Asset Sentinel - Asset Standards, Budgets & CI Validation for Unreal Engine 5

Unreal ships a validation framework. It does not ship any rules.

Data Validation gives you UEditorValidatorBase and a place to hang C++ subclasses. Every studio that wants naming conventions, texture budgets or folder policies writes that C++ themselves, then maintains it, then discovers their technical artists cannot change a rule without a programmer and a recompile.

Asset Sentinel is the authoring layer Epic left out. Rules become editable data assets. A technical artist writes the standard; nobody writes a plugin.

Standards as data, not code

A rule set is a Data Asset. Add a Naming Convention rule, point it at a class, give it a prefix. Add a Mesh Budget with a triangle ceiling and a minimum LOD count. Add a Folder Policy. Set each rule's severity independently, so you can roll a new standard out as warnings and promote it to errors once the project is clean.

It runs headless, and it fails the build

The commandlet runs with no editor UI and returns a non-zero exit code when the project breaks the standard — which is the entire point of a CI gate:

UnrealEditor-Cmd.exe MyProject.uproject -run=AssetSentinel \
  -RuleSet=/Game/Standards/DA_StudioStandard -Output=Artifacts

==================================================
  Asset Sentinel: FAIL
  Assets scanned : 11 (0 loaded)
  Errors         : 3
  Warnings       : 0
  Auto-fixable   : 3
  Fail threshold : Error
==================================================

Three report formats, because three things read them

• JUnit XML — your CI already knows how to render it. Every violation becomes a failed test case, grouped by rule
• JSON — versioned schema with ruleId, severity, asset, message, suggestion and autoFixable per issue, for dashboards and trend tracking
• HTML — a readable summary to attach to a build, or hand to an art lead who does not read build logs

Findings tell you the fix

Not just "brick_wall violates Naming.Convention". Every issue carries the remediation and whether it can be applied automatically:

[Error] /Game/Demo/brick_wall: 'brick_wall' is missing the required prefix 'M_'. Rename to 'M_brick_wall'. AUTO-FIXABLE

It scans without loading your project

Rules read the Asset Registry tags rather than loading every asset to inspect a property. That is the difference between a scan that finishes in seconds and one that hangs the editor for twenty minutes on a real project. The run above scanned 11 assets with 0 loaded.

Verified, and the limits stated

• Packaging gate: 0 errors, 0 warnings, with 21 real compile actions observed in the log — the gate refuses to report clean unless it can see the compiler do work
• Verified end to end on UE 5.8: rule set authored, project scanned, violations found, all three reports written, non-zero exit returned

Engine support: UE 5.8 only. Earlier versions are not claimed, because only 5.8 is installed here and an unverified compatibility claim is worth nothing. If you need 5.4–5.7, say so and it will be built and verified against them.

Built to be read

Full C++ source, Doxygen on every public API, no obfuscation. Editor-only modules, GC-safe object handling, and Slate widgets that hold weak references to model data.

Requires Unreal Engine 5.8.

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More from CSAF

CoreCLR Migration Scanner — the same idea pointed at Unity. 22 rules that find the Mono-era constructs which compile perfectly and then throw in a player's hands: BinaryFormatter, Thread.Abort, AppDomain loading. JUnit XML out, so it drops into the CI job you already have.

Also in the catalogue: Kinetic UI for GameMaker, and six RPG Maker MZ systems. Everything at csaf.itch.io — every product ships raw readable source and states its own limits.