Don't use Github "Download Zip"

Development Programming & Scripting
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1

I have made a research project, which I uploaded to Github with LTS.

I also made a Youtube video about that project, and I got a comment from Youtube telling me that the project has error and can’t be loaded.

The project worked fine in my local desktop.
I downloaded the project from the Github with “Download Zip” button to check if there is something wrong with the repository.
I ran the downloaded project installed at a different directory in my desktop, and the project crashed.

So I tried to build the project from VS. It could be built and launched, but it fails to load the asset map. Giving me “Umap appears to be an asset file” error.

I tried to figure out if this has to do with some git ignored files, but it wasn’t.

The solution I found was using “git clone” command to download the code.

So, it seems the “Download Zip” button has some error with LTS.

You should use git command to download UE project from Github.

2

It is expected.
LFS is a system where large files (assets) are converted to pointers when pushing into the repository, while the real large files are sent to a different remote storage.
When cloning or checking out, pointers are retrieved from the repository first, then they are parsed, and the real files are downloaded from the other remote storage.
If you look at your uasset/umap files on github web, you’ll see they are simple text files with just 1-2 lines containing some UUID. Those are the pointers.
When you download repository as zip, you just get the pointers, there’s no handler to retrieve the real files. Not only you need a Git application to do that, but also make sure it was installed with LFS support enabled, which is generally optional with most git apps.