How do I avoid packaging DLC content in the game?

Development Platform & Builds
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1

Hi There,

I’ve been trying to resolve a good process for DLC packages. Initially I wanted to build my DLC outside the Content tree but it seems the editor restricts this.

So now I want to build the DLC within the Content tree, but make sure that it’s content doesn’t ship in the original game.

How do I do this? I can find settings to cook only a set of maps (for cookall only) but nothing to filter out specific directories.

To make DLC a first class citizen I think it should exist as a specific folder type in the Content tree, the game would know not to package these folder types with the main distribution and each one would have it’s own project settings to manage platform specific packaging.

Any suggestions pointers etc gratefully received!

2

Did you find a solution for this? I’m also trying to find a good way to separate DLC from main pak. UnrealPak and your examples on other threads helped A LOT!

But I can’t figure out how to pak and load Blueprints, even though they’re children of a C++ class. And the Release/DLC packaging from Project Launcher is not working. It seems that without a .umap, nothing goes into the resulting pak of the DLC. Even when the plugin Content folder contains Textures, SkeletalMeshes and Materials.

3

Apologies for the late reply.

I’m using the unreal process to build all the uassets but build my own pak files by hand - running unrealpak.exe on a manifest file with the contents I want.

4

The basics are that you need to create a plugin. This plugin has it’s own content folder distinct from the game.

You can then create custom profiles to build different packages in the “ProjectLauncher”.

If you google around looking for this you’ll find some information:

I documented my personal approach here:

BUT My focus is UGC and users don’t have the editor nor the time to get to know it so I had to go down a very custom path.