Android App Bundle

Development Platform & Builds Mobile
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1

Is android app bundle on the roadmap to be added to ue4 packaging i can not seem to find an answer ?

If no does anyone know of a way you can build in Android studio The first thing i need to do is upgrade the gradle version that ue4 uses and i don’t know how to do that if anyone does would be appreciated.

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Litlle bump because I’m really interested in this.

Any UE guy?

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I guess the reason it’s not supported yet is because app bundles have limitations that make them not usable for all games:

  1. Your final app download cannot exceed 150MBs and there’s no support for expansion files at all. So if you’re working on a larger game than that it’s useless for you.
  2. It doesn’t support texture compression format and OpenGL API version segmentation, which is crucial for offering the best quality/performance with minimum download sizes.

I heard Google is working on addressing problem #1, as there’s a closed beta going on with some developers for some sort of “large asset” support for app bundles. What it is, how it’s supposed to work and what the size limits are, only those in the beta and Google’s developers know.

About #2, they said “we’ll support this in the future”, so who knows. It’s been two years since Vulkan debuted on Android and it’s still not possible to use it as a filter on Google Play, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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Developers tell me that Google is rejecting apps in google play if the apk are not bundled using android app bundle

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I’m in the middle of trying to get an unreal game rolled out on Google Play for the first time, where I built the APK with Unreal. It was approved in Google Play Console and I rolled it out to Internal Test Track, but I’m running into an issue where I can’t seem to download it from the Google Play store. I’m not sure if it’s because of this Android App Bundle thing or not. I’m currently trying to see if I can pull off bundling an Android App Bundle with Android Studio which I know nothing about. Gradle is throwing errors about min/target SDK versions in my manifest. It’s been a nightmare. If anyone knows about this stuff I could use some help :frowning:

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Hi you guys. I just made a video on the issue with bundling in Android Studio with ue4 project. Hopefully it helps.

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Just added an update.
How To Bundle UE4 Project With Android Studio Update

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Hey, I updated my game as well with Android App Bundle. Seems everything got uploaded and should be working!
I also looked at your video OnjigoOrigins, really nice you recorded this for everyone!
( btw you can delete the intermediate folder if you have issues (only folders you “should not” delete are Config, Content, Source, and of course the “MyProject.uproject” file, everything else can be recompiled).)

For those of you who know UE4 from before and are familiar with packaging for Android, and just want to update your project asap, this is a quick TO-DO list to make Android App Bundle from your UE4 project:

  1. Check project settings -Android , make sure you check to export 64 bit version (arm64), don’t uncheck armv7 as you still need 32bit version, App Bundle will merge both into one .aab file.

  2. Install Android Studio! Download Android Studio and SDK tools  |  Android Developers

3.I’m not sure if this is necessary but I deleted any previously packaged files in …\Unreal Projects\MyProject\Binaries\Android (or simply delete the Binaries folder). I did this because I’m not sure which files Android Studio will use to make the bundle, and so I did this to make sure I know which version I will put into the bundle (probably latest build).

  1. Package your project in the desired format (multi, ETC1, ATC…).

  2. Note that despite they say in video the file size will get smaller up to 35%, in my case this was not true at all, for example a multi version 64 bit was 100mb and the AppBundle was then 98.8mb, for ETC1 64bit version was 66.1mb and the App Bundle was 64.8mb… of course considering both versions are supposed to be packaged into the same file then yes looking it that way it is smaller, but download size for user is more or less the same…

  3. Open Android Studio, Choose - open an existing Android Studio project and scroll to …\Unreal Projects\MyProject\Intermediate\Android\APK\Gradle , click “OK” and it will attempt to sync the project.

  4. Now simply follow instructions on each of the errors, it gives you links that you click and shows you what to do, you’ll have to remove-delete a few lines, then hit save and Sync again until you get rid of errors, it looks confusing but yes you can delete those lines, if you will package the project in UE4 again all of this will be re-generated anyway, and you’ll need to repeat this every time you package in UE4. Same if you update Gradle when you package again this will be deleted and you’ll need to update again next time you open the project in the Android Studio.

  5. Go to Build-Generate Signed Bundle / APK , click “Next” , for Keystore, click “choose existing” and browse and locate your KeyStore file, add password twice and Alias (copy-paste from your project settings), and hit “Next”, then select “Release” or “Debug” for your App Bundle, and click “Finish”.

  6. Once finished you can click on “locate” and it will open the Gradle folder for you, and there you can find the app.aab in \app\release so that’s
    Unreal Projects\MyProject\Intermediate\Android\APK\gradle\app\release

  7. Rename your file to know what format you used and version it is and put it somewhere else, so if you delete the intermediate folder you don’t lose it.

  8. Now you can upload to GooglePlay.

  9. To package into a different format, you’ll need to repeat all this, and in my case, I simply deleted the intermediate folder (to avoid errors) each time before I started packaging a different format in UE4.
    For uploading to GooglePlay I first upload the multi version , followed by other versions, I avoid DXT because there were some issues last year, not sure if that got fixed or not, probably it did.
    (GooglePlay automatically detects the version needed for your device by checking the newest version first and then continues to check older ones until it finds the match).

If you have any doubts about the Android Studio stuff, check the video from **OnjigoOrigins , **he made an effort to explain it in detail what he did for his project.

Only thing I’m not sure about is why multi version keeps getting bigger, last year I had it at 79mb, now its 96mb for 32bit version,100mb for 64bit, this App Bundle was then 98.8mb while I didn’t change the project in any way…

My Game: www.jumpyfrogs.com

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That would cause all games larger than 100MBs to be rejected, because App Bundles don’t support expansion files yet, AFAIK.

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This feature is definitely needed. I Wish some people at Epic can confirm if this is a thing or not in an upcoming release.

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Hello, i created a .aab using your technique but when i check on Play Console, there are only arm64 inside the bundle. However, I packaged my project on unreal with armv7 and arm64 enabled. Anyone else have the same issue? Is there a command line to include in visual studio to say “package both in .aab” that i missed?

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I tried the app bundle method but when I uploaded to google play They say they can’t download it and sent me a scree shot that says no obb found no key store for donwload? any help I know I followed all the steps correctly.

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Hey Twtch.Twinsassin

Try to enable “Package game data inside.apk?” in project settings->Android

If you havn’t signed your app you need to create a key : A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums

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When I enable

When I enable that option my package is to big to upload to google play. and I have did the key signing this is why I am confused on what I am doing wrong

1 Like
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question if I opt in to the google play app signing do I use my key to sign it or how does this work?

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I have the same problem.

someone knows the solution to this problem?

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+1 with this issue. When I analyze the .aab with 7zip, there’s only the arm64 libraries, and Google Play says the same.

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Good news here Unreal Engine 4.24 Preview - Announcements and Releases - Unreal Engine Forums

Mobile Updates:

  • **Auto-instancing on Mobile (Experimental). **We are planning to support the auto-instancing feature of the HLR on mobile devices for improved performance due to reduced draw calls. This functions the same as desktop auto-instancing, but it uses a texture instead of a buffer due to limitations on Mali devices, which can only support a buffer of 64 kb.
  • Android App Bundles. Android App Bundles are a new upload format for the Google Play Store that defers APK generation and signing to Google Play itself. Google’s Dynamic Delivery system then provides an APK optimized for a user’s device configuration automatically. As of 4.24, we will be supporting App Bundle builds through the Unreal Engine.
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Hey, I think the page used to say that, but now there’s only
Mobile Updates:

  • **Auto-instancing on Mobile (Experimental). **We are planning to support the auto-instancing feature of the HLR on mobile devices for improved performance due to reduced draw calls. This functions the same as desktop auto-instancing, but it uses a texture instead of a buffer due to limitations on Mali devices, which can only support a buffer of 64 kb."

Also the trello card was erased (Trello)

Do someone knows what happened? Did they remove it from the engine preview patch notes in purpose because it didn’t work correctly?

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i have been checking the preview build since the first one it has never been there to test. And yeah i noticed they had removed it from the cards and the update page but as they have never answered us about adding it i doubt they will ever answer us about removing it feels like the teased us lol