Modify/Debug cooked source without re-cooking
Article written by Epic Games staff
After cooking once, you can iterate within Visual Studio. Building for one of the non-editor build configurations (Debug, Development, etc.), add the -basedir= arg to your running command line:
-basedir=X:\Path\To\Your\Cooked\Executable\Folder\Binaries\Win64
This argument is used to point the process at the previously cooked assets on disk. The path you specify needs to point at the cooked executable’s directory (down to the platform folder). UE will implicitly append …/…/… to in-process paths (to find content); the engine assumes a nested working directory.
Alternatively, use -BaseFromWorkingDir and simply set the debugger working directory to the value of -basedir.
See more on the Knowledge Base.