Inside Unreal: Adding Mod Support with the Simple UGC Plugin

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great project, I read through the source, and have a few questions / notes:

  • 1st of all, creating a new mod plugin by a button click is really handy for modders, thanks for that! using a pair of replacement components is also a nice idea. and ofc the editor widget is also like a xmas present. but seeing more comments in the source would be lovely.

  • imo it is a better approach to build the mod plugin (as a DLC) by AutomationTool.exe + command line arguments. it seems to be more simple than a source build. I’m experimenting with it currently, calling AutomationTool by CreateProc(), args can be got from the build log of a DLC, and replacing some parameters according to actual project is easy (engine path + project name + mod plugin name), and works fine. rarely certain maps are left out, but apparently newly created ones work.
    the command looks like this:
    <engine-root-dir>Engine/Binaries/DotNET/AutomationTool BuildCookRun -project=<project-path>.uproject -noP4 -clientconfig=Shipping -serverconfig=Shipping -nocompile -nocompileeditor -installed -ue4exe="<engine-root-dir>Engine\Binaries\Win64\UE4Editor-Cmd.exe" -utf8output -platform=Win64 -targetplatform=Win64 -ini:Game:[/Script/UnrealEd.ProjectPackagingSettings]:BlueprintNativizationMethod=Disabled -cook -map= -unversionedcookedcontent -pak -dlcname=<mod-plugin-name> -DLCIncludeEngineContent -basedonreleaseversion=1.0 -stage -compressed
    then the resulting pak can be found easily, ready for renaming, copying to the installed game for quick testing, and uploading…

  • it would be nice to have a solution for displaying the output log while the mod plugin is being built, similarly to project launcher (in case of errors we could support modders more easily)

  • copying the mod pak files to the Content folder of the installed game is not always possible, imo the pak loader plugin available on marketplace is the correct way how pak files should be mounted, because it enables mounting paks from any location e.g. steam workshop folders. and steam workshop support is a must today.

  • I would love to see a live stream or a tutorial of up/downloading paks using SteamWorkshop and Mod.io too, and managing them in-game, especially maps. (other stuff can be)

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