Deleting Big_City_LVL

[Papero64]

I am wondering if anyone can help me.
I am new to Unreal Engine and I am practicing with the City demo.
In an attempt to reduce the size of the project, I tried to delete the Big_City_LVL, in order to work only with the Small_City_LVL.
But deleting the map just takes forever! After a few hours I am only seeing the deletion bar progressing minimally:

What am I doing wrong?

[Papero64]

Just to be clearer on what I did:

1. I cloned the entire project CitySample into a new one called SmallCity
2. Opened SmallCity and (in the bottom-left corner) navigated into Content->Map
3. I right-clicked on Big_City_LVL and selected Delete
4. Then… still waiting…

[Papero64]

After more than 24h, the deletion is continuing with a rather strange % indication:

It’s crazy, but I am now very curious to see what happens next

[SupportiveEntity]

Hey there @Papero64! Welcome to the community! Looks like something might have went wrong during the deletion of the level. I’d recommend canceling the ever mounting deletion, making a backup of your project, and then delete the asset from the file directory. For reference, this is a bad idea for anything you could normally just delete as it leaves hanging references that need to be cleaned up. Then verify the project still loads and let me know how it went!

[Papero64]

Many thanks for your reply.

What do you mean when you write “delete the asset from the file directory”? Just deleting the map with Windows File Explorer?
Because I tried that, but “Big_City_LVL.umap” is a very small file, so the overall size of the project remains the same.

The project then loaded normally.

So it seems to me that one of these two options apply:
either

1. the deletion of the “Big_City_LVL.umap” file did not produce a purge of the relevant assets, which are still in the project even if they are not used; so something else would need to be done to reduce the size of the project; I tried running Tools->Validate Data but the engine crashed;
   or
2. the big city map does not contain anything special over and above what is in the small city; it’s just a repetition of buildings, streets, etc. and deleting the map does not shrink the project.

Option 2 seems unlikely: while playing (just flying a bit around the city) I noticed skyscrapers in the big city that are not present in the small city.

BTW: if I package the game with the big city I end up with a 20Gb package.
If I package the new small city (after deleting the map), I end up with 15Gb (so something indeed has been left out).
If I package the game before deleting the map, I end up with 20Gb even if I delete the Big_City_LVL from the list of maps to include in the packaged build (via Platforms->Packaging Settings) and set Small_City_LVL as starting level for the game. It looks like the Big_City_LVL ends up being included anyway.

As you can see, I am literally just starting learning how the engine works.

[KryogenicGames]

If you are sure you dont want to use BigCity then you can delete these in file manager or total commander etc not in UE as it will take ages.
Content/ExternalActors/Map/Big_City_LVL @ 8.25Gb
Content/City/Big_City @ 350mb

Wouldnt touch anything else really, but if you are packaging your Small_City_LVL why are you bothered about BigCity , that has no effect on your packaged build, perhaps you have some settings not set correctly

[Papero64]

Thanks very much.
That’s what I was looking for.

[Papero64]

Just FYI: with this approach, the small city is empty. No cars and no walking people.

[KryogenicGames]

what do you mean? is your map fully loaded and all spawners present in outliner and set to spawn?

[Papero64]

Both Crowd and Traffic are set to autospawn.

But I figured out the problem: I set Foliage to Low in the Scalability Settings and that triggered a SpawnDensityMultiplier=0.1 in the DefaultScalability.ini

[KryogenicGames]

well done