With all due respect Yata, just telling someone to find another way to get a product is not an acceptable solution, particularly given the reason an offline installer is not produced.
As with Horsham College - we are not an end user attempting to get a single version of this installed on a computer.
We are the network administrators attempting to get a product provided and marketed for use in schools to work.
For the product to work in schools it needs to be able to communicate with the internet within our environment - and we cannot just throw away the security to get one product to work.
To quote the webpage
Schools have a legal responsibility to monitor and enforce internet restrictions, and one of the most common methods is to utilise a web proxy.
When a product is marketed towards schools then the developers have a responsibility to ensure their product can be deployed utilised within an educational environment without the need to use third party workarounds.
A self contained offline installer is the best way to ensure this is possible as it can be deployed via various technologies without any user interaction.
As the technician responsible for managing the fleet we would be able to deploy a silent install to dozens of computers with little or no effort.
However, failing that and acknowledging that the developer wishes to maintain updates or for legal reasons cannot provide a standalone offline installer there are alternatives.
Mind you, by suggesting a workaround of copying data from one computer to another, that pretty much negates the argument for an offline installer.
By all means require a sign up and acceptance of a EULA, but that EULA could be phrased to allow schools to deploy the softare.
The simplest method (without any significant changes to the existing platform) would be to ensure the downloaded “stub” installer for the content adheres to published web standards for Web Proxy Auto Detection (Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Protocol - Wikipedia) that all major browsers support, and once the instruction file for how to connect to the internet is parsed, if they receive an authentication request from the proxy server to provide that to the end user.
I am within a near identical contact to Horsham College [We do not have a direct connection to the internet - direct access via port 80 and 443 is NOT an option] and I can tell you with certainty - the installer did not even attempt to communicate with the internet via the authorised channel. It wasn’t a matter of the URL’s being blocked, as I would have been able to identify that from the proxy logs and whitelist them. Indeed I have already whitelisted the URL’s listed here [A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums] It did not even attempt to use the proxy.
As far as the school is concerned,
- the use of the application is authorised.
- the classroom teacher has supported the use of the application
- the application is allowed to access the internet within all local firewalls
- the students do not have administrative rights so we are required to install this for them
- as a network administrator with full administrative rights to both the computer and the proxy server we are making every effort to ensure it works
Unfortunately if the product does not even provide an option to specify proxy settings, or adhere to published standards it is not a product we can deploy or support.
I was able to get it to install on a single computer - by using my personal 4G connection, however its data cap is limited.
I should not have to do this when I have a internet connection capable of high volumes of download present.
Once it is installed you do have one “option” which is to append “-http=wininet” to the launchers shortcut - so why not support this within the installer?
Currently I have only got as far as being “rate limited while logging in” before it fails. Error Code WR-0002
I believe it will work for the students at home on their devices - but I cannot provide any guarantee the product will work as intended while on site.