Today I found in experimental section of editor a feature called “game launcher”.
How does it work?
What will it do exactly?
On other engines launchers with ability to update/patch game are done manually by every developer… Talk about reinventing wheel over and over again…
All game eventually require updates, how about developing once and for all one solution everyone can use?
Perhaps a solution that works by storing files on a web server that supports resume, then with some md5 or other voodoo client downloads/resumes/repairs different/corrupted/missing files.
Game Launcher is another method for packaging your game. It’s a part of Unreal Frontend.
option in Experimental section enables Game Launcher UI in Editor, which you can then access via Window > Unreal Frontend. It is normally only available in UFE, because it works for any project and not just currently loaded project, and this can be confusing to new users. That’s why it’s currently in Experimental section. If someone wants it available in Editor, they can turn it on with that checkbox, but it’s not enabled by default because conceptually it doesn’t quite fit. Generally recommended approach for launching games from editor is PIE or Launch in toolbar.
What you’re looking for is something developers are looking into and may eventually provide as part of Unreal Launcher. overlapping terminology can be confusing so all of these may go by different names or may not be available in future.
Thank you , it makes sense now.
Perhaps calling this game executer or game starter could avoid confusion with usual ‘game launcher’ everyone is used to see in games.
On a side note knowing that you guys are considering a game updater/launcher is a big hurrah! It looks like engine providers are scared to provide a solution out of box for everyone which is weird really. Knowing in depth data structure of games build with engine allows good patching methods for small memory footprints so I’m pretty sure nobody could do something better than Epic on that matter.
