HTML5 Size/Garbage Collection/DisableUnusedPlugins Request

Hey there - we’ve been doing a lot of compiling for HTML5 as of late for ArchViz work that we’re doing.

A huge pain point is obviously the size of both the Javascript files as well as the data files. The size presents an issue in that end users have to download the data, and not all internet connections are alike, and that uploading via FTP is a pain.

Most text editors break when trying to minify the Javascript files that UE4 pumps out due to their size. It would be great to have the engine itself present an option to minify the javascript when compiling.

Also - right now there is no way to automatically delete the assets that are unused in a project. From my understanding - everything in the content folder is automatically compiled regardless of whether or not it is being referenced at runtime. It would be amazing to change that and not have to manually delete assets and references to assets.

Plugins that are enabled, but not used in the project are apparently (According to forum posts that I’ve read) are included when packaging. Can there be an option to not include those when compiling as well?

Finally, when it comes to the DATA files included in HTML5 builds - what can be done to compress them even more? Right now one project we’ve worked on has a 547MB data file. Our FTP compresses using GZIP but it is still really quite large. Automating a method to shrink that down would be fantastic!

Thanks so much!

A.

Hi AndreElijah,

I can tell you that packaging size across all platforms is definitely becoming a hot issue of late, so we’re getting lots of requests like yours, for clearer instructions on how to reduce packaging sizes overall. It is absolutely on the ‘to do’ list. Past that, I can point you to another threadwhich contains some good suggestions for reducing packaging size via compression. This one is slightly newerand does not yet have a resolution, but I’ll link for you to keep an eye on, it may be that it will also have good info for how to optimize for HTML5. I hope this helps!