Why do I have to cook everything again after restart the editor?

(I don’t know if this is the correct section for this post, feel free to move (and answer :p) if necessary.)

I’m working with console development, so I need to use the “Launch” button to run my game in the console many times.

While the editor is open there is no problem: the first time the process will take some time to cook the assets, build and then deploy the game. After that, the next time will be very quick, because only the modified assets will be cooked again.

The problem is: everytime I restart the editor, everything is cooked again with no reason, and it takes a long time to complete.

The log shows the following messages, that may be related with the issue:

  1. LogCook: Display: Creating asset registry
  2. LogCook: Display: Cooked content cleared for platform AllDesktop
  3. LogCook: Display: Unable to read previous cook inisettings for platform AllDesktop invalidating cook

I have to restart the editor many times because I’m working with optimizations, so sometimes I modify an asset for tests purposes and I need to discard the changes (using GIT). Or even simple code modifications (I always restart the editor after compile C++ code).

Is there any way to prevent it to happen?

Make sure you have Iterative Cooking enabled in your launch settings.

Edit: first I though it was fixed, but it was a false alarm. Checking the iterative cooking enabled didn’t make any difference.

No one? So, is it expected behavior?

Well, I think I will have to live with that…

Project Settings -> Packaging -> Full Rebuild must be unchecked !

But I’m not packing right now… and it doesn’t make sense, since it is not a issue that happens everytime I launch the game, it “only” happens after restart the editor.

I was not developing anything that needed to launch the game in the past few monts, but I am now and this issue is a huge waste of time for me. Imagine have to wait 30-60 minutes each time you made a minor change in the game (I don’t need to restart the editor each time I made a minor change in a C++ code theoretically, but we know that this is not entirely true in reality). UE4 is becoming unusable for console development for me!

Anyone knows if there is something I should do to configure the project to not cook everything again without any need for that? (Also, I didn’t mention before, but I’m using UE4.18).

I am getting the same issue with those same error messages, Marcio did you find a solution? Are you using any editor plug ins?

Any news about cooking every time after restart ?

UATHelper: Packaging (Windows (64-bit)): LogCook: Display: Creating asset registry
UATHelper: Packaging (Windows (64-bit)): LogCook: Display: Discovering localized assets
UATHelper: Packaging (Windows (64-bit)): LogCook: Display: Cooked content cleared for platform WindowsNoEditor
UATHelper: Packaging (Windows (64-bit)): LogCook: Display: Unable to read previous cook inisettings for platform WindowsNoEditor invalidating cook
UATHelper: Packaging (Windows (64-bit)): LogCook: Display: Sandbox cleanup took 15.947 seconds for platforms WindowsNoEditor iterative false

Same here. Tryied almost every “packaging” and “cooker” settings but it always clear previous cooked content are restart from zero each time

And 4.25 Project Settings -> Cooking -> Ignore Ini Settings Out of Date for Iteration = False, appears to resolve the problem.

I’m still living with this issue without any clue on how to fix that. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions worked.

I managed to prevent this by adding the following to Config/DefaultEngine.ini:

 [/Script/UnrealEd.CookerSettings]
bIgnoreScriptPackagesOutOfDateForIteration=False

Which changes the log messages to this:

LogCook: Display: Unable to read previous cook inisettings for platform WindowsNoEditor invalidating cook
LogCook: Display: Inisettings were out of date for platform WindowsNoEditor but we are going with it anyway because IgnoreIniSettingsOutOfDate is set