I’m very new to Unreal, and I’d love to get started learning, but this issue has been very frustrating. I have a project that I’ve downloaded to use along with a Udemy course, but I can’t actually do anything with it. I spent all of yesterday trying to find out how to get around this and no existing answer solves the problem. I have no way of creating the necessary visual studio files for an Unreal Project. Any advice at all would be appreciated, though I can confidently say at this point that if it’s any solution that can be found through a Google search, I’ve already tried it.
Did you read this page…
When Visual Studio is installed, you can right click on the “.uproject” file of yourproject to generate visual studio files.
Which OS are you attempting to do this on? One of the annoying things I’ve found with UE4 is the lack of useful error information or direction. There are config files all over creation, but trying to find just what you’re needing is like telling a 5 year old to sit down after they downed candy.
If you’ve installed VS2017 and installed UE4 launcher from the VS Installer.
- Attempt to see which engine they are using and install it. This is the best approach for new users.
- To avoid having to immediately edit configuration files, create an empty Blueprint project and let it open.
- Once BP Project has opened, go to Editor Preferences -> Sources and set it to Visual Studio 2017. This may differ in older versions, but should be there for 4.18-Current.
- Click Set as Default and okay through the write errors. You shouldn’t have to save anything, and can safely close out of the project.
- Go to where you’ve downloaded the project you’re wanting to open and look for the $projectname.uproject file and right click on it. If UE4 has registered one or more engines properly, there should be 3 options available. You’ll want to use the Generate Visual Studio Project Files option. If an intermediate folder exists, you’ll want to remove it first just to ensure it generates a new one.
- Once it has completed you can either open the sln in VS2017 or double click the uproject file. It should say you’re missing modules and needs to be built. If you’re lucky, it will. If not, there could be other issues depending on what cryptic message it gives you. Thank you M$.
If you’re on Windows 10 (I forget which version it starts with but think it’s 1803), you will need to check for case sensitive filesystems or disable. It took over a year before I realized this was what was making it to where I could not build projects. Folders past 1 depth that are cased do not build, or did not. I’m literally fighting that issue at this very moment, again. I usually make a blank C++ project to see if it builds. If not, I open an admin powershell and run
Get-ChildItem $PathToProject -Directory -Recurse | % {fsutil file SetCaseSensitiveInfo $_.FullName disable}
I don’t believe this is enabled unless you have the Linux Subsystem enabled, though with Microsoft you can never be too sure what dumb thing they are going to do next.
Hopefully that gets you going.