FULL BAGS started with a small engineering team and a simple goal: build a competitive heist FPS from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, without buying a pre-made shooter template or splitting the code into pieces nobody could rebuild.

That is why the core runtime module grew into one big codebase. When the team is small, working inside a single module is faster. You can refactor across systems without fighting build dependencies. The trade-off is that the module became large, and a full rebuild now takes more than half an hour.

The upside was worth it for the first three years. Mechanics changed weekly. Fire modes, armor, movement, and the Commander role all iterated rapidly. A single module let those changes move quickly.

Now the team is growing. Artists, designers, and new engineers need clearer boundaries. We are slowly splitting the code at the natural seams: backend and session code goes into its own module, editor tooling into another, AI behavior into a third. The core gameplay stays together, but new systems must expose narrow interfaces.

If you are building something ambitious with a small team, do not be afraid of keeping things together early. Just keep track of where the seams are. You will need them when the team expands.