Lore Version Control in Unreal Editor for Fortnite | Fortnite Documentation

Lore is a next-gen, open source version control tool maintained by Epic games, and it powers UEFN's in-editor version control system.

Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) integrates version control as an important part of project management, team processes, and quality control. It maintains a single source of truth for the project and developers.

Enabling Lore in team projects facilitates collaboration between team members, keeps work from getting lost, and speeds up an island’s release by shortening production time. Incorporating project synchronization in daily iteration takes a little work, but is well worth the effort in the end.

For more information on version control with Lore, see Lore.org.

How Lore Works

Lore is available out of the box for all new islands in UEFN. It works by incrementally saving the state of the island and its assets at various points in time. These incremental save points are called “revisions”.

Select Lore version control to enable source control to your project. — Enable Lore for your project.

Select Lore from the Project Defaults panel for a new project to enable source control for this project.

From the Team Selection dropdown menu, select Only Me if you are working on a project alone, or your team’s name if you are working on a team project. You can disable Lore for your personal projects.

Projects using Lore are hosted on servers.

Sync changes are marked with a download icon. — Sync Latest is marked by a download icon.

You can also use Lore from the Outliner panel. An asset's revision control status will display for reference on the right side of an asset's row in the outliner. Additionally, you can right-click an asset from the Outliner panel then select Revision Control > Check out from the dropdown menu.

Use Lore with Your Projects

Enabling version control when you’re creating new projects adds these features to the bottom toolbar:

Revision Control
Sync Changes / At Latest
Check-in Changes / No Changes.

All Lore features appear below the Details panel of your project.

Revision Control

The revision control indicator. A green checkmark indicates that revision control is in use for this project. Click the arrow to open the control menu where you check out modified files and assets and change your revision control settings.

Change your control settings by clicking Change Revision Control Settings… from the dropdown menu, this opens the Revision Control Login. From here you can toggle on and off automatic settings and review the Revision Control Log.

Auto Checkout

Auto Checkout is automatically enabled when you create a new project. This feature works by automatically checking out an asset to you when you make changes or move the asset in the viewport.

This feature locks the asset you made changes to and stops another teammate from making changes to the same object while you have it checked out. By looking through the assets listed in the Outliner, you can see which assets have been checked out by a colleague.

Assets checked out by colleagues will have a special icon attached to them in the outliner.

Using Auto Checkout avoids conflicts and allows you and your teammates to collaborate on projects with as little friction as possible.

If auto checkout is turned off, Lore will ask you to either connect back to the internet or save locally.

Auto Revert

Auto Revert stops you from creating conflicts with team members by automatically undoing your changes to an asset already checked out by another person. You’ll receive a warning about the conflict and reversal of changes.

This feature stops you from putting in hours of work on an asset only to undo all the changes you made in the end. By checking quickly in the Outliner, you’ll know what assets your teammates are currently working on.

Sync Changes

This feature pulls the latest version of the project and syncs to disk. You’ll need to sync to the latest project version when you see Sync Latest. If there are no changes to sync, the button reads At Latest.

Once you click Sync Latest you pull the latest project version down to your local environment where you can continue working on the project.

You can make and save changes without having synced to the latest version as long as the changes you make do not conflict with the changes in the latest version and are not changes made to assets currently checked out by another user.

Refer to Conflicts in Unreal Revision Control for more information on the possible conflicts you may encounter.

Check-in Changes

Checks in all changes and creates a new project version with all of the checked-in changes. When you make changes to the project that need to be checked in, the button changes from No Changes to Check-in Changes.

Lore tracks the version history of source files with formats native to the UE ecosystem but does not track the version history of source files with formats native to other software, (for example Blender, Photoshop, and so on).

Clicking Check-in Changes opens the Check-in Changes window. In the submit dialog, list the changes made to the assets in the Changelist Description, then click Submit to create a new revision of the island.

If there's an item on the check-in list that should be reverted to its earlier version, you can do that from the submit window.

Select the asset and right-click, a dropdown menu appears with the Revert option. Click Revert and any changes to the asset are undone.

Revert an asset during the submission process if necessary.

Revision control requires a change description for all assets checked out and altered. A checkmark means the asset was checked out, a plus sign means it is a new asset added to revision control.

Changelist Description: Add a description of the changes you made to the asset you checked out.
Plus Sign: A new asset added to Lore.
Checkmark: A checked-out asset.
Keep Files Checked Out: Selecting to keep the files checked out means that the files will still be checked out to you even after you submit your changes.
Submit: Submits the changes to Lore.
Cancel: Cancels submitting a new version and takes you back to the project.

After your changes are saved then successfully submitted, your teammates will be able to sync to the new project version. The project thumbnail updates for all team members with the download icon on the project thumbnail, informing them the project needs to be synced.

There is a difference between saving your project and checking-in changes. Saving your project saves the project to your disk where checking-in your changes creates a shared version of the project at a moment in time that you or any collaborator can return to.

These revisions provide a history for your project assets you can later review to understand how and why an asset was changed, and by whom, over time.

Check an assets history by right-clicking on the asset and selecting History.

Check Out a Project Asset

Checking out an asset locks that asset from being edited by another teammate. Whoever first checks out the object has control of it as long as it is checked out.

To check out an individual asset:

Right-click on the asset thumbnail to open the asset menu.
Select Revision Control > Check Out.

The asset is now checked out to you and the asset thumbnail updates with a red checkmark. Teammates see a different icon on the thumbnail that lets them know the asset is checked out.

Checked out assets have a red checkmark on the thumbnail.

After the object is checked in, anyone with access to the project will need to sync to the latest project version to edit the asset.

From the right-click menu you can also do the following:

Feature	Description
Sync And Check Out	Syncs your project and checks out the asset.
Mark For Add	Marks an asset for addition to the project.
History	Opens a window that shows the edit history for the selected asset or project. Click to enlarge image.
Revert	Reverts the selected file back to its previous state.
Merge	Merges two selected asset files together.
Refresh	Refreshes the selected assets's status.