Fortnite’s Unreal Engine editor lets it compete with Roblox

polygon.com:

Epic Games has revealed a new set of tools to give Fortnitecontent creators even more power. The new tools are called the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), and they aim to bring some of the power of the full Unreal Engine 5 into Fortnite, making them a little more approachable, while also allowing entirely new creations and games to be developed inside of Fortnite. The UEFN tools were announced and debuted during Epic’s “State of Unreal” presentation at the Game Developers Conference 2023.

Unreal Editor for Fortnite is for experienced game developers, but it’s also designed to be a user-friendly tool for Fortnite’s many Island creators and hobbyists. Eventually, the goal is to have every single one of Unreal Engine 5’s features available in UEFN. This includes assets and eventually Meta Humans as well. UEFN will also work on any platform that can play Fortnite, allowing creators to collaborate with each other across consoles and PC.

The editor itself is designed specifically to import all kinds of content and assets from the Unreal engine, but also to provide players with a lot of base game systems to work on top of. During the GDC presentation, Epic showed off footage from some of the projects that have been built using UEFN, including one that featured a full cinematic before smoothly transitioning to third-person shooter gameplay in an environment that looked nothing like Fortnite — except for the characters and the shooting.

The tool features landscape editing abilities similar to the ones that Epic developers use to make Fortnite maps. Creators can also instantly switch to an in-game mode to play their creations right away. Epic is even including a custom programming language called Verse, which should allow