Ok I have no clue why these things are happening, and am overall unimpressed about how hard it is to deal with UE’s c++ shenanigans.
But the problem magically went away after I:
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became an expert on many ini files
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deleted project Binaries
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deleted project Derived Data Cache
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deleted project Intermediate
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deleted project Saved
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deleted project .sdf file
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Then regenerated visual studio project files
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Opened the sln project in Visual Studio and did a Build
^ this got rid of the Net Serialization: Error, and data cache errors for my project.
Then I:
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disabled tens of plugins UE4 loads with by default that I’ll never use (which slow down loading and sometimes log warnings or errors)
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deleted Engine’s Derived Data Cache
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deleted engine’s Intermediate folder and recompiled
^ this got rid of a “missing global shader” publishing error with regards to my project’s shader plugin, and got rid of the data cache crash/errors for the engine.
There really should be a sandbox that prevents the engine from crashing if “something’s wrong” with your code.