Update on 1.6 (2025)

Why is the next update taking so long and what is coming with it?

I know its been a while since the last update, and most people (myself included) had expected the 1.6 update for Quest Map Pro to be available by now. So I thought I'd take a moment to address it here.

Is this update cancelled?

No. I've spent many hundreds of hours of time working on this update, so I can guarantee you I want it to come out more than anyone. In fact, this update has taken significantly more man hours than the base system did due to the size of it, so trust me - I don't want to just leave it sitting around gathering dust.

If I ever were to cancel this update, I would make this public. So unless you see me announce that it is cancelled, either on this site or in the Dapper Raptor discord, rest assured it is still coming.

So then what's taking so long?

I very much dislike explaining reasons things take longer than expected, as it feels like it always comes off as excuses. But given I am constantly getting asked about this, hopefully this will help you understand why things aren't completed already.

Design Challenges

Simply put, some of the additions have just turned out to be quite a bit more work than expected. This is always true in development, but a couple of the features that I thought were complete had some major issues that required a lot of attention, and one or two that were not done turned out to be a lot more difficult within the confines of UE5's blueprint system. For the most part, these have been ironed out, though its always possible more testing brings up more issues that take more time.

Burnout

Towards the latter half of last year I started to experience quite severe burnout, which took a bit of a toll on my health. I've never really experienced this before, so it was a bit of a shock and its taken quite a long time to adjust and learn how to work on a project with this. This is particularly frustrating when coupled with the issues around fab.

FAB Launched

As we all know, FAB has replaced the Unreal Engine Marketplace. While this might sound like it shouldn't impact things too much, this unfortunately is one of the primary reasons for the delay. To put things into perspective, Epic have gone on record saying that sales since FAB launched are at about the same level as they were on the UE Marketplace before its launch. However, when you consider the context that FAB is now significantly bigger with many times more the products due to the inclusion of SketchFab and ArtStation, as well as the flood gates having been open on AI generated content meaning that the number of products on FAB is absolutely massive compared to the UE Marketplace, you start to realise that the sales on FAB are not as good as they were before.

While I have managed to maintain most of my regular cadence of sales, having only taken a small dip so far, the fact that FAB has released in such a terrible state, and now, months later, Epic have made little to no headway into addressing the concerns, has made it clear that right now - the platform is not a stable one to rely on. My sales have dipped a bit, more than the standard drop-over-time, and I do not have the confidence in this platform that I did in the UE Marketplace, at least not in the short term. I do very much hope that Epic can address the issues in time and it will start to thrive, but in the meantime, as this is a substantial part of my income, I have had to invest at least some of the time I would normally invest in my assets in other ventures for the sake of financial security.

For those that don't know, I do this in my spare time as a hobby, but I do not have a regular income job - instead my time goes to being a carer for a family member which prevents traditional employment. This means that diverting some of the time I usually put into Unreal has a very significant impact on progress.

Documentation

Another significant time sink here is updating the documentation for Quest Map Pro to reflect this update. I have been, in the background, working on updating documentation so that at least some of it is ready to go when the update launches. Due to the size of this update, almost every single part of this gitbook needs to be either updated or, in many cases, rewritten. A lot of the integration tutorials and videos are also in need of at least some adjustment. Its a very large task, but I don't want to launch the update without at least some of the important parts of the documentation being ready to go as it will just cause a headache for everyone involved.

Ongoing Support Commitments

And finally, as always, supporting Quest Map Pro and my other products takes a not-insignificant portion of the available time I have. People who have purchased my products are doing so based on the feature set at the time of their purchase, and its far more important to me to ensure that they have a good experience with the product than it is to add new features that people who have already made the purchase may or may not want, so support does take priority over new developments.

So what now?

As I mentioned above - this update is still being completed and I have every intention of releasing it. However, I do not have an estimate on its launch and I'm not even going to try and guess. It is largely complete, but as with any project the final portion is always a lot of difficult work and things ar estill going to take time. I understand this is frustrating, but I have always maintained that people should not buy my (or any other marketplace content) based on future updates, so I'm sorry if you disregarded that, but that is on you ultimately. In time, 1.6 WILL release. Until then, Quest Map Pro is still one of, if not the most, feature rich map systems available within the UE asset ecosystem and I am incredibly proud of the base product.

If you have any questions, concerns, feedback, etc. about Quest Map Pro, the 1.6 update, or anything else related to my products, please reach out (the discord is the best place, but email also works if you prefer!) and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!