Skip to content

How Gantry fits together

Gantry is an experience framework for Unreal Engine. You build your game from experiences, and Gantry loads them in stages, switches between them, and drives the systems around them: game features, loading screens, settings, input, UI and multiplayer.

The pieces

Piece What it gives you Read
Experiences Your game as a tree of experiences: the main menu, each game mode, each map's setup. Gantry activates the one you ask for, with everything it depends on. Experiences
Stages The steps an experience runs when it activates: load assets, switch on game feature plugins, add input, UI and settings. Your own steps too, written in Blueprint. Activation and stages
Loading Every load is a named, counted step, so a loading screen can show real progress and knows when to appear. Loading screens
Settings, input and UI Per-player settings pages, input mappings and UI slots that an experience adds while it is active. Settings, input and UI
Messages Gameplay events on tag channels, so a game mode, a DLC pack and the HUD can talk without knowing each other. Settings, input and UI
Multiplayer The server chooses the experience; every client runs the same one from its own content, or says why it cannot. Multiplayer
Mod-ready DLC, live content and mods take the same side-loaded path: each attaches to the tree or extends an experience, checked before anything of it loads. Mods

Three ideas behind all of it

Gantry runs your content; it does not decide what it is. There is no built-in pawn data, ability set, game mode or menu. An experience holds whatever your game puts on it: your own fields, your own data assets, your own stages. Gantry's job is to load it in the right order, switch it on, and switch it off again.

Gantry draws nothing. Loading screens, settings menus, scoreboards and lobbies are yours, built in UMG or Slate. Gantry supplies what they show: progress, settings values, UI slot entries, the list of experiences.

One path for everything. The base game, each mode, DLC and live content go through the same system, each finding its place in the tree by experience tags. Mods take that path too, so a game built on Gantry is mod-ready without a separate system.

Where to go next