F**ks sake they changed something pretty fundamental between UE 5.4 Preview and UE 5.4 Final - the ability to have multiple objects in an asset file, which SUDS relies on - the dialogue and string table are in the same asset; now the string table is gone.
I was worried they might do this because they started hiding them in 5.3 (not a problem) so I tested 5.4 Preview but everything was fine. Now it's completely broken in 5.4 Final, every single dialogue line is <MISSING STRING TABLE ENTRY> 😠
It's not even what I thought. I updated my code to separate out string tables into a separate .uasset file instead of embedding in the same one as the dialogue, and the problem is exactly the same.
So I started to debug it. And in both cases, in the debugger I'm seeing the correctly resolved text from the string table. And yet when I pipe that into anything - widget or Slate, it comes out as <MISSING STRING TABLE ENTRY>. WTF is this quantum level shit?
@sinbad I have no idea what kind of stack is that, but the string appears to have a tag that is not properly closed. Could there be something discarding the whole string because of that?
The problem seems to be when the FText goes through TextData->GetDisplayString(). Everything seems totally fine in the FText itself, but when converted to a string that way it just falls over. I can't see anything wrong with the internal data, the string table reference is fine, the table is loaded, everything looks peachy but then it goes bonkers on conversion to FString
So, FTextLocalizationManager::GetDisplayString is the one that's shitting the bed. In between 5.4 Preview and 5.4.0 they changed the fallback behaviour (when it doesn't find a localised string) from returning the source string, to by default doing nothing and resulting in a null return. There used to be a blanket "else" which caught this case, now it has a a condition that can basically never be true (it requires the current language to be "keys" for some bizarre reason).
If you compile localisations, everything works. English and other languages. The problem is that this is a pain in the arse to do, you absolutely don't want to be doing this just to see your native text on the fecking screen. I have no idea who changed this at the last minute or why but it's completely broken FText based on StringTables until you build localisation. It can't be just my usage??
@neilhenning I’m sorry to have to ask but could you put some feelers out inside Epic to find out when this fix is going to be merged into the official 5.4 release please? It missed 5.4.1 and it’s completely road blocking my plugin’s 5.4 update because FText + StringTables are broken until you build localisation. ☹️ I’m not getting any response on GH
I’ve been told that the fix for FText+StringTables has been merged for UE 5.4.2. I’ve heard anecdotally that several other plugins as well as mine have been blocked from supporting 5.4 because of that bug, so happy days if it pans out as hoped 🤞 #unrealengine
@psychicparrot42 Hope so. I'll just have to not release my plugin for 5.4 until it is, and put up with the marketplace side-eyeing me for not keeping up to date when in fact I did all the work a month ago if it wasn't for this 🙄🙄
@psychicparrot42 It's technically fixed in the source version but it's just not been merged into the branch which generates releases. So if it was just for my own project I could get the fix right now if I wanted. The problem is, being a marketplace plugin, pretty much everyone using it will be on the officially released version so would have the broken version
@psychicparrot42 TBF the extremely fast response I got from the comment I made on the source has almost completely dissipated my annoyance. Everyone makes mistakes, I just think whoever reviews merges for releases dropped the ball here, this is a pretty big breakage to let in there in between a Preview and Final release (and not merging the fix in time)
Christ alive they've shipped UE 5.4.1 and didn't merge in the fix which un-breaks FText + StringTables (pre-localisation compile). The fix is a one line deletion, it's been in ue5-main for over a month, but it wasn't merged and thus my marketplace plugin is still completely broken in 5.4.1 because it relies on FText displaying the source string from a string table before you build translations in the localisation dashboard. Everyone who uses string tables will have this problem. Madness
Obvs Epic are on main rather than release, and they probably automate their localisation build (if loc files are there all is fine), but if you're creating string tables yourself, or something generates them (like SUDS) and want to see the text, nothing works until you build localisation even with 5.4.1 now. I'm very disappointed in how they've handled this one, the breakage was right between Preview and 5.4.0 and I have to put a "it's not my fault" banner on the marketplace which prob looks sus
I know you have to be careful about merging changes into a stable release, but if only the merger of the breaking change between Preview and 5.4.0 had been as careful as they're now being over the 1-line fix for it :(
@sinbad I noticed this in 5.4 as well and haven't had the chance to look into it so thanks for this thread! Hopefully it gets fixed soon, pretty annoying.
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