Anyone modded the game to run on Unreal Engine 5.2?

Jimbo · 2023-04-02T18:05:16.381Z

Not for a six year old game using a highly modified custom version of the engine. They’d have to rebuild most of the infrastructure from the ground up, which is why it won’t be officially ported by the devs. I doubt any modder is insane enough or has enough free time to essentially remake the entire game

Grymm · 2023-04-02T18:08:19.511Z

Jimbo:

remake the entire game

…each time there’s an Update as well were it possible

Dzonatas · 2023-04-02T18:29:41.243Z

I doubt original PS4 can handle UE5.2. I’m sure it can be done. I would up the system requirements to ps4 pro, however.

BrianDD · 2023-04-02T19:44:38.942Z

Jimbo:

I doubt any modder is insane enough or has enough free time to essentially remake the entire game

There’s always somebody up for a challenge.

Xevyr · 2023-04-02T20:12:12.899Z

Not even remotely possible

Don’t you think if it was, the devs would’ve upgraded it by now?.. like… at least to a newer version of UE4 along the years?

Conan is on 4.15.3 and it’s a highly customized engine, not even remotely resembling what you could download from Epic so the engine itself has a ton of feature implementations that UE was lacking at the time so they custom-made them. That made it pretty much impossible to port it forward to newer UE4 versions, not to mention 5.

And @Jimbo was correct… that’s not how modding works, seeing as we don’t get the full C++ source code (that would be silly and make it an open source game… kinda hard to sell stuff like that… ) we only have the UE blueprints that build on top of the C++ base classes.

So the person could be as ambitious as they want to… but they’d still have to rewrite the game from scratch… which wouldn’t be conan exiles anymore… but a different game infringing on the Conan IP… They’d be better off spending their time just writing a completely separate game that has nothing to do with Conan

Megaton238 · 2023-04-03T00:57:02.947Z

UE5 is designed to work pretty well on a potato (by today’s standards). Here’s a video of what it looks like on a GTX 1060, which is roughly equivalent to what you’d have on a PS4 Pro.

rolee9309 · 2023-04-03T06:15:45.368Z

Xevyr:

Don’t you think if it was, the devs would’ve upgraded it by now?.. like… at least to a newer version of UE4 along the years?

Well, considering the fact that they STILL did not implement the end boss into the game, I highly doubt they would implement the whole game into an other engine, even if it would be possible to do

DeaconElie · 2023-04-03T12:16:55.987Z

Hey, I run a GTX 1060. Still waiting on the RTX3080 to cost less then my entire house budget.

darthphysicist · 2023-04-03T13:55:42.043Z

And even if they did, they’d then be subject to a lawsuit.

Jadzia · 2023-04-03T23:42:11.969Z

Jimbo can do it!

Bodin · 2023-04-04T00:04:35.401Z

That’s only if Funcom changed over to Unreal Engine 5.2 without paying for the licensing fee. I think the current rate is 5% of the sale. With over 1.4 million copies of the base game sold already, making the game to run on Unreal Engine 5.2, then you have to calculate the money from the 14 DLC packs they sold to make them compatible, plus asset calculations for each item such as Conan’s Royal Armor, Conan’s Atlantean Sword, and all the Bazaar items to be Unreal Engine 5.2 compatible as well… I think Funcom would be looking at spending well over 3 million US dollars plus the one to two years a full coding team would need to rewrite Conan Exiles into the Unreal Engine format.

TLDR: between the cost, time, and work involved (and that’s for existing sold product – not profit making new product), I really don’t see Funcom doing that.

