In the past I had issues with partial rebuild. Not only it would take long time, but also game would come out incomplete somehow. So I resorted to full rebuild, all the time.
Now that my project has gotten bigger, full rebuild takes a very long time. It would be nice for UE4 to be smart about it and when running partial rebuild give a warning pop-up if full rebuild has to be made. However it’s not the case and I’d like to know when I should be doing full rebuild and when partial rebuild.
For example, currently I am testing FMOD+Oculus Audio SDK and spatialization. All I am doing is swapping .so files and updating parameters of the audio banks. Would I have to do full rebuild or partial should do ?
What about when I move around audio events on the level ? Or move around actors that don’t need lighting to be rebuilt ?
What if I add streaming level and rebuild lighting?
What if I add new BP actor or edit existing on or both?
UE4 already does this when building so that you don’t have to do a full-rebuild every time. There shouldn’t be a need (in the majority of cases with the current version of the editor) to have to do a full rebuild.
Full Rebuild tool tip: “If enabled, a full rebuild will be enforced each time the project is being packaged. If disabled, ony modified files will be built, which can improve iteration time. Unless you iterate on packaging, we recommend full rebuilds when packaging.”
I can’t speak to the FMOD and Oculus Audio files because I’ve never used them, but for the other options you’ve described I do this on a weekly, if not daily, basis when testing and reporting issues between different platforms.
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In addition to the forums also try posting on the AnswerHub in the section that applies to your question, in this case it would be Using UE4 or Packaging and Deployment, where we encourage community support over dedicated staff support.