Short situation description: We are using Unreal 4.24 to develop a marketing video for a project, but everything is in a closed lab where there is no internet access and a host of security protocols. We built Unreal from the source code and copied it onto a machine, as well as installing the Epic Games Launcher to get all of the DLLs. The PC will never be connected to the internet again, and getting any error logs outside is a whole process. The Epic Launcher is installed, but it won’t open because it wants to check for updates and cannot.
The problem: When I attempt to build lighting, Unreal hangs and stops responding at “Starting Up Swarm Connection: 100%”. It never completes no matter how long I leave it. The lighting is not built. This happens even with an empty scene and the starter content scene. It doesn’t crash or anything particularly helpful. I have not found any other problems with the Editor. I can even render a video, but it still has the “Preview” shadow in the lighting
Tested:
Took the version of Unreal that we built, installed it onto another work PC that is connected to the internet, and tested it. The lighting build worked.
Disconnected that PC from the internet and built lighting. Still worked.
Disconnected the PC in the lab from the lab network (thought that the network might be the problem). Still didn’t work
Swarm did generate a log file, but I categorically cannot bring that out and post publicly. If I can contact support I can email it to them once it’s been cleared but in the meantime, I remember two things from the file.
It complained about “Windows FIPS Validation” and that the Swarm system failed to make a TCP connection and tried to make an ICP connection.
I’m looking for suggestions for ways to debug and at least identify the issue. We have a tight deadline coming up so if I can’t fix this soon we will need to switch to an animation-only software like Maya or something (which I don’t want to do).