Conan Exiles 2.0 in Unreal Engine 5, however, is something Funcom might consider in the future. Since you’d have to basically remake the entire game, it would give Funcom the opportunity to make Conan Exiles bigger and better than the first one (learning from the mistakes of the first version and trying out even more powerful features in the new version).

darthphysicist · 2023-04-04T00:09:47.716Z

Ignoring the feasibility of it, which is admittedly unrealistic in the land of fairy tails and pixie dust, IF a third party (modder, whoever) recreated Conan Exiles in Unreal 5 tomorrow and either released it for free or for a fee, doesn’t matter, Funcom would be well within their rights to slap a cease and desist as it would be a massive financial hit to their business and a violation of the terms of modding. It cannot be done with the devkit, which would mean someone would have to completely rip all the game functions and do it outside the devkit, in the UE5 editor. That would be straight up IP theft.

Dragoonduneman · 2023-04-04T07:32:23.138Z

well there already some game being made on ue 5 , if those game plays well as everyone think it will , only reason funcom will go up toi UE5 , is if another company with the same type of game is drawing player away from their flag ship game. im hopeful in about two years , we might finally have games that worthy of putting CE in its place.

sirvink · 2023-04-05T03:36:16.681Z

Do they have to pay royalties if the upgrade for users is free though? I know this isn’t happening. Funcom has talked about 5.x not being in the plans for an upgrade, but in theory, I think they are only on the hook for new revenue AFTER making an engine upgrade, unless there are other revenue models for UE5.x. I’d be surprised if there weren’t. Never in my life was there only one monitization model for the products I sold.

Jazrek · 2023-04-05T04:53:06.387Z

Ark is getting a UE5 upgrade… they are even selling it as a new game again and forcing you to pay for the other maps.

I see no reason why Exiles can’t… they would just have to do the same thing and make players pay for it again… lol

Nemisis · 2023-04-05T06:56:48.587Z

Jazrek:

forcing you to pay for the other maps.

Nothing is forced. If you choose to play the new Ark game on the new UE5, you have to buy it again. Your previous game on UE4 will still work fine.

Find another game that ports well over 400 gigs of a game to a completely new engine with new features for free. Im sure the coders in the community will tell you how much work that would be.

Megaton238 · 2023-04-05T09:41:05.451Z

Nemisis:

Nothing is forced. If you choose to play the new Ark game on the new UE5, you have to buy it again. Your previous game on UE4 will still work fine.

Unless you play on one of their official servers. If you do, you are wholly borked because all of the Ark Evolved servers are being shut down in August. You’ll be relegated to single-player or finding a private server. There’s no cross-compatibility between the Evolved and Ascended versions, and Evolved is going into maintenance mode.

So you’re not “forced” per se, but if you enjoy the game and want to continue to play it and get updates and new content, you really are.

Edit: I’ll also point out that to get Ark Ascended (the UE5 version), they are essentially forcing players on PC or Xbox to buy a pre-release of Ark 2. That “bundle” for $50 is the only way they’ll be able to purchase it (Playstation folks apparently will be able to buy it standalone, for whatever reason).

DeaconElie · 2023-04-05T11:04:53.757Z

Jazrek:

Ark is getting a UE5 upgrade… they are even selling it as a new game again and forcing you to pay for the other maps.

It pretty much is. They charged you for every new GTA didn’t they? Same with any number of games. It’s more then just transferring files. The game will pretty well have to be rebuilt from the ground up to work on the new engine. More over who would want to jump though the hoops necessary to convert 5 year old content to work on the new engine?

Nemisis · 2023-04-05T14:33:57.672Z

Megaton238:

Unless you play on one of their official servers.

True, they are shutting down their officials. Knowing Wildcard they will likely make their save files available for people to transfer to private games. They did it with the legacy cluster servers, I can see them doing it again.

But, all games eventually die and are shut down.

Megaton238 · 2023-04-05T14:39:51.308Z

Nemisis:

But, all games eventually die and are shut down.

True enough, but this clearly isn’t that. This is designed explicitly to push pre-sales of a new version of the game they had originally said would be out this year, and now won’t be at least until the end of 2024, possibly beyond. And because of how it’s being bundled, no refunds for you if it’s delayed again.

This is purely a marketing move to strong-arm players into rebuying what they’re playing now and locking them into an upgrade that is at least a year and a half away.