Best Unreal Engine Plugins to speed up your Development Time

Introduction

In the current state of Unreal Marketplace there are many good plugins that can help you speed up your development time. Here are a few of those plugins that should help you get up to speed and help you out.

Procedural Levels with Dungeon Architect

Dungeon Architect reinvents level creation with its advanced procedural generation technology. This tool empowers designers to craft level layouts using a sophisticated node-based system, enabling the creation of diverse elements such as key-locks, teleporters, and cyclic paths.

A significant feature of Dungeon Architect is its ability to construct expansive levels procedurally with just a single click, offering various adjustable parameters applicable both during design and runtime. For those who prefer a more hands-on approach, the tool also provides the option to manually design level layouts. This method grants greater artistic control and is facilitated by custom editor tools like the Paint Brush Tool and Volumes. In this mode, the plugin efficiently builds the surrounding environment in response to the designer's layout.

Additionally, the tool features a powerful Graph-based Theme Editor, which guides the plugin in decorating levels with appropriate meshes and actors, enhancing areas around walls, floors, doors, stairs, and more. The themes created can be saved as separate data assets, allowing for reuse in future projects or swapping with other themes to alter the level's appearance entirely.

Dungeon Architect supports the use of multiple themes within the same map, enabling designers to create varied environments, such as wooden architecture in one section and stone-based designs in another. These themes can be easily modified in any part of the level using a custom volume actor. The tool also accommodates height variations, adding another layer of complexity to level designs.

For those looking to add a personal touch, Dungeon Architect is extensible, allowing customization of the dungeon with one's own blueprint-based logic at different stages of the generation process. This flexibility makes it an ideal tool for a wide range of design needs, from simple layouts to complex, multi-themed environments.

Tidy up your Blueprints with Electronic Nodes

Electronic Nodes transforms your experience in visual scripting editors like Blueprints, Materials, Niagara, and more. It reimagines the presentation of logic by altering wire shapes to create straight lines with either 45° or 90° angles. This approach, reminiscent of circuit boards, eliminates the confusing 'spaghetti' wire tangles typical in traditional layouts.

At the core of Electronic Nodes is its unique wiring styles. The Manhattan Style introduces a wiring approach with sharp 90° edges, offering a clean and organized look. In contrast, the Subway Circuit style utilizes 45° edges for a slightly different aesthetic and organizational structure. Beyond these styles, the tool boasts extensive wire customization options. Users can adjust alignment, priority, radius, thickness, and offset to suit their specific needs.

The software also includes specialized features for executive wires, allowing for overwrite customization to enhance clarity and organization. An experimental feature to offset overlapping wires further contributes to a more readable and manageable layout.

Speed up Blueprint Coding time with Blueprint Assist

Enhance your Blueprint creation process with the addition of convenient keyboard shortcuts. This feature streamlines your workflow by allowing for the auto-formatting of Blueprint nodes as they are created. It simplifies the design process, making it more efficient and user-friendly by integrating these time-saving shortcuts directly into your workflow.

Create awesome Combat Gameplay with Combat Fury

Combat Fury offers an extensive combat system, ideal for both full-scale projects and quick prototyping. This system includes a range of features such as parrying, dodging, and sophisticated enemy AI, designed to assist in crafting an engaging combat experience.

The system boasts a variety of combat mechanics, including combo buffering and a hitbox feature that reacts directionally to the strength of attacks. It also encompasses advanced features like Finishers and Executions, which are adaptable to characters with different skeletons, including Air or Jump finishers. The Counter attack and Parry mechanics add depth to combat, while the Lock on enemies feature offers three types - Free look, Free pitch only, and Lock control rotation.

Further enhancing the system is a Directional dodging and rolling system, complete with four custom-made dodging animations. The Levelling system includes XP and skill points, and the Skill system is enriched with a UI video preview. Character stats cover a wide range - from Lives count, HP, Stamina, to Fear (Posture). The Melee weapon system supports dual weapon states, and all combat mechanics are based on the current equipped weapon, requiring only animations for your weapon's state.

Additionally, the system is equipped with both standard Enemy AI and specialized Boss AI. Camera closeups for finishers, counter attacks, and special attacks add cinematic flair, and the package comes with example animations and VFX.

If you're seeking a dependable and time-efficient combat system that meets or exceeds expectations, Combat Fury is an optimal choice.

Faster Level Desing Prototypes with Blockout Tools

lockout Tools offers a streamlined and user-friendly solution for rapidly creating blockouts or greybox levels in Unreal Engine 4 & 5. This lightweight toolkit comprises a range of basic geometric elements, each equipped with easy-to-use scaling and transformation controls. Additionally, it features a custom triplanar grid material, designed to simplify and enhance the level design process.

