macOS New Project C++ no starter content showing

Hey all. I am experiencing some issues with getting starter content to load with new C++ projects running UE4 4.16.1 on macOS. I have read some of the other threads that seem relevant, but none of them appear to solve the problem I am experiencing; the solutions they contain do nothing for me, or don’t exactly apply to my environment. This is going to be a long post because I am going to provide as much diagnostic data as I have captured.

Here are some of the other threads I have reviewed hoping to find an answer:

My Environment
I am using an iMac 5K w/4.0GHz proc, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD, and macOS Sierra. I have been following a Udemy course on Unreal Development and have been interpolating the instructions and comments the instructor makes in the video (they are focused on Windows) to their macOS equivalents as needed. I am very familiar with both Windows and macOS, so I am pretty comfortable with making those translations.

Problem Origin and Summary
In watching the Section 03 / Lecture 57 video, the instructor talks about the size of the BuildingEscape project folder while looking at it (on a Windows system) using TreeSize Free. He shows how, just after creating the project, it’s already taking up a good chunk of disk space (this is about at time index 4:10 in the video) due to the Unreal-derived files. Then, after compiling the project in Visual Studio, he describes how it gets even larger now that Visual Studio adds its own derived files (at about time index 4:34). His point is that when we decide what we need to put under source control, we can ignore much or all of the “derived” files and just source control our content.

When I first created the BuildingEscape project using the same steps the instructor used, I did a screen cap of the folder structure in Finder (TreeSize Free is Windows only), but I did not “Get Info” on the folders to check size. When he compiled the project in Visual Studio, I compiled mine in Xcode. It was then that I realized that I did not perform that Get Info of the BuildEscape folder (or any of the sub-folders) to see how much larger it grew after Xcode compiled the project. So I decided to set about deleting the project and re-creating it so I could do that folder-size capture experiment.

What I did
When I started S03 L57 video the first time, I followed along with the instructor’s instructions and everything looked as it was supposed to.

  1. Launched UE 4.16.1,
  2. Clicked on the new project tab
  3. Clicked on the C++ tab
  4. Clicked on Basic Code icon
  5. Selected With Starter Content
  6. Created a folder inside my Unreal Projects folder (I named mine Section_03) from Finder
  7. Named the project BuildingEscape
  8. Clicked Create Project.

Just like in the video, it took some time for the UE editor to set up/build the initial starting point for the project. When it was done the first time, everything looked the same on my screen as it did in the video: I saw the two chairs, the table, the lamp/sculpture on the table, the floor, and the blue sky with clouds lighting. When I “ran” the project, I could use the WASD keys to move around, mouse to turn and rotate, everything worked just fine as I would expect.

This is the point where I realized I hadn’t captured the folder size, so I wanted to throw this project away and create a new one so I could do the before and after Get Info folder size check. I did the following:

A) Quit the UE4 editor
B) Quit Xcode
C) Opened the Epic Games Launcher (it was still open but minimized the moment I launched the Unreal Engine).
D) Saw the “BuildingEscape” project in my Library under My Projects
E) Right-clicked on the BuildingEscape project, selected Delete
F) I was then asked whether I wanted to delete content data or do not remove. I selected delete content data. The way the dialog was worded, it sounded like it was deleting the content data from just my proejct, not from the default libraries of Unreal Engine.
G) The project was gone.
H) I confirmed (through Finder) that the BuildingEscape folder under the Section_03 folder was in fact gone.
I) Just for grins, I emptied my trash bin as well.

I closed the Epic Games Launcher, then reopened it and followed the exact same instructions again (starting from #1). In doing so, however, when all was said and done, what I received was an all-black scene. No furniture, nothing runnable, and running it anyway resulted in nothing. I can see the rest of the UE editor window, the icons, the menus, the ribbons, the palettes, etc., just plain blackness in the scene area. Let me qualify that further: blackness in the scene area, but I could still see the XYZ pointer in the lower left corner, the controls in the upper left and upper right corner of the scene area, and I could use the mousewheel to zoom in and out and see the thin white line grid change in scale as I did so. It was a black, unlit scene, no sky, no floor, no objects, but it was not as if it was frozen/dead. Just entirely empty.

When I look in the “content” folder (which, back at 4:10 in the video shows it having at least 621MB of content) on Finder, it now shows 0 bytes on my Mac. Now I would understand it if there were some variance between the two for Windows/macOS (621MB for Windows, 800MB or 400MB for macOS, depending on any number of factors), but 0? Something is wrong here.

