This month, after the successful launch of my MCC modding project, I'm beginning to make my return to Unreal Engine 5. However, what's been keeping me away from this project has been my abundance of "junk data" within my game's project files. Unused assets, physics experiments, every type of developer-room item you can think of. In my efforts to make this "beloved" trash heap more approachable to myself, I've begun cleaning up as many assets as possible. Removing what needs to be removed, cutting down as many gigabytes as I can.

In this process, I am now removing the map file for my very first developer testing room. Many fond memories have been made here of my own eureka moments and outlandish experiments. However, a good 90% of what you see here is made up of Brush files and borrowed code from the UE5 asset store, all of which take up a completely stupid amount of memory. So, for the sake of chopping off as much data as possible, this level I've spent a good 4 years messing around in is finally getting the axe today. Code named "alpha base" (pun for military speak and how games are referred to as "alpha build" in early creation), it has served me well for a long time. But like the firing of any good employee, I'm taking a good photo to randomly upload to my gallery in loving memory, before I press a big scary button to kill it. That's what companies do, right? No? That joke didn't land at all, did it? Sorry, I'm having a dark humor day.