Create Quests and Level Scripting with Flow Graph

The Flow plug-in for Unreal Engine is a versatile event node editor, not limited by specific design paradigms. Developed from ten years of expertise in designing and implementing video game narratives, this tool features a graph editor specifically crafted for orchestrating event flows in virtual environments. Its core principle is simplicity, making it accessible and efficient for users.

By releasing this plug-in as an open-source project, the author has the goal to facilitate the creation of compelling stories and immersive worlds in video games. This initiative aims to enhance the art of video game storytelling, ultimately inspiring people and contributing positively to our world.

Build Complex Systems visually with Logic Driver

Logic Driver introduces an innovative blueprint editor that empowers users to create their own node-based gameplay systems. This tool is versatile enough to handle a variety of applications, from constructing simple AI behaviors to developing complex narrative systems.

Developers have the flexibility to craft a node class using either blueprints or C++. This allows for the encapsulation of reusable logic and the exposure of any variable type on the node. They can also tailor the editor with construction scripts for dynamic value setting or property hiding, implement node validation for visual feedback or compilation control, and define rule behavior to enforce patterns and enable basic automation.

Designers can then employ these nodes within a Logic Driver state machine blueprint. Each state node reveals all exposed properties, complete with its own blueprint graph. Designers have the option to edit most property values directly on the state or link them to variables. Furthermore, they can preview their designs in the blueprint editor or conduct debugging during Play-In-Editor (PIE) sessions, enhancing the development process.

Save the state of your game world with SPUD

SPUD is a comprehensive solution for saving game states and maintaining the persistence of streaming levels in Unreal Engine 5. It is designed to simplify the process of saving and loading game states. Additionally, it ensures that streamed levels maintain their state seamlessly as they are unloaded and reloaded, eliminating the need for manual saves.

The system offers straightforward methods to designate actors in levels as persistent. This is achieved through the implementation of ISpudObject, a marker interface that requires no specific methods. Users have the freedom to select which properties to save by enabling the "SaveGame" option. SPUD supports all property types, including arrays, object references, and custom structs. Moreover, it allows for the manual inclusion of non-level UObjects, like GameInstance, in the save file.

Another key feature of SPUD is its handling of dynamically spawned objects. These objects are automatically respawned when the game is loaded, and level objects that were destroyed are re-destroyed upon level load. Essential details such as transform, controller rotation, and physics state are automatically saved as well. SPUD is versatile, offering compatibility with both C++ and Blueprints, making it an ideal tool for a wide range of development projects in Unreal Engine 5.

Simplify your Input Bindings with Ninja Input

The Ninja Input plugin is an advanced tool that streamlines the management of player input in projects utilizing Epic's Enhanced Input plugin. This plugin comes equipped with a variety of Input Handlers, ready for immediate use. These handlers can be linked to Input Actions for executing standard tasks like moving, looking, jumping, or crouching. Fully compatible with the Gameplay Ability System (GAS), Ninja Input includes Input Handlers specifically designed for all the standard GAS activation and cancellation processes. Additionally, the plugin offers the flexibility to effortlessly craft new handlers tailored to your project's specific needs.

A standout feature of Ninja Input is its innovative Animation-Based Input Buffer. This tool is not only simple and powerful but also extendable. It enables the caching of handlers, allowing them to be activated at a later time, thereby enhancing the fluidity and responsiveness of player input in your game.

Have easy decals on your Skeletal Meshes with Skinned Decal

The Skinned Decal Component offers a revolutionary way to apply decals on skeletal meshes in Unreal Engine, accommodating Bone Deformations and Morph Targets both swiftly and efficiently. Traditional methods, like Unreal Engine's deferred decals which float over Skeletal Meshes or Render Target Texture solutions, often come with limitations and complications. However, Skinned Decal Component bypasses these issues with its unique and effective approach.

One of the standout features of this component is its UV Independence. It allows the use of skeletal meshes with overlapping or even non-unwrapped textures. This is a significant advantage over other market solutions, as it eliminates the need to modify your models to accommodate decals.

In terms of performance, Skinned Decal Component is exceptionally lightweight. It surpasses other solutions in speed by only storing essential data such as Transformation, ID, Size, and Time to spawn a new decal. This is a stark contrast to other methods that rely on using three or more Texture Render Targets to bake each pixel upon spawning.

Moreover, Skinned Decal Component offers Individual Sampling, a feature that grants the ability to edit, move, modify, or remove decals post-spawn. Since each decal is sampled individually, adjustments to one decal will not impact others. This provides unparalleled control and flexibility in managing decals on skeletal meshes.

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Conclusion

These are some Unreal Plugins that will allow you to speed up your development time with ready-to-use solutions depending on your needs.

The state of Unreal right now is really good, and it's even getting better with all these plugins. You can expect this list to grow in the future.

There are many other useful plugins for the Unreal Engine, so if you want to know some more of them that I find useful don't hesitate to reach out to me.