(18+) The author of the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone remake on UE5 spoke about the difficulties of porting the game to another engine

Work is progressing, but some elements may still be very buggy.

Enthusiast developer under the nickname MattShadd continues to create a remake of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone PC. The project is being developed on the basis of the modern Unreal Engine 5. Recently, he conducted a broadcast during which he showed some work-in-progress moments and answered community questions.

Character creation was the focus. The developer explained that Blender 4.3 is used for the work. Difficulties arise during the porting process: for example, with Nearly Headless Nick, “something breaks at the retargeting stage” — the character loses correct inverse kinematics of the legs, and animations glitch.

Cutscenes are being ported, but for now, due to timing differences, there is desynchronization of movements and the camera may shake.

During the stream, one of the discussion participants emphasized that their project “is not an independent game or a non-commercial game. It is, literally, just a port.”

Earlier this summer, MattShadd talked about how he implemented the save system — he made it in the style of Bethesda games:

As long as an object is untouched, it is not saved. As soon as the player interacts with it, upon the next level load, it will be restored to its saved state. When loading a level, all objects are checked — are they in the save? If yes, the saved parameters are applied.