At the State of Unreal 2024 presentation, Epic Games announced a slew of new product information and details. Among them were the new tools coming to Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and confirmation that next year, the studio will launch its first season of Fortnite that's developed entirely in UEFN.
As part of its UEFN roadmap, Epic Games revealed that "by the end of 2025," it will ship the first season of its widely popular free-to-play Battle Royale, made entirely using the level editor it introduced nearly a year ago.
Beyond that surprise, Epic went into more detail about the UEFN roadmap and the new creator tools it will add this year. This includes confirmation that the first-person camera settings will arrive in UEFN sometime this year; this is a highly requested feature by creators and is something Epic previously teased would be added down the road.
Other noteworthy changes in the 2024 UEFN roadmap include updates to creator pages, such as an option to follow a creator and to link out to social media platforms such as X/Twitter. In addition, gameplay will allow users to experiment with in-game physics in a sandbox-style environment and manipulate static objects.
UEFN was released in public beta last year. This PC-only creator tool "works side-by-side with Fortnite's existing Creative toolset," allowing users to develop and create new experiences entirely inside the PC version of Fortnite. Many tools from Unreal Engine 5, such as custom asset import, modeling, and VFX, are present in this free app.
Today's news is one of many changes Epic has rolled out for Fortnite in recent years, with more to come down the road. Some other significant changes Epic has made to its popular battle royale over the last several years include moving the game to Unreal Engine 5, adding support for Nvidia DLSS 3, and announcing spinoff games released inside Fortnite, including a racing game titled Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival. The latter is a rhythm game that will soon support plastic controllers made for Rock Band and a brand-new controller by PDP that will be released sometime this year.
For more on the biggest announcements from State of Unreal, check out our everything announced piece.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
