packaging a standalone .exe file like twinmotion does

aris777 · November 16, 2019, 12:58am

Hi,
I am a designer that works almost exclusively with a specific offshore company. (I design floating houses)
Up to now, apart from drawings, I routinely sent them video presentations of new designs but have recently started experimenting with unreal engine.
I quickly came to the level of creating convincing archviz games (or presentations) but I only have one problem:
Unreal packages the game as a folder with an .exe file and three subfolders.
That is a problem for me for two reasons: the guys in said company are not exactly IT gurus and every time it’s a hassle explaining to them that they should extract the files in the same directory etc.moreover, they want to send the presentation to clients who in turn are often e-illiterate as well.
What I need is a single file that can run the game without needing other folders.
I was hoping that there is a way to create a self extracting file or -somehow- embed the folders in the .exe file

any suggestions? this would really help!!!

IslandPlaya · November 16, 2019, 6:37am

A simple solution is to create a standalone self-extracting .exe using WinRar. Compress your packaged UE4 folder to an archive as normal then go to Tools->Convert archive to SFX
Hope this helps.

Daniele_Barone · November 16, 2019, 9:35pm

very interesting this solution, but I did not understand the steps.

once the project is cooked, and compressed with winrar

where should i go? in winrar I can’t find any “tools” tab

I also have problems each time explaining how to start the project.

thank you so much

IslandPlaya · November 17, 2019, 6:20am

Perhaps only the registered version of WinRar has this option? Idk.
If you have this option then you will also get Advanced SFX options where you can make your presentation.exe autorun after extraction…

There are other options in this dialog you may find useful. I think you will be able to set things up to do what you want.

Daniele_Barone · November 17, 2019, 9:40am

Thanks a lot!
Yes there are these options, and I create the .rar file with the self-extractor and leave after the first pass.

But in the second step I go to put the name of the .exe file that it has to extract on “run after mining” and it makes me dezippare only the folder and the program to open it again remains open.

Definitely something wrong.

Thanks again for the help, this is a very useful thing if I can do it, it saves me a lot of explanations.

IslandPlaya · November 17, 2019, 9:55am

You could try ESEMPIO_GIOIELLO\ESEMPIO_GIOIELLO.exe or even ESEMPIO_GIOIELLO\ESEMPIO_GIOIELLO\ESEMPIO_GIOIELLO.exe to run after extraction. It appears you may have nested folders in the archive and it needs the correct relative path I presume.
Good luck, glad to help.

IslandPlaya · November 17, 2019, 10:12am

These options will make updating an existing install function better.

You can customise the install dialog here make it look professional.

Daniele_Barone · November 17, 2019, 5:18pm

nothing, I tried both paths and at the end of the extraction does not automatically start the.exe.

IslandPlaya · November 18, 2019, 7:10am

I tried packaging a test project and then compressing to a SFX. I did this in one pass by setting the SFX options on creation of the archive. I set the program to run with the correct path.
It works! My UE executable runs after extraction.
Try opening your created .exe in WinRar… Mine looks like the below.

Daniele_Barone · November 18, 2019, 11:41am

Wonderful! it works! I took another project and I set the path correctly.
First I was wrong and put the path.
Thank you very much again, it seems a minor thing but it saves you a lot of explanations.