Packaging Can't Find External Engine Assets - Referencer 'None' - How and Why?

Development Platform & Builds
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After fixing numerous packing errors I have run into one that I can’t figure out.

My game was built off of 4.13.2 using the VR template. When I package for Windows 64-bit I am receiving strange referencing errors. Compiling and packing for 32-bit results in source-code library-linking related errors but I’m not worried about compiling for 32-bit yet. Anyways, when I package for 64-bit I get errors of the sort (abbreviated to remove timestamps)

    LogLinker:Warning: Error opening file '../../../Engine/Content/Tutorial/SubEditors/StaticMeshEditorTutorial.uasset'.
  LogLinker:Warning: Error opening file '../../../Engine/Content/Tutorial/SubEditors/StaticMeshEditorTutorial.uasset'.
   LogUObjectGlobals:Warning: Failed to find object 'Object /Engine/Tutorial/SubEditors/StaticMeshEditorTutorial.StaticMeshEditorTutorial_C'
    LogRedirectors:Warning: String Asset Reference '/Engine/Tutorial/SubEditors/StaticMeshEditorTutorial.StaticMeshEditorTutorial_C' was not found! (Referencer 'None')
    LogLinker:Warning: Error opening file '../../../Engine/Content/Tutorial/BlueprintTutorials/BlueprintMacroLibrariesEditorOverview.uasset'.
   LogLinker:Warning: Error opening file '../../../Engine/Content/Tutorial/BlueprintTutorials/BlueprintMacroLibrariesEditorOverview.uasset'.
  LogUObjectGlobals:Warning: Failed to find object 'Object /Engine/Tutorial/BlueprintTutorials/BlueprintMacroLibrariesEditorOverview.BlueprintMacroLibrariesEditorOverview_C'
   LogRedirectors:Warning: String Asset Reference '/Engine/Tutorial/BlueprintTutorials/BlueprintMacroLibrariesEditorOverview.BlueprintMacroLibrariesEditorOverview_C' was not found! (Referencer 'None')

and there are dozens more like these, all failing to find assets in …/…/…/Engine/Content/Tutorial

Later on in the cooking process, about 700 lines later (see the attached log for details), these errors (specifically failing to find the first failed asset, as it’s doing them in order) causes the entire build to fail with a useless stack trace yada yada. Anyways, my questions are:

•Why would my game be referencing these assets, even though I never migrated any content from the tutorial project these are probably from?

•How do I find those references and remove them?

•I have found that these assets exist in “… /Epic Games/4.13/Engine/Content/Tutorial” and judging from the file paths of those errors (where the path navigates up three folders and to the assets), these assets must be referenced from some deep subfolder within either the “FeaturePacks” “Samples” or “Templates” folders inside “Epic Games\4.13”. How can my project be using assets from there?

•Why does it say “Referencer ‘None’”? Can the packager not keep track of where references are made from?

Another possibly related error message in the log is

Invalidating cooked content because Engine:Core.System:Paths:../../../Engine/Content ini setting was out of date

This looks like it’s being referenced from the same location as the others. Why would my project be using a .ini that is so uniquely referenced? A global .ini sure, but not one uniquely referenced as is the case here.

A possibly related fatal error that I already fixed was

LogLinker:Warning: Error opening file '../../../Engine/Content/Maps/Entry.umap'

But I fixed it by going to the Config/DefaultEngine.ini in my project folder and making sure that none of the default maps referred to this “Entry.umap” . I had never seen this map before either and besides the .ini I don’t know where its reference came from.

Things I have already tried after researching similar issues:

•Right-clicking on the “Content” folder in the content browser to fix redirects

•Deleting the “Saved” and “Intermediate” folders inside my project folder

•Deleting the hidden UE4 folder “%USER%/AppData/Roaming/Unreal Engine”

Thanks in advance.

package_log.txt

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Hey Awesome24712,

Those assets are referenced in the Engine Content most likely, which you can see in your project by going to the Options dropdown on the bottom right of the Content Browser and selecting Show Engine Content. This should make those assets available. It’s possible that you accidentally deleted the directory for this content somewhere along the way.

