Tip:
Low-tech alternative to ^^ that ^^… But it might help someone in similar circumstances. For example, devs who don’t have time to deal with all the security aspects of remote access, or devs who are traveling right now and can’t guarantee access will work at the destination, or for devs who are quarantined without net access etc.
Had a trip coming up… But with all the corona-mania madness, I didn’t want to bring production gear in case of being trapped in places with no security (stuck in quarantine in a rundown hostel etc). So I tried to source a 2nd-hand cheap PC…
I got hold of a refurbished low-spec laptop, normally only good for web-browsing (dual boot Win7 / Ubuntu). But I tried installing UE4.18 on there anyway, along with a couple of projects just to see, and voila it worked. The stability of 4.18 seems to be key here… In one test, I got 7 FPS versus 40+ FPS on a production rig, but it works!
Conclusions:
Hardware is 64-bit, but otherwise specs are way below minimums: I5 / Intel graphics / 8GB Ram / 128GB SSD (of which only 40GB was available). Obviously working with source is out and the editor UX isn’t great (single small screen). But if you can get by working mostly in Blueprints / Level editor / Material editor, then its passable. Cost is a 10th of the price of a production rig, so if anything happens to it - no tears! So if remote access is looking uncertain, maybe a low spec laptop will get you through. Who knew UE4 would even run…
BTW:
- Did not copy over any DDC, just let UE4 on the laptop recreate it.
- Did not do a local install to the PC. Just copied the engine folder.
- Some dependent DLL’s were missing (some Microsoft run-times).
- Copied over most MSvc*dlls in system32 / wow64 (Sys-Internals).