Moving files in-editor makes them unusable/unselectable?

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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1

Hello,

Recently, my team and I have been going through many different processes trying to successfully reorganize our project files. I have learned a lot about redirectors, activeClassRedirects, etc…

I have been moving files in the editor, fixing up redirectors, and everything. My goal is to have all of my files nicely organized in a neat, easily navigable folder architecture.

Everything works, everything compiles, no errors. So what’s the problem? For some reason, any file that I have moved is unable to be selected in any dropdown menu. For example, I moved my character BP and the skeletal mesh to a different folder, fixedup redirectors. Then, just to check, I defaulted the skeletal mesh component in the character BP to see if the unwanted behavior was present (I’ve experienced this behavior several times over this past week of attempted reorganization) and it WAS. So I default the skeletal mesh, then attempt to select SKM_MyCharacter from the dropdown box. SKM_MyCharacter DOES appear, with the correct thumbnail and everything, but when I select it…NOTHING CHANGES…curious.

I’m experiencing the same behavior with my project defaults. For example, BP_MyGameMode is set as my default game mode in the project defaults. Then, when I move BP_MyGameMode to a new folder, the project default game mode is set to “None”. Here are some screenshots to hopefully better exhibit what I mean:

109016-1.png
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109017-2.png
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So this is obviously unwanted behavior. Theoretically, I CAN set BP components in a construction script (like the skeletal mesh I mentioned above) and that would work. It’s really not ideal because I should be able to set it in the GUI of the BP, but I could make do with that method. Unfortunately I don’t think that there is any way to set the defaults to be BPs that have been moved. THAT is a HUGE problem because I need to have the game default to my MainMenu level and game mode. But even still, I would prefer to be able to actually use the interface to set these defaults the way they’re meant to be able to be set.

My question is, is there ANY way at all to safely move files in the project and not have this issue? Also, since I’ve moved these files, am I just screwed? Is there some way to recover from this? I’m not really seeing any way to fix this at the moment. I tried setting the project defaults in Config/DefaultEngine.ini but that didn’t fix anything. I really would like to find a fix because I’ve been practically working a week straight on this and I finally thought I had it but then this issue comes up and completely ruins everything. Has anybody ever had this issue? If so, how did you mitigate the problem?

Please help haha, any help is greatly appreciated.

  • arj
2

Hello ArjunTheMiella,

I have a few questions for you that will help narrow down what issue it is that you are experiencing.

Quick questions:

  1. Can you reproduce this issue in a clean project?
  2. If so, could you provide a detailed list of steps to reproduce this issue on our end?
  3. Could you provide screen shots of your folder structure/settings that may be involved with this issue?
3

Okay Rudy I was about to type the reproduction steps (yes I am able to repro this issue) but then I figured out what the problem was. So yes there is a bug. At the very least, it’s unwanted behavior. But I figured out what was causing it and I now want to kick myself.

My use case:
I was reorganizing the files and folders of a big project of mine. When my team and I first started out, we didn’t really have any idea of what kind of organization we would be needing, so the project is a messy cluster of misleading folder names and things placed in the wrong space. My solution was to type up a clean, organized sample of the file structure, then go through the entire project by hand and reorganize everything.

What happened:
Here’s an example of the outline of my project:

109178-examplefolderstructure.png

I put the “$” at the beginning of the new DESTINATION folders in order to have it put at the top (the folders are alphabetized) to make things more clear to me when I was drag->moving things around in the project. NOTE: No error or warning was presented when I put the “$” in the name of the folder…I think that the dollar sign should count as special characters…maybe it was left out?

Anyway I could type up the exact reproduction steps but the real problem is that the $ somehow messes things up along the way. The result was described above: If I selected the skeletal mesh component of BP_ThirdPersonCharacter, clicked the “reset to default” arrow, then attempt to reassign the mesh to one that was under a $Folder…nothing would happen. If you want me to give you a more detailed explanation of the problem let me know, but the simple answer is:

Don’t put “$” in the name of a UE4 project folder :slight_smile:

I realize that my actions directly caused this issue, but I would humbly suggest, for the benefit of others who might make the same mistake, that the editor should not allow users to enter “$” into the name of a folder. Thanks Rudy!

  • arj