Just bought a Plugin on Marketplace that is updated to version 4.20. I only have 4.21 installed on my machine.
To download the plugin, I have to install 4.20 first, download the plugin, copy it somewhere on my PC so I can adapt it myself for 4.21, and then delete 4.20. Pretty annoying from a UX standpoint.
Bump. Been ~3 years and we still can’t do this.
I work with source engine builds more than launcher builds now. It’s frustrating having to download the entire engine, just so I can copy-paste the plugin into a source build, then uninstall it.
PLEASE Epic - Provide a “Download” option for plugins and content, do not require us to have the required engine installed. This is utterly infuriating UX.
+1 from me as well. I just recently went through the process of installing a launcher version, only to be able to download marketplace plugins and then copy them to my source version of the engine.
+1 on this, its been years but hopefully this can be changed at some point.
Having to download 2 engines (~12gb in total) on a 20mb/s connection, to download two plugins that are probably less than 50mb in total is incredibly frustrating.
bump
bump.
epic games launcher really is the worst launcher in existence.
bump…
Epic Games boys, how many centuries should we wait for a such simple feature?
bump
It amazes me that the Epic Games Launcher runs in Unreal 4, for some unknown reason.
No wonder it takes so long to load and uses ~1GB of RAM when idle.
After at least 7 years of waiting for an extremely primitive, zero-effort-required feature, somebody else has done the work for them:
It installs the plugin if you have the link to github of the plugin. But not all authors leave the link, like here
I have to download 5.0 version of the engine to download the plugin for 5.1… again…
epic games MUST add the feature, the link, API, whatever, idc, but devs should have the possibility to download god dĐ°mn zero-weight essential plugin.
There are threads (here and here) about this feature request
New Solution:
I made a simple python tool that fakes UE version for EGS, so you and I don’t need to do the steps below manually. Github link.
Current problem: It requires admin access. I will fix it as soon as possible.
UPD: Added UE4 support
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Old solution:
Ok. I found the hack how to get the plugin of older version without installing old UE.
Close the Epic Ggame Store
Open Epic Games Store manifests directory (for me it is C:\ProgramData\Epic\EpicGamesLauncher\Data\Manifests). Idk is it different for other users or not, but if yes you can use Registry Editor and look for ModSdkMetadataDir and it should be located somewhere in …\SOFTWARE\Epic Games\EOS tree.
Make the backup of this directory
Open all .item files via text editor (I use VSCode)
Look for the file that relates to your UE. The file should contain such fields: "LaunchExecutable": "Engine/Binaries/Win64/UnrealEditor.exe", "AppName": "UE_5.1", "MainGameAppName": "UE_5.1",
Now change UE_5.1 to UE_[version] in AppName and MainGameAppName. I set mine to UE_5.0
Save the file
Go to your UE installation directory. If you don’t know where it is, you can find the path in Registry Editor by key: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EpicGames\Unreal Engine
Open .egstore folder
Find the *.mancpn file that relates to your UE. It contains the field like: "AppName": "UE_5.1"
Do backup of the file
Change the value to your UE version as we did before. I set it to "AppName": "UE_5.0"
Save the file
Open Epic Games Store
Download the plugin
When downloading finished, EGS probably will crash, heh. Make sure you completely close the EGS.
Back to your edited files and restore their initial state by backup files.
Go to your UE installation directory and you will find your plugin in Engine\Plugins directory.
Copy it to where you want.
Open EGS and make sure that engine installation is correct.
Congrats! You downloaded outdated plugin without downloading the whole Unreal Engine
Probably I will make the tiny script for that stuff so we don’t need to do it manually.
bump
This is frustrating. Please fix this.
Bump. This is horrible pain in the â– â– â–
I want this too.
I also give it a +1. I recently installed a launcher version of the engine, but before that, I could download and transfer marketplace plugins to my source version of the engine.
I just need to download a 4.X plugin that is not updated to 5., argh
been a year and still waiting lol
Bump. It’s just absurd that this is still an issue.
Please Epic, listen to your developers & make their life easier. Industry leading rendering features can be accomplished, but simple UX features are impossible?!
Hello There, Epic/Unreal, we STILL need this, why isnt there a button to simply download it.
I’m running it with a simple .bat with the admin rights, and it’s working. Thanks for the nice script!