Some UE drawbacks

I am an Objective C, Ruby Developer from almost a decade. And recently I came to know about UE4 and started to learning. At first look I really loved it, simple and very useful. And those blueprints, I just loved it. Although sometimes it could be a pain that what you could do in 3-4 lines code, you have to create so many nodes in it, but still It was very useful, until I migrated to some advanced stage.

I started building an advanced level car racing game with almost 20 cars and I realized that those blueprints can’t work I can’t create so many blueprints for everything for each small change of every car. There are so many things Material / Wheels Data / Bones structure for every car. So either I have to completely dump that Blueprint thing and move to C++ code but every little change so much time to compile that it becomes a lot frustrated. So the ideal way is to create a some kind of C++ structure which loads either from XML files or SQLite Database.

Just have a quick question for now, Is Unreal Team doing anything in that direction already or not. If they are then I can hold my project and wait for them to do it in right way. If not, then they should re-think in that direction.

Whatever is the case, if UE team can update on this issue. It would be really helpful, or if anyone knows any third-party solution or plugin that can do this. Please update.

Thanks

So the ideal way is to create a some kind of C++ structure which loads
either from XML files or SQLite
Database.

It sounds you loooking for FDataTable, you can create struct in C++ and make teable out of it, it little limited on datas types you can use but it still something, here documantation about it:

Also you can create base class (either C++ or blueprint) where you create configurable behavior which you can set up in child blueprint classes, it feel data driven too

Actually, you can also create Data Tables in Blueprint: - YouTube

I’ve only used data tables for primitive types so far, but you’re also supposed to be able to assign assets this way. (Though from what I’ve read that might be buggy.) That could take care of things such as scale, color, material.

If your cars have different skeletons, though, I’ve no idea how to handle that without creating AnimBlueprints for each of them.