What I recommend here is that you attempt to open a copy of your project in a later engine version and test it there as well to see if it is an engine issue and has been fixed.

Another thing I’d recommend is attempting to migrate your content over into a clean project and package that to see if you get the same errors.

Let me know if any of this helps and let me know the results of the test when you try a later version.

Thanks

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I migrated everything in the project to a new project, and attempting to cook that resulted in the same error. I was unable to convert the project for 4.15 because doing so requires administrator approval, which I do not have at the moment.

And with “Show Engine Content”, I have made the engine content visible. I looked in the Content/Tutorial folder and subfolders, and I found that the missing assets weren’t there, even though I verified that they exist on disk. How do I import the individual uassets from disk into the project ? Or for a better solution, how can I find and remove references to them so that I don’t have to include them in the project?

I may have to just wait and see if upgrading the project to 4.15 fixes it, but I’d still appreciate an alternate solution.

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Have you tried reinstalling the engine from scratch? Is it possible that you deleted these directories by mistake when deleting folders from your AppData?

I’d recommend installing the clean engine version at some point to see if that resolves your issue. Unfortunately, besides that, I’m not aware of another way to resolve the issue.

However, if the upgrade doesn’t resolve the issue (also try a clean, blank project to see if that works as well once you’ve installed 4.15) feel free to leave a comment to reopen this thread.

Have great day

5

I say again that the missing assets exist on disk—rather it seems that the engine content folder in the project either can’t find them or isn’t looking for them.

So I got approval to install 4.15, but then I found that I could not open any new, blank C++ projects at all. Apparently, as the error messages were telling me, I needed administrator-only write access to some directories in UE_4.15\Engine\Intermediate

At first I thought, okay, this is my first time compiling the new engine, so maybe it will compile some libraries into there and then I won’t have to mess with it again because I won’t be changing any of the 4.15 source code. I got administrative approval to open the 4.15 editor as administrator, and I successfully created, compiled, and opened a blank C++ project.

However, when I opened the engine afterward on my own, I was again unable to create a blank C++ project. Likewise, the VS solution for the one I had created failed to compile before it even ran the UnrealHeaderTool (The UE4 project compiled(up-to-date), but my own game’s project did not).

I tried opening a blank Blueprint project, and that succeeded, so it seems to only be a problem with compiling the C++ projects.

Why does compiling C++ for 4.15-based projects now require administrative approval? None of the other engines were like that. I can get administrative approval for installing new software and whatnot, but requiring me to run everything as administrator every time I reopen the project or create a new project isn’t realistic.

Here’s the precise error message I get when trying to create a new C++ project
link text

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As far as I’m aware, other users have reported issues when not having administrative privileges for several versions, so this shouldn’t be something new to 4.15. I’d recommend checking that directory listed in your error message to see if that file is marked as read-only for some reason, as this could also be a reason you are denied access to the file.

One thing I can definitely recommend trying while you’re trying to get the 4.15 issues sorted out is a full reinstall of 4.13 as well. This includes navigating to the AppData folder after you uninstall from the Launcher and making sure you open the Unreal Engine folder and just delete the 4.13 folder instead of removing the entire Unreal Engine folder. Then try to reinstall it from there.

Give those suggestions a try and let me know if any of that helps, if not we’ll definitely continue looking into further solutions for the issue so we can get the packaging up and running for you.

Thanks

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I’m glad you were able to resolve the issue. Thanks for posting the solution.

Have a great day

8

Upon examining the folders, I had found that my 4.15 installation had been installed in a different location than the other engine versions. Then when I re-installed the 4.13 version, the default directory was the same place as the 4.15 installation. I believe a recent epic games launcher update probably changed the default location.

Anyways, the administrator/permissions error turned out to be a permissions issue with the installation folder itself and is not reflective of the Unreal Engine.

To get past all of those issues, my coworker and I tried to convert the game to 4.15 and package it from there on his personal laptop where we have all the administrator access we want. The game successfully exported into a standalone executable and we were able to manually copy the exported game to one of our VR computers.

It worked. My issue is resolved now. Thanks so much for your help.
-Awesome