UE4 newbie here, looking for help with structuring a mobile iOS and Android app that will contain multiple mini games built in UE.
Ideally the app will have a native UI with some tabs, buttons and content areas (with text, video, images) - this is the easy part. The mini games section will feature small mini games built using UE, a new game will be released every two weeks.
My idea is to have the native app load these games from a server as they are released, perhaps using a PAK file each time a game is released. Is this at all possible? If someone could point me in the right direction I would be most thankful, totally lost.
A few more notes:
I’d love to handle the development of the app outside of Unreal for all content other than the mini games section, can I do this?
Each time a new game is ready, I would like the app to download it from a server (so that users do not have to update the app from the app stores to get new content)
Currently loading updated content for videos, text and images is fairly simple using HTTP requests and loading this into a webview, I’d like to follow a similar approach with UE4 content, AKA the mini games where a “shell” would hold the UE logic and engine, and the mini games load inside this component (you could also think of them as levels of a larger game for example)
One barrier you’re going to face is just the submission and verification aspect of the App Store which is a couple of weeks in of itself. You might also want to check if it goes against Apple’s Terms and Services since, in essence, the main game is really acting like a frontend/portal service. If I recall, I think as long as you don’t try to charge for the extra mini games, you might be okay, but you should look into that first.
I could see this working the way you are describing by utilizing the browser features incorporated within UE and mixing in a bit of web technologies. For example, you could use Meteor as the backend which has a featured called Hot Code Push ( http://info.meteor.com/blog/Apple-hot-code-push-mobile ), allowing you to push updates to the main app. That article also includes the clause in the T&S and how including it as WebKit content. But, your scenario might be breaking even that since the content is actually separated content (other UE “executable” games) and the main app/game is more of a portal.
If you treat the mini-games more like additional levels that conform to the main container game, you might be able to get away with it. Or, at least having like a character that is involved with all the mini-games might allow you to get it approved. Then, loading logic through a JSON file with Meteor’s hot code push and treating it as a resource loader with support from something like VaRest: