Coherent UI for Unreal Engine 4 FAQ & short-term roadmap
After we released our beta plugin for Unreal Engine 4 we’ve been getting a lot of great feedback and questions about our plans for the official release and how the development will continue.
Unreal Engine 4 is a priority for the Coherent Labs team and the majority of the developers are currently working on different aspects of the UE4 integration – both on the plugin and on improvements of the core Coherent UI product aimed especially at UE4.
We’d like to directly answer some of the most asked questions:
Q: When will the official release of the plugin take place?
A: We don’t have a fixed date when we’ll deem the plugin “final”. We continue to improve it and as soon as a feature is implemented and passes QA, we push a new version. The current version are Beta because they still don’t implement all the features we want to put in and we are working on them constantly. Teams interested in Coherent UI for UE4 can license the product even now and will receive all the updates even after the plugin is deemed “released”. We have tons of ideas and features that will gradually make their way in the plugin. As soon as we feel the plugin has most of the features we believe are the most important, we’ll tag a version as “not-Beta” but it will be an iterative process.
A1: As Unreal Engine 4 is still rapidly changing, we cannot commit a final release date for the plugin. We will continue adding features and improving performance until we are sure that we have met all customer needs and our standards. The API is already quite stable, so Coherent UI can be used in production projects.
Q: Can I license Coherent UI for UE4 now?
A: Yes, you can. You’ll receive all the updates of both the plugin and Coherent UI.
Q: How much time does the trial continue?
A: You can use the Coherent UI Trial for 30 days and in that period you have access to all plugin updates and support. You can also request a single extension of the Trial if you need.
Q: Are there any limitations in the Trial?
A: There are no hard limits – it has all the features of the licensed version but shows a little watermark on all Views. You also can’t release a product with the Trial and it will stop working after 30 days.
Q: Can I upgrade easily from the Trial to the Licensed version?
A: Yes, the API is the same. The upgrade means that you’ll just have to replace a couple of DLLs and your License file. Then your game will work the same minus the Coherent UI Trial watermark. You won’t have to touch a single line of code.
Q: Can I use Coherent UI with Blueprints?
A: Yes, Coherent UI is currently encapsulated in Components that expose 90% of the API to Blueprints. All the functions can be called from BP and all the View callbacks invoke Delegates that can be bound via BP. We are also working on easier ways to script the UI (interact with JavaScript) from BP.
Q: Is there a way to debug the UI, check performance etc.?
A: Yes, in every package we bundle the Coherent UI Debugger. With it you can live-edit your UI, check the JavaScript code, put breakpoints, watches. It also includes timeline profiles that tell how much time was spent executing JS, in layout, drawing etc.
Q:What is the price for Coherent UI for UE4?
A: Our official pricing options will be released very shortly on our website. Until then, please contact sales@coherent-labs.com and get an inquiry.
To clarify our short-term priorities we’d also like to share what we’ll be working on in the next few weeks:
1. Mac OS X support. Coherent UI itself supports all desktop OSes, we’ll just have to update the plugin to make use of the Coherent UI for Mac libraries.
2. Video tutorials.
3. Improved documentation.
4. Improved texture signalization to better use the multi-threaded rendering model of UE4. This will also fix the occasional flicker of the Trial watermark that some users experience.
5. Better input integration.
Note that this is a very short-term roadmap that we plan to complete in a couple of weeks. A more detailed long-term roadmap with most of the ideas we have for our Coherent UI plugin will follow in another blog post, so stay tuned.
