UnrealBuildTool without admin rights

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hi,

This is on a Windows 10 machine where the administrator user has installed the Launcher and the latest version of a number of versions of the engine (4.15, 4.16, 4.17). Then, I login with a non-admin user. Visual Studio 2015 is installed and works fine.

With this setup, blueprints sample projects work fine. However, if I try to create a C++ sample project, it immediately fails, showing exactly the same error as if I try to run the UnrealBuildTool from the command line even without arguments:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\4.16\Engine\Binaries\DotNET\UnrealBuildTool.exe"
UnrealBuildTool Exception: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\4.16\Engine\Saved\UnrealBuildTool' is denied.
   at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
   at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectory(String fullPath, String path, Object dirSecurityObj, Boolean checkHost)
   at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectoryHelper(String path, Boolean checkHost)
   at UnrealBuildTool.DirectoryReference.CreateDirectory(DirectoryReference Location)
   at UnrealBuildTool.XmlConfig.CreateDefaultConfigFile(FileReference Location)
   at UnrealBuildTool.XmlConfig.FindInputFiles()
   at UnrealBuildTool.XmlConfig.ReadConfigFiles()
   at UnrealBuildTool.UnrealBuildTool.GuardedMain(String[] Arguments)
   at UnrealBuildTool.UnrealBuildTool.Main(String[] Arguments)

I have looked at the freshly installed versions of the engine, and NONE have such an Engine\Saved folder. The UBT setup help page at

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/UnrealBuildSystem/Configuration/index.html

says that UnrealBuildTool reads settings from XML configuration files in the following locations:

  • Engine/Saved/UnrealBuildTool/BuildConfiguration.xml
  • User Folder/AppData/Roaming/Unreal Engine/UnrealBuildTool/BuildConfiguration.xml
  • My Documents/Unreal Engine/UnrealBuildTool/BuildConfiguration.xml

If the installation does not create that folder, who does? Is it necessary for admin user to run UBT manually before non-admins can use it (or do C++ projects) at all?

Thanks