Guides for indie game devs

AI Tools for Unreal Engine 5: What Actually Works

What AI and automation genuinely do in a UE5 workflow today — Blueprints, materials, environments, rigging, store pages — and how to evaluate any tool.

What Is an AI Assistant for Unreal Engine?

How in-editor AI assistants for UE5 work — the Model Context Protocol, tool calling, what they can and cannot do in your project, and how to try one free.

UE5 Behavior Tree AI: patrol, spot, chase

How Unreal Engine 5 behavior trees actually work — Selector vs Sequence, blackboard keys, decorators and services — and the exact editor calls that assemble a patrol-and-chase enemy.

UE5 AI perception: making enemies actually see you

Sight radius, peripheral angle, lose-sight radius and team affiliation in Unreal Engine 5 AI perception — plus the two reasons a correctly configured AI still detects nothing.

UE5 Gameplay Ability System without the C++ chapter

Attributes, abilities, effects and tags — what each part of the Unreal Engine 5 Gameplay Ability System is for, why cost and cooldown are effects rather than code, and the calls that scaffold a working ability.

UE5 Enhanced Input: setup, and the line everyone forgets

Input Actions, Mapping Contexts, triggers and modifiers in Unreal Engine 5 — how the new input system replaced axis mappings, and the one missing call that makes every key do nothing.

UE5 Animation Blueprint: state machines, blend spaces, slots

How an Unreal Engine 5 Animation Blueprint fits together — where blend spaces belong versus state machines, what slots are for, and why a character ends up stuck in T-pose.

UE5 PCG: sampling, density, and why nothing spawned

How Unreal Engine 5’s PCG framework fits together — Surface Sampler, Density Filter and Static Mesh Spawner — plus the volume mistake that produces an empty world.

UE5 UMG: main menus, HUDs, and the anchor trap

Building a main menu and gameplay HUD with UMG in Unreal Engine 5 — why widgets drift at other resolutions, why buttons stop responding, and the calls that assemble both.

UE5 Sequencer: bindings, camera cuts, and playing it in game

How Unreal Engine 5 Sequencer bindings work — Possessable versus Spawnable — plus camera cut tracks, audio, and why a finished sequence never plays during gameplay.

UE5 replication: why it works in standalone and not as a client

Server authority, replicated variables and the three RPC types in Unreal Engine 5 — why a client setting a variable does nothing, and how to test multiplayer properly in PIE.

UE5 MetaSound: sources, patches and Blueprint parameters

MetaSound is Unreal Engine 5’s node-based audio system — what separates a Source from a Patch, how to drive parameters from Blueprint, and why a finished graph plays silence.

Steam Capsule Sizes and Design: The Complete Guide

Every Steam capsule size in one table — header, small, main, vertical and library capsules — plus the design rules that make a capsule readable at thumbnail size.

The Steam Store Page Checklist: Everything Before You Hit Publish

A practical, ordered checklist for your Steam store page — capsule, screenshots, trailer, short description, tags, and the above-the-fold priorities that drive wishlists.

How to Choose Steam Tags (and Why the Order Matters)

Steam gives you 20 tag slots that drive search, More Like This, and discovery queues. How to pick them, order them, and the tagging mistakes that put your game in front of the wrong audience.

How Many Wishlists Do You Need on Steam?

What Steam wishlists actually do for your launch, the Popular Upcoming threshold, realistic indie benchmarks, and the levers that reliably grow wishlists before release.

How to Write a Steam Short Description (With a Formula)

The 300-character blurb under your capsule decides whether browsers keep reading. A concrete formula, good and bad examples, and the clichés to cut.

How to Rig a Character for Unreal Engine 5 (Three Ways Compared)

Manual rigging in Blender, auto-rigging with Mixamo, or a Manny-native auto-rigger — what each path costs you in time, control, and retargeting pain, and how to pick.

Mixamo to Unreal Engine 5: The Workflow, the Gotchas, and When to Skip It

The full Mixamo → UE5 pipeline: export settings that work, the import-scale gotcha, retargeting Mixamo rigs to UE animations with the IK Retargeter, and the alternative that skips retargeting.

From AI-Generated Model to Playable UE5 Character (Meshy, Tripo & Co.)

You generated a character with Meshy, Tripo or another AI tool — now what? Mesh checks, rigging options, import settings, and the fastest route to a character that runs around in UE5.

How to Retarget Animations in UE5 (IK Rig + IK Retargeter)

The full UE5 retargeting workflow: building IK Rigs, mapping retarget chains, fixing the retarget pose, batch-retargeting animation sets — and the four failures that produce twisted limbs, sunken feet or lost root motion.

The UE5 Manny Skeleton, Explained

What Manny and Quinn actually are, how the UE5 mannequin skeleton is structured, why "Manny-compatible" is the property that decides whether animations just work, and how to get a compatible rig.

Avaturn to Unreal Engine 5: Rig Your Avatar to the Manny Skeleton, Keep Its Skin

Get an Avaturn avatar into UE5 as a Manny-compatible skeletal mesh: upload the GLB, keep the original skin weights and blendshapes, download an FBX that plays Manny/Quinn animations with no IK Retargeter.

Ready Player Me to Unreal Engine 5: A Manny-Skeleton Rig That Keeps the Avatar’s Skin

Bring a Ready Player Me avatar into UE5 on the Manny skeleton: upload the full-body GLB, keep its skin weights, download a UE-ready FBX that plays Manny/Quinn animations without the IK Retargeter.