Overview

DreamFXLang is a text-first authoring language for Unreal Engine Niagara. You write .dfs, .dfe and .dfm files, and the DreamFX plugin compiles them into standard assets — UNiagaraSystem, UNiagaraEmitter, UNiagaraScript — which a level, a blueprint or a sequencer references exactly like any other.

The source is what you maintain. The .uasset is a build product: it can always be thrown away and regenerated, and it is never edited by hand.

The reverse direction holds too: any existing Niagara system decompiles back into a .dfs. That is not a convenience export, it is a contract — anything the language cannot express is written into the file header as an explicit gap, never dropped in silence.

Three kinds of source file

All three share one header:

<Kind>(Name="<path under the root>", Root="<root token>")
{
    ...
}

Kind has to agree with the file extension (DFX2021). Root is Game, empty (the same thing), or Plugin.<PluginName>; Name is the asset path relative to that root's content directory. See the file model.

A minimal system

System(Name="Effects/NS_Hello", Root="Game")
{
    Properties = {
        float Speed = 150.0 [ Group="Motion" ];   // exposed as User.Speed
    }

    Emitter Motes
    {
        Settings = { SimTarget = CPU; Determinism = true; RandomSeed = 1; }

        EmitterUpdate = {
            EmitterState(LifeCycleMode = Self, LoopBehavior = Infinite);
            SpawnRate(SpawnRate = 20.0);
        }

        ParticleSpawn = {
            Spawn/Initialization/V2/InitializeParticle(
                LifetimeMode = DirectSet, Lifetime = 2.0,
                SpriteSizeMode = Uniform, UniformSpriteSize = 8.0
            );
            SystemLocation();
            AddVelocityInCone(ConeAngle = 30.0, VelocityStrength = User.Speed);
        }

        ParticleUpdate = {
            ParticleState();
            GravityForce(Gravity = (0, 0, -400));
            SolveForcesAndVelocity();
        }

        SpriteRenderer Core
        {
            Alignment = Unaligned;  FacingMode = FaceCamera;  SortMode = ViewDepth;
        }
    }
}

pwsh -File Plugins/DreamFX/.skill/dfx.ps1 build DFX/Effects/NS_Hello.dfs

That writes /Game/Effects/NS_Hello with no editor involved. With the editor open, saving the source rebuilds it — leave the generated asset open in the Niagara editor and it is the live preview for this workflow.

What the language covers

• User parameters, including data-interface parameters with their JSON configuration (DI<X>);
• the six stacks: SystemSpawn / SystemUpdate / EmitterSpawn / EmitterUpdate / ParticleSpawn / ParticleUpdate;
• event handlers OnEvent(...) and named simulation stages Stage <Name>(...);
• renderers, with schema-driven properties and Bind;
• every value mode: literals, links, enums, nested dynamic inputs, hlsl { }, curve { } with tangent modes, and static switches in every position.

Not covered, by design or not yet: Scratch Pad, module-internal graph lowering, GPU/CPU branch conditions, Scalability conditions, and true emitter inheritance (from is a copy). Every degradation is diagnosed rather than silent — see limits.

Round-trip, verified four ways

The correctness of a decompile is measured, not claimed:

The detail is in round trip and equivalence.

Where to start