I recently made some Group Policy changes to my Windows domain network, where I redirected many of the user folders back on to a network drive. For the purposes of this post, I redirected my Documents folder for every user, and every user keeps their local UE4 project file in their Documents folder. This basically puts their working project directory onto the server so I can include it in my daily backups. The project directory is source controlled via Perforce.
The folder structure after this GPO was applied changed from:
C:\Users\%username%\Documents\Unreal Projects\%projectname%
to a shared network drive located at
//-DC/User/%username%/Documents/Unreal Projects/%projectname%
Which is then added via Group Policy to each user as a mapped drive:
S:\Documents\Unreal Projects\%projectname%
where “S:” is the name of a shared SSD on our server, specifically for user files.
After making this change, I simply updated the workspace path in P4V with the mapped drive path, and everything is working as intended.
However, when I open the Epic Launcher, my library tab claims that I have two separate projects: one in the “S:” mapped drive where it should be, and another in it’s physical shared network path of “//-DC/User//…”
While these are both technically the same directory accessible via two different paths, it seems as though Unreal picks it up as two separate projects. If I open the project using the mapped drive path (“S:”) then everything works correctly. If I open the project using the physical network path, Unreal still opens and appears to work correctly, but without a Perforce connection as P4V complains that the project is not mapped to the directory (which I guess is technically true, as Perforce is looking for “S:” and not “//-DC/User/…”, even though they’re technically the same path).
I realize this isn’t a situation most people will come across, and it’s got an easy workaround by simply ignoring the network path and only using the project directed at “S:”, but it’s definitely strange behavior that I figured I’d report.
Any suggestions? I’ve considered going back through my GPOs to see if there’s a way to restrict access to the shared network path, and somehow force traffic to only ever look for the mapped drive… but I’m not sure it’s worth the time or effort to figure out.