Now, I understand the engine is getting bigger. But… I feel like maybe this has gone under the radar for far too long…
7GB to 20GB for just debug symbols
Can anything be done before Debug Symbols are 100GB?
3 engine versions later…
20GB to 24GB for Debug Symbols
7.73GB to 12.46GB for Core components
Sure we don’t really need starter or templates…but it’s basically 16GB to 45GB in 14 versions.
I guess we’ll be seeing 100GB **Launcher **builds soon enough.
Someone ping me in 3 or so versions if you can remember.
@VictorLerp @Amanda.Schade If you could just ping the appropriate folks. Not everyone wants to download 100GB Launcher Engine Version builds in the future.
There are clearly parts that some folks are just never going to use.
Possible Idea (not sure how feasible) Allow us to download what we need as we need it. Especially the debug symbols. Example. If no one is going to ever bother with VR. They uncheck the XR checkbox, launcher build does not have XR plugins at all, or symbols for them.
Again, this could be a pipedream, but could be interesting to get a real conversation going at HQ.
Thanks.
For what’s it worth. The mainstream isn’t retrenching from VR. It was never mainstream and XR games made $6.3 billion last year.
And I see a lot of different opinions from yours 
https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/09/c…o-automobiles/
Of course, it should be always an optional “component” to download… Also, Datasmith should be optional… It seems like Epic forgets to update “component” selection while adding new stuff…
Fortunately, they actively work on the better separation of the engine, but this is a huge undertaking. They started from reorganizing engine architecture to move platforms (i.e. Playstation, HTML5) to an entirely separate folder. Hopefully, they’d do the same with mobile platforms. And then they could extend on excluding “sub-platforms” like XR.
And this would be even more useful for the source builds. This is seriously annoying when you have to learn how to exclude mobile content from your build 
Seriously? The developed world doesn’t have problems with downloading 50 GB to play a single game or watching Netflix (which switched from renting DVDs to streaming because of faster internet) or constantly streaming Spotify music.
20 GB for the flexible indie-to-AAA engine + 20 GB for optional symbols? Is it that big nowadays? It could be a bit smaller, but the general codebase grow and it won’t as small as UE 4.0
Yes, fast internet IS abundant no one has denied or will deny that fact, but which is also a sad fact many must deal with,is ridiculous prices for said internet that while on its own may( for a few , who cares) may be a non issue, for many, I’m sure is a big budget decision for many of us, regardless that our voices may be ignored.
Eveything I look at on list as noted by Victor I get a tad of a sad face over ,because not being rich, or necessarily comfortable but missing no inspiration or capabilities , makes the equation much more difficult. Also of concern sadly for some, is also ssd/hdd space( some may say why BOTHER with game dev then wa wa,), the former which everyone know is nearly mandatory for game dev ease of work, and is why I must pass on many things, tho my willingness to work hard TO that end isn’t damaged whatsoever. One mans junk…another’s pocket.
Oh and btw, I rarely have problems with Netflix,but lets not get started on Xbox One S > Youtube app, which frequently has lag issues, maybe apples -oranges but hey there again, availability of one persons funds vs speed compared to another.
Personally I’m overjoyed to be part of the ‘process’, rough spots and all, but in no way does it mean things as are, aren’t problematic .
I don’t know enough about those installation packages to give input on it, basically when I read ‘symbols’ I think of icon pack.
However somewhat related are the Quixel Megascan packs from the market. The QM packs are all defaulted to 8K, yet most people probably do not use above 2K, and installing a pack each with +20GB in filesize, and download included is imho bloating. Thus, an option to select target texture size should be optional, like they implemented it through the QM plugin. This would be a great feature for all content packs, since it would considerably reduce pack related tasks for texture optimizations.
How? Did you invent a way to fully debug optimized binaries which entire point to be stripped away from heavy debugging stuff?
Microsoft, Autodesk, and Adobe don’t provide source code or any way to debug their products for end-users. All you get from Windows is one of the thousands of error codes
That being said, UE4 is a very stable engine, I don’t see a reason for a drama. And it’s just 23 GB to download few times a year.
I don’t develop for VR, AR or mobile at all yet there are plugins that gets loaded on the editor for those slowing down the editor start up which is crucial since you need to reopen it every time you change header files. This is pretty important control to have.
Firstly, the VR/XR was just an example of something that could be compartmentalized out (especially since I am actually a VR Dev, but know others aren’t). Others like Datasmith (I’d never use) is another thing. UE4 is becoming less of a Game Engine and more of a “DoEverythingYouCouldPossiblyThinkOfDoing Engine”, which is good, don’t think I don’t think it’s good. But I feel IMHO that it would be nice to have better packages available, split up by “large disciplines” and even a “DoEverything Package”
GameDev
Enterprise
VR (which admittedly can be under Enterpise at times)
Etc.
These are just random examples. Just wanted to restart the conversation again.
Hey all - thanks for the feedback and input. We’re passing this along to see what options we may be able to provide.
The Plugins are the biggest chunk in the packages (> 10GB). If we could opt-in for them or download them from the marketplace instead. that would be great!
I have to strongly agree with this, having a more cloud based approach for plugins and platform support makes sense! Having the plugins on the marketplace means those developers working on those plugins can release updates independent of engine releases. Templates which rely on plugins should perhaps be bundled with those plugins rather than with the core engine, have some sort of prerequisite check in the launcher when you want to use a template. Doing it this way means you can download just the template and plugins you need instead of them all, heaps of times over, for every engine even if you only use one or two of them.
It seems kinda odd to have the Editor the starting point and not the Launcher, the Launcher already manages quite a lot in regards to UE4 project so that also makes sense to me, then rather than doing add to project individually in vault you can use the wizard on the Launcher end to add all the packages you want when you create a new project 
10GB given not everyone ( I feel the pain w/256gb ssd ) has huge amounts of space, or necessarily the bandwidth seems a tad non thought out, thus +! on strongly agree with this!
I agree all plugins that can be decoupled from the core engine should be pushed to Unreal Marketplace.
But there’s a lot of hardcoded things in engine and build tool that assume they are installed and activated (these things must be removed and template C++ projects must be changed).
Sorry to bump this old thread, but there seems to be a easy solution to at least the debug symbols here, which is to have Epic maintain/host a symbol server. It’s a super easy thing to set up, and it would effectively be transparent to users as it downloads the symbols on demand.
Adding more layers of complexity and dependency on top of a severe problem as a bandaid patch that could likely cause even more issues on top of it all is an absolutely terrible idea.
Would be really cool to have useless specialized things such as VR, AR, iOS, Virtual Production, etc. deleted moved away to separate plugins that can be optionally installed.