Does PakBlacklist prevent cooking and paking, or just paking?

Development Platform & Builds Mobile
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1

I created a file named PakBlacklist-Shipping.txt and have placed it in the appropriate directory.



[GameFolder]
Gamename.uproject

[GameFolder\Build\Android]
PakBlacklist-Shipping.txt

Blacklist content…



../../../Engine/Content/MobileResources/
../../../Engine/Content/Maps/Templates/
../../../Engine/Content/Tutorial/
../../../Engine/Content/EngineSounds/
../../../Engine/Content/EngineResources/
../../../Engine/Content/EngineMeshes/
../../../Engine/Content/EngineMaterials/
../../../Engine/Content/EngineDebugMaterials/
../../../Engine/Content/EngineDamageTypes/
../../../Engine/Content/EditorResources/
../../../Engine/Content/EditorMaterials/
../../../Engine/Content/EditorLandscapeResources/

My file size did go down about 4mB but I still see all of the blacklisted content in the cooked folder. Is this to be expected, or is the content supposed to not be cooked as well?

edit: Wouldn’t recommend using the list I mentioned above; game crashes on load. I have to refine it still.

2

Follow up:

I’m thinking it just prevents paking.

On an essentially blank paper2d project I was able to get an APK to 36mB shipping by using the following PakBlacklist.



~2.5mb off file size.
../../../Engine/Content/EngineDebugMaterials/
../../../Engine/Content/Tutorial/
../../../Engine/Content/EditorMaterials/
../../../Engine/Content/MobileResources/
../../../Engine/Content/EngineSounds/
../../../Engine/Content/Maps/Templates/

Blacklisting the following seems to crash the game but also removes quite a significant amount of size. If there’s a way to prevent the crash here’s the data on them…



~2mb off file size
../../../Engine/Content/EngineMaterials/
~3mB off file size.
../../../Engine/Content/EditorMaterials/
3

Everything is still cooked and staged; the PakBlacklist is just a way to prune out content you know won’t be used (it isn’t included in the PAK). It is best used when you have disabled anything which has a dependency on it (which in most cases should have prevented cooking if it can determine it). You might get away with finding a few items in EngineMaterials which you can ignore but it is unlikely.

4

I was only able to narrow it down to the list in my second post. My project is 39mb with the oob packed inside the APK. Just seems a little high to me. I’ve disabled almost every plugin except Paper2D. Content folder is 8mb, about 6mb of it is blueprints.