Would it be possible to put the latest code for the “large” C++ game templates (ShooterGame, VehicleGame, etc.) on GitHub, akin to the engine’s master branch?
I am building a game based on ShooterGame, and would love to have the latest fixes as they show up. Also, whenever there is a new Engine release, I have to download the full ShooterGame (over 1GB), when all I want is the source code. So it could save you some bandwidth (at least from me ).
Specifically, currently my main concern is that ShooterGameKing class which breaks the Hot Reload feature (causes a crash after you compile game code in editor). It is stated in ShooterGameKing.h that this game state management system is being integrated into the engine, has this already been done in the latest-preview github release?
We’d love to make the ‘master’ versions of the free sample games available to you guys. We’ve been discussing it but it still isn’t clear how we would deliver them yet. I could add a “Samples” repository on GitHub with the very latest code for all of our free samples, but we couldn’t fit the content for samples on there (1 GB soft limit on GitHub.) I know just having access to the code would be useful to you, but it is a bit strange to release code to a sample but not the content that matches that version. Going forward, we are really trying to break compilation compatibility with existing game projects and samples unless there is a really good reason to do so, and instead are favoring API deprecation strategies. But it will be a few months before we learn how to do this well. Love to hear your ideas and feedback though!
The new GameInstance system is not checked in to main yet (nor will it be in time for 4.3), so regardless of it being there you would not be seeing any updates.
I just asked about the mirroring of the sample game code to the master and the reason it isn’t being done is that unlike the engine content, the sample game content is far more prone to changing and because of githubs issues with binary content, having to keep the zip files up to date along with the code was deemed not really viable. I will make sure that your desire to see the live state of that code is noted though.
Edit: And that’s what I get for starting an answer hours ago and not refreshing before hitting post. Mike’s answer should be considered far more authoritative than mine
Why doesn’t Epic just use the same content distribution system the Launcher relies on to distribute the prerequisites zips and the latest content for the samples? Add a new section to the Launcher that gives access to the prerequisite zips for every official release, and the last X daily snapshots from the master branch (or whatever makes sense). Easy, right?
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