Consolidate”.
• You can perform a Force Delete, or you can Cancel and go handle the references yourself.
• Allows for multiple simultaneous deletes.
• Even if an asset is referenced by other assets, as long as they are also being deleted, it won’t flag that as a problem.
• Double Clicking on referenced assets will open their editor
• If an asset is being referenced in the open map, Double Clicking the map asset will take you to it in the open map.

NEW! UNDO HISTORY WINDOW

• The Editor now has a way to access the undo history!
  Undo History Window
• You can access the Undo History window from the Windows menu (Windows > Undo History).

NEW! JUMP TO CONNECTION IN GRAPH

• You can now right click on pins and jump to connections!
  Debug Histogram Visualization

NEW! DEBUG HISTOGRAM VISUALIZATION

• You can now draw a histogram (graph) of float values in the world!
• You can record the value of a property or other aspect of the game over time and visualize that as a histogram at a specific location in the world.
• Values can be recorded and histograms can be drawn from both C++ code and Blueprints!

NEW EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE: TRANSLATION EDITOR

• The Translation Editor makes it easier to edit translations for strings in your game code and assets.

Bug Fixes and Updates

Dozens of bugfixes and other updates can be found in the Unreal Engine 4.1 Update Preview document.

Get It

Existing licensees will be able to download the 4.1 updates later this month, when they are made available. If you are interested in using the Unreal Engine, you can get the full source code on subscription for $19 per month.