Engine source changes

We’ve been investigating using UE4 at work (after quite some time on UE3) so I also downloaded it at home to do some additional “playing”. Now, at work we’ve gone the github route and use the GenerateProjectFiles batch file and rebuild everything from the engine on up. At home, since I don’t have a personal github account, I went the Epic Games Launcher route. I’ve encountered a case where I want to make a small local modification to some of the engine source, however when I did that I noticed (after a couple crashes running PIE) that there was no way to cause a rebuild of the UE4 engine binaries.

Are my only two options 1) Using the Launcher and never being able to modify the engine? or 2) scrapping the Launcher and go the github route in order to make engine modifications?

From my limited experience so far UE4 at work and at home, I’d rather be able to keep the Launcher for my home projects. I like having unique solutions for each application, which doesn’t seem like the way that the GenerateProjectFiles batch file wants to work. Overall I like the organization of the source I have now for multiple local game projects (which isn’t something that will come up much at work).

I’ve done a little searching and found the BuildGraph command for the Automated Build Tool. The only problem there is that I can’t find any good examples of what the xml file (InstalledEngineBuild.xml) should look like to get it do what I want. Also, the documentation is more about the invocation than it is about the xml format. I’m not even sure if it’s output is exactly what I want since all the discussion was about outputing to a LocalBuilds directory which isn’t quite what I want.

Thanks in advance for any help or insight.

AFAIK you need to use the github version, not the launcher one.

The launcher version can’t be modified, the source is only included there for… looking at it I guess?

You’ll still get separate solutions per project with a custom build, so it’s no problem. The GenerateProjectFiles.bat / UE4.sln is only necessary for the initial build before you can run projects.

Its needed for C++ projects.

You only need the headers. The launcher lets you add the source files aswell, but you can’t do anything other than look at them.

Okay, thanks you both of you.

Ah yes, thanks for the correction :slight_smile:

You might also want to try this, for a launcher-like setup but with your own build: