Arbitrary Cooking

Development Modding ARK: Survival Evolved
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This is a topic for the devs to look at. What the hell is wrong with the ADK?

Tried cooking my TC mod today. Followed all the rules, and I have already successfully cooked the mod before.
I altered the structure so that instead of just editing the core files, I create custom ones and replace all appropriate references.
The cooking finished within 2 minutes, which surprised me, but when I looked in the folder, it only cooked a few files which it seemed to pick at random.

What it did cook:

  1. PlayerPawnTest and the custom PlayerStatus files that I’ve edited earlier in the same launch.
  2. My custom Hide Shirt, which I edited earlier, and the three layers of parent items I used for it.
  3. My custom Hide and Fibers resource items, which are used for the Hide Shirt.
  4. InventoryComponent for my custom structure, which I didn’t edit earlier, but which is referenced by the Hide Shirt.

It didn’t even cook the weapon and projectile files that I did edit during the same launch.

What it should have cooked:
0) How about the PrimalGameData for a start?

  1. 252 Engrams, all linked items, structures, their inventories, weapons and projectiles
  2. 40 Dinos, with related settings, inventories, harvest and status components
  3. Remapped HarvestComponents, SpawnEntries, SupplyCrates
  4. Probably other stuff I’m forgetting about

What am I supposed to do in this situation?

EDIT: Actually, after re-starting the ADK just for the hell of it, it still only cooks the mentioned files.

EDIT2: I figured the problem out.
I have, by mistake, edited a few core files earlier. While I changed them back as soon as I noticed, the ADK still considered them altered. Since I didn’t want them cooked, I “updated” the ADK (from manual v217 to launcher v217) to make sure only the core files I want would be considered edited and thus cooked (PlayerPawnTest and the Dyes that I was going to get to later).
However, everything that I edited prior to the update - even files outside the “PrimalEarth” directory - refuses to be cooked in a TC now, since they are “not edited”.

Please fix this sort of idiotic behavior. Stuff under Mod folders should always be cooked, regardless of it being the “same version” as prior to an update/verification!

EDIT3: So I can cook my mod as a normal one, but not as a TC. But I need it to be a TC to inherit the changes to PlayerPawnTest and Dyes (which for some stupid reason crash the game unless they are edited directly), and possibly other things that I can’t think of right now. What can I say, GG.

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Not entirely sure what is missing to be cooked but I wanna explain to you how it works with the cooking. From my experience everything neccessary gets cooked if referenced correctly.

Here is how it does not work: Cooking every file you altered.
Here is how it works: You reference at least one level in the cooking menu. In that level you reference your PrimalGameData. The system takes that GameData and builts up a reference tree. Every altered or new item in that reference tree gets cooked + TheIsland main level.

If you just wanna make a test I can recommend my tutorial. Well, maybe not the tutorial, but the test files I included. Copy them in your ADK and start a cook. If everything works fine there must be an issue in your reference tree. I made this test case specially for checking if something is broken with the cooking. I haven’t tested it with the latest version so it might be that you are right and something broke with the update. Here is the link: Tutorial - How to setup a TC - ARK: Survival Evolved - Unreal Engine Forums

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Actually, it does cook every file I altered. Except for some reason, it only takes files I altered after the last update/verification - even for those within my mod folder.

EDIT: It gets better: even after updating my PrimalGameData, it still won’t get cooked! And, by extension, no other part of the mod will.

EDIT2: Finally forced it to cook PrimalGameData by referencing it inside PrimalGlobalsBlueprint in place of the default file. But god did that take more effort than it should have.