Before Zen there was piece and prosperity then Zen came and destroyed Engine and my brain and my sanity with it!
Engine keep failing to connect to it in random places, on start, on build, on render and crashes the engine.
There are Thousands of threads with answers from people who think because something worked for them it is a general answer and it will work for everyone.
a few of these answers
Turn off your VPN
Add a -dcc something to your command prompt (it was working previously but it doesn’t anymore)
Add something Environment variable and it will work (this one was from an staff, and still didn’t work)
Add some random thing to your DefaultEngine.ini (that has no documentation or reference why and what is it)
Give Permission to some non-existing folder in drive C: (Assuming both my installation and project are on drive C which neither are)
Remove something from registry (which not only the key doesn’t exist, its parent doesn’t exist either)
Add something random to registry (again without any reference to why and what is it even)
Delete and install engine from scratch
Delete your project and start over
Delete your operating system and start over
Destroy your PC and buy a new one!
All my problems started with Zen and continue with Zen
It has created an 80Gb folder in my drive C which only has 220Gb space total, leaving only 2Gb empty space with my OS keep giving me frequent warnings that something failed due to insufficient space in drive C. there were also thousands of suggested solutions for moving that folder which neither works either.
And two days ago I have installed the last update that I was ignoring for a while and now I cannot build anymore
Latest Error is
Unable to use default cache graph 'InstalledDerivedDataBackendGraph' because there are no writable nodes available.
While Zen is running and sitting there idle and I can verify it since the Zen Dashboard is also open and connected to it!
If I try to build 2 more time, the editor will crash and ruin my nerves!
Is there a way to disable Zen and go back to Local Caching just like what it was in 5.2 and 5.3?
I would suggest to never touch registry values unless you are absolutely sure of what’s being changed. Checking around the community, the most straight forward way to disable Zen is from the BaseEngine.ini file, as seen in the following thread (just avoid the zenserver.exe step):
After that, change the environment variable to a local drive hard drive location, as seen here:
As for the disk space issue, clear the contents from AppData\Local\UnrealEngine\Common\Zen after disabling Zen. You can also delete DerivedDataCache contens from both project and engine directories.
Ok, I figured it myself and it was very satisfying.
Disclaimer: This is not suitable for Enterprise, company or people working in teams (using shared cache for large to huge projects).
Since I am developing as an indie, I don’t have a network or cloud cache and don’t need zen even if it make build time shorter. Waiting a few more minutes, worth my time than troubleshooting the engine or editor for hours.
Do not add overrides in your environment variables, command line or shortcut starting the engine (it won’t work when you put a project shortcut on your desktop anyway). Remove any of those if you already added one, if you leave them there, this solution will not work, since it relies on engine using its default cache configuration.
Go to your engine folder, wherever you have installed it (mine is on drive F)
Find BaseEngine.ini and make a backup (in case you have ruined it or later realize you did need zen server). It is in Engine/Config folder wherever you have installed it mine was in F:\Unreal\UE_5.4\Engine\Config\
Replace everything under [InstalledDerivedDataBackendGraph] with everything under [InstalledNoZenLocalFallback]
Change first line that says Root to Root=(Type=Hierarchical, Inner=Pak, Inner=CompressedPak, Inner=EnginePak, Inner=Local). This will remove Zen from list of the things to forcefully try before giving up and using local cache.
Probably you will need to add bUseZenStore=false under [/Script/UnrealEd.ProjectPackagingSettings] as mentioned here Version 5.4 does not start, it gives an error. Help me fix it?. This doesn’t seem to be needed, as it started showing a strange message in the logs that bUseZenStore is deprecated and should be set to false which was already false.
And for me editor started from both project and editor’s own shortcut.
Note: Probably this will make some build processes slower, but I’m happy with not having 60Gb in my drive C, not having to worry about complicated process to recover cache etc. If cache breaks I’ll just delete the *.ddp file, go make a coffee and when I come back a new one is created. It is most probably Compressed.ddp inside your project or engine folder.
Note:[InstalledDerivedDataBackendGraph] is the default cache that engine will look for when it is starting. [InstalledNoZenLocalFallback] is the section which engine will look for when you add it to -dcc parameter to your command line or environment variable. There are a few more similar section right under that (Zen Only, Cloud Only, …), which is out of my fixes scope, but you can read those configs yourself.
Thank you for taking your time and leaving a reply. It is helpful up to a extent. I had disabled Zen Auto launch long ago and I was starting it manually, since engine was refusing to start it by its own and making me nuts! then came the issue of not being able to connect randomly. which in middle of work the editor would suddenly crash and exit with error saying something regarding not being able to reach zen.
I work with PCs (windows) for very long time and I almost immediately recognize when someone is asking you to delete or add something to registry or asking you to change folder permissions that has nothing to do with fixing the issue. unfortunately I can’t warn every time I see one of these suggestions since there are a lot of them.
Most people just like me, don’t care what was the root cause of the issue and just want it to go away so they can continue what they were doing, until comes a point that they cannot take it anymore. Unfortunately Unreal documents don’t help much either. This is all I could find regarding how to setup local cache instead of zen LocalDerivedDataCache which is just 3 lines!
Thanks again for your help and valuable comment that I forgot to mention in my solution: If engine try to start zen and cannot, it still will crash.