I was playing around with the Unreal Development Kit this evening, and discovered a rather interesting quirk in the handling of braces within UnrealScript. All of the sample code I read use a syntax style that places opening braces on the following line:

    event PostBeginPlay()
    {
      // Do something
    }

However, my typical style places the opening brace on the current line:

    event PostBeginPlay() {
      // Do something
    }

Unfortunately, this does not seem to work for defaultproperties blocks. If you place the brace on the same line, the compiler will not give you any warnings or errors, but the entire defaultproperties block is just ignored!

So this code works:

    defaultproperties
    {
      PlayerControllerClass=class'MyPlayerController'
    }

while the following code compiles but silently just ignores all of the contained settings:

    defaultproperties {
      PlayerControllerClass=class'MyPlayerController'
    }

I was banging my head on the wall for at least an hour figuring this one out!

I hope this can help prevent someone else from repeating my mistake.