Missing content after cooking/packaging

[Coldscooter]

Hi, So I just cooked and packaged my game, ready for its next update.

After cooking/packaged/installing and running the game I was missing my hud entirely and many sounds we're missing/not-playing.

When running the game, i just get tons of warnings about failed to find file for package:

[0010.68] Warning: Warning, CreateImport: Failed to load Outer for resource 'draw_rod_back_stretch': Package ColdFishing.Sounds
[0010.68] Warning: Warning, Failed to load 'ColdLogs': Can't find file for package 'ColdLogs' while loading NULL

Any idea why my packages aren't getting included in the build?

[Coldscooter]

It basically appears that anything that isn't referenced by my map isn't able to be found. The size of the packaged .exe and installed game appear to be what i would expect.

If i manually add a package under [Engine.StartupPackages] in DefaultEngine.ini, then content in that package can be found in the packaged game. But obviously I can't add all my packages here.

[Chosker]

IIRC that's how UDK works. anything that isn't referenced by a map or by code won't be cooked as it's deemed unnecessary.
you don't need to add them as StartupPackages, IIRC adding them as PackagesToAlwaysCook should be enough

[Coldscooter]

Thanks for the response Chosker. The thing is i've never had to do that before (nearly 5 years working on the project). Pretty sure it takes your game type and looks for all references in the code to know what to cook.

I've installed a fresh copy of UDK on a secondary computer and have added all my current content/config/maps/code etc, and that also has the same problem. So it's definitely something I've done. I'm currently in the process of adding a previous month's backup, ensuring that works, then slowly adding the new stuff to see what triggers the issue. Pretty painful process (especially seeing as I was looking forward to releasing my new update).

I wonder if it's some reference I've added somewhere, that is bugging it out. Maybe some cross package dependency or something.

[Coldscooter]

So after a whole day of debugging, I finally discovered the cause (or at least how to get around it). I was extending UDKGameViewportClient to catch network errors. Compiles and runs fine on the dev build. However it turns out if I even mention the class name of my player controller class in this extended class, it bugs-out FrontEnds packaging so that almost all of my packages can't be found when running the packaged/installed game.

This has to be one of the oddest UDK quirks I've seen in many years.

[Nathaniel3W]

TL;DR: I solved this by running the game with -user instead of -seekfreeloading.

I've been struggling with this issue for days, working on nothing but locating the missing content. It's all there in my editor, but when I cook and distribute the game, the content just isn't in the game.

The problem stemmed from dynamically loaded assets. I was following the instructions on using +SeekFreePackage=MyPackageName in MyGameEngine.ini to force the dynamically loaded content into seek-free packages, but it just wasn't working. The content wasn't there when I started the game with -seekfreeloading. I could run the game on my own computer without -seekfreeloading, and then the content was there. But my players couldn't run the game without -seekfreeloading; the game would want the player to rebuild scripts, which they couldn't do. (And besides, I wouldn't want to distribute a game that required building scripts anyway.)

There are some undocumented arguments, -user and -installed. If you start the game with one of those, it skips the check to rebuild scripts and just plays with what cooked scripts there are.