frustration

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Yes, thanks for listening. currently im in the 8th hour of something extremely stupid. I want to start developing with c++, all fine. Im used to vscode and saw u can make it work in vscode so i did all the nessecery steps, install this pack, get that extension, make this modification, add this, do that bla bla. ok it works kind of. Only to find that when u add a new class, you need to regenerate the compilecommands json file, i make a batch file for it, doesnt work, drama this, drama that.

then i though ok f it, i will use vs2022 instead, no more issues with missing includes. great, only to find, that when i add a new class i need to regenerate the vs files, or at least i had to as i had problem this, error that.

so this goes with a very nice context menu, right click the uproject file and tadaa u can regenerat the files there. NICE, except, i dont have that in my right click menu, (yes windows 11 show more options i know). so turns out my files are not associated with UE editor, i manually did that before as the isntaller didnt do that. Turns out u need a file called unrealversionselector.exe which can be easily found in the win64 folder of the engine, NICE, except, there isnt. no problem u can still do it with the bat file called GenerateProjectFiles.bat, NICE, except there is no such file. i looked everywhere. So i verify the files via epic launcher time and time again, and it downloads sometimes something, but never those files. Turns out, when u install the engine in a differnt filepath then regular, it wont give u those files. after manually downloading the exe file and registering the assosation, restarting system etc to my big shock and everybody’s surprise, no file assosication and no way to regenerate those files. its the 8th hour now, and im completly drained.

something this simple. something so easy … its taking all i have and i am still at step 1. why is it like this?

2

GenerateProjectFiles.bat is for building the source code of the engine itself. It’s not for your own project. You say that when you add a new class, you need to regenerate the vs files? Why? I’ve never had to do this. The editor will create the new files, add them to your project and compile them. There’s no need to regenerate the vs files. I like to exit the editor and do a proper build instead of using live coding because I find live coding is not reliable… or rather, there are zero issues when doing a proper build from VS.

If you manually add a new class inside VS instead of the UE editor, you still don’t need to regenerate the vs file. You do have to build your project though.

If you absolutely want to regenerate your VS project files, you right click the .uproject file and there’s an option “Generate Visual Studio project files”. But this is only needed if you download a sample project or something like that.

I get the feeling we’re missing a part of the story here.

3

“you right click the .uproject file and there’s an option “Generate Visual Studio project files”.”

Yes i thank you a lot for this response but as you could read in my post, there is no such option for me, and to get that options took 3 hours from me. Now i have that option but when i click it, it says ‘invalid command line’ or something, so basicly i dont have it, still. the reason seems to be that when u install the engine in a differnet location it wont give u that exe file.

i finally made it to work though, and live coding is quite realiable. It just a headache to set it all up. The trick was to start Unreal Editor, Edit → regenerate VS files. close editor, start the *.SLN file. from there right click ur project name → set as default project. now the windows local debugger is available, click it, and it works.

This costed me a full day, but we are there.

4

Sorry to hear you had that much trouble getting things running. FYI, the “Generate Visual Studio project files” context menu in windows explorer is provided by the UnrealVersionSelector.exe application and comes with the Epic Launcher, not Unreal Engine. So if you install Unreal Engine via the Epic Launcher, it’ll set up the correct paths and configuration for you. But if you build from source, it won’t set it up.

To fix the menu, you can copy the UnrealVersionSelector.exe from:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\Launcher\Engine\Binaries\Win64

to your UE install:

C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.0\Engine\Binaries\Win64

And then run the exe from there to register it. Select Yes and it should be fixed.

For the .uproject file, you can right click and “Open With” → “Choose another app” → “More Apps” → “Look for another app on this PC” and select the exe in your UE install that you copied. Make sure “Always use this app” is checked.