Features

1 - Engines

The Engines page is OPAL’s answer to the question “which O3DE do I use?”. Install as many versions as you want. Pin projects to specific versions. Remove engines you no longer need — with full awareness of what will break.

Install an engine

Click Install Engine (top right of the Engines page). OPAL offers three install modes:

1. Latest stable — the most recent tagged release.
2. Specific version — pick any prior tagged release.
3. Source build — clone a branch and build locally. Useful when you need engine patches.

Installer downloads run in the Downloads queue. Source builds run in the Builds queue. Both are interrupt-safe — you can close OPAL mid-install and resume later.

Set a default engine

Your default engine is the one used for new projects when you don’t override it. Click the Set Default button on any installed engine. The badge updates immediately.

Switch a project to a different engine

Open the project’s Settings dialog (right-click the project card → Settings, or the gear icon). Change Engine to any installed engine. OPAL writes the pin into project.json and prompts for a rebuild.

Remove an engine

Click the Remove button on an installed engine. OPAL shows an impact preview:

• How many projects are pinned to this engine
• Which projects will be orphaned (no compatible fallback)
• Total disk space reclaimed

Confirm to remove. Orphaned projects remain in your list but will show a Missing engine warning until you assign a new engine or reinstall the old one.

2 - Projects

The Projects page is the landing view of OPAL. Every project you’ve created or imported lives here. Each card shows at a glance what state the project is in and what actions are available.

Status badges

Actions per project

Every project card has:

• Launch — opens the Editor
• Build — queues a build using the configured build command
• Gems — opens the per-project gem editor
• Settings — opens the project settings dialog (engine pin, build command, CPU cores)
• View logs — shows the most recent build logs
• Open in file system — jumps to the project folder in Explorer/Finder/your file manager
• Remove from OPAL — removes from OPAL’s list (does NOT delete the folder)

3 - Gems

Gems are O3DE’s unit of reusable functionality — art, code, systems, whole frameworks. OPAL gives you three things the stock tooling doesn’t:

1. A real browser with filters, search, and a proper inspector.
2. Repository management that’s easy to keep current.
3. Per-project gem editing that stays in sync with project.json and CMake.

Browse the registry

The Gems page lists all gems available across every repository you’ve added. By default it includes the canonical O3DE gem registry; you can add any number of additional repositories.

Filter pills at the top: All, Installed, Updates available, Compatible with current engine. Search bar supports full-text plus operators:

• author:Acme — only gems by Acme
• tag:audio — only audio-tagged gems
• engine:25.05 — only gems compatible with a specific engine
• category:ui — category match

Combine freely: author:Acme tag:audio works.

The Gem Inspector

Click any gem to open the Inspector. You’ll see:

• Overview — name, author, version, short description
• README — rendered markdown from the gem’s README
• Dependencies — other gems required
• Compatibility — which O3DE engine versions it supports
• Changelog — if the gem maintains one
• Install / Update / Remove — one-click actions

Per-project gem editing

From a project card, click Gems → OPAL opens the Gem Editor for that project. You see the full list of available gems with checkboxes for the ones currently enabled. Toggle to enable or disable. OPAL:

1. Updates project.json’s gem_names array
2. Updates the project’s Gem/CMakeLists.txt
3. Offers a rebuild prompt when you close the dialog

Repository management

Go to Settings → Repositories to add, remove, or refresh gem repositories. Each repo has:

• URL
• Refresh interval (manual, hourly, daily, weekly)
• Authentication (optional — for private repos)
• Offline cache status

OPAL keeps a local cache of every indexed repo so you can browse offline.

4 - Queues

OPAL ships with two separate queues: one for downloads (engines, gems, assets) and one for builds (engine source builds, project builds). They behave the same way from a UX perspective: add, pause, resume, reorder, remove.

What you can do in a queue

• Pause / Resume individual items
• Pause All / Resume All the whole queue
• Move to top / Move to bottom an item
• Cancel an item (asks for confirmation; preserves partial state to a trash area)
• Retry a failed item
• Clear completed to reclaim the list

All of these persist across launches. Close OPAL mid-download, reopen an hour later, and the queue looks exactly like you left it — same items, same order, same progress.

Parallelism

How many downloads run in parallel? How many builds? Configurable — independently — in Settings → Queues.

Good defaults:

• Downloads: 4 concurrent connections
• Builds: 1 concurrent on laptops, 2–3 on workstations

Speed limits

Settings → Queues → Download speed limit sets a cap in MB/s. Set to 0 (default) for unlimited. Useful when OPAL is competing with Zoom calls or a home connection that doesn’t love saturated uploads.

Schedule windows

Settings → Queues → Schedule lets you restrict download activity to a time window — for example, 22:00 to 07:00 so you don’t burn daytime bandwidth. When the window closes, OPAL:

• Allows downloads >90% complete to finish
• Pauses everything else
• Resumes automatically at the next window open

Overnight windows that cross midnight (e.g. 22:00–06:00) are handled correctly.

5 - Settings

OPAL’s settings are grouped into categories. Defaults are called out in bold — you don’t need to touch most of these.

Appearance

Storage locations

Changing a storage path prompts to migrate existing contents — you can opt out and leave the old contents in place.

O3DE defaults

Queues

Notifications

Accounts

Manage connected marketplace accounts. (Marketplace is a planned post-1.0 feature.)

Advanced

Import / export

Advanced → Export config writes every setting to a JSON file you can back up or share with a teammate. Advanced → Import config reads it back.