I tried a few variations on the create process above as well, each time quitting the UE Editor and Xcode, making sure the project was deleted (through the Epic Games Launcher), re-creating the project again (with the variations below) and every time winding up with that black scene:

  • Changed the Folder name to 03_BuildingEscape (as opposed to my original Section_03).
  • Changed the Project name to BuildEsc.
  • Tried deselecting and re-selecting With Starter Content just to see if that button/control was in a stuck state (showing one state but actually reflecting the other).
  • Tried creating the project with starter content, getting the black scene, exiting the UE Editor and Xcode, then going back to the launcher and just trying to open the project directly. Still black scene. I did, however, notice a couple of other behaviors while doing this:
    o On a Mac, when creating/opening a project for the first time, when Xcode loads, the UE editor opens afterwards. If you go back to the Xcode window, you will see it doing something in its upper status area. Specifically, it says “Indexing | Processing Files” while the UE window is still and the scene is black.
    o On a Mac, when you go back into an existing project directly from your My Projects in your Library, only the UE Editor window opens; Xcode is not opened automatically. I wonder if this is intentional or not.

Then I tried one variation that worked:
From the Epic Games Launcher, I launched the UE Editor.
Creating the same project (New Project, C++, Basic Code, NO starter content, named BuildingEscape)
When the editor opened and the project had been setup, compiled, and the editor finally opened, that project type did work. I saw the floor, the scene has a light background, and when run, I could keyboard and mouse move around as I would expect.

Since that variation worked, I decided to give the starter content another try, so I deleted that No Starter Content project and re-created the project WITH starter content. That brought me back to the black, empty, unlit scene.

Since the with starter content project worked the first time but not subsequent times, I wanted to see if the same thing would happen with a no-starter-content project, so I then tried to re-create that no-starter project. Interestingly, the no-starter-content project worked the second and subsequent times whereas the with-starter-content project did not. So there appeared to be something specifically wrong with the C++ Basic Code With Starter Content project.

I decided to try something else. I built yet another new project: this time a New Project > C++ > Flying project WITH starter content named BuildingEscape. This seemed to work just fine. Standard flying starter project, works as expected when run. All good. Just as a favor to Xcode, I waited until it showed that it had finished “Indexing” before quitting either the UE Editor or Xcode.

Now to go back to the Basic Code with starter project again to see if doing an entirely different kind of project had any effect. No different, still a black scene. I decided to try one last thing: uninstall the Unreal Engine and delete Epic Games Launcher (probably didn’t need to kill off the launcher, but why not?), empty the trash, reinstall the launcher, let it update, re-download and install the Unreal Engine, and try it again. Epic Games launcher is in the main Applications folder, but the Unreal Engine is in the Users/Shared/Epic Games folder. I don’t think I missed any parts, but if I did, someone can let me know that.

After doing all of that, no change; still a black scene for that combination of New Project > C++ > Basic Code > With Starter Content.

I also tried New Project > Blueprint > Blank with Starter Content, and that also brought me to a black scene.

So, in summary:
C++ Basic Code with NO starter content works
C++ Basic Code with starter content DOES NOT work
Blueprint Blank with NO starter content works.
Blueprint Blank with starter content DOES NOT work
Flying with starter content works
(I did not test Flying with NO starter content, as I did not see the point of that variation)

So the problem appears to be SPECIFICALLY related to the combination of any basic/blank project WITH starter content. The Folder doesn’t seem to matter, the Name of the project doesn’t seem to matter. Other projects WITH starter content work, and basic/blank with NO starter content work. It is strictly that one combination that is non-functional.

UPDATE
After all that, and before posting this message, I tried one last thing. I set up a project named BuildingEscape that was a C++ > First Person With Starter Content, and that project worked. This time, I decided to create a second project without deleting that other project. So I created a C++ > Basic Code with Starter Content and called it Test2. This time, it worked: I could see the chairs, table, sculpture, floor, and sky just like the first time. So even though earlier, with ZERO other Section_03 projects, I created BuildEsc and that one DID NOT work, this time, with a first project already in existence and then building a Basic Code with starter content as a second project, that did work.

Time for one more experiment. I really want the name of this project to match the one that the instructor is demonstrating, so I am going to delete both projects, create Test2 as the First Person project and then create BuildingEscape as the Basic Code with starter content project. Let’s see if that works.

Interesting results: When I created Test2 as the First Person project with starter content, it DID NOT open Xcode, but the project did open properly as expected in the Unreal Editor, with content and a sky and everything I saw previously. When I created BuildingEscape as the Basic Code with starter content, I again received a black scene but that time Xcode did open.

There seems to be some “memory” of what projects were opened and what their “last known state” is, but somehow it’s not being cleared properly when projects are deleted. Long story short, I am going to have to continue the “tutorial” on my Windows system and leave the Mac for now, which is unfortunate and disconcerting.

Any feedback or assistance with this would be appreciated.

Well, it seems I have a workaround solution. My son actually managed to figure this out and show me the pieces I needed to get this working correctly.

As I have described above, the problem seems to center around creating a “new” project with a previously-used name – even if you deleted that previous version of the project through the Epic Games launcher library tab. As a reminder, I am using this on a Mac, not on a Windows system.

To recap:

  1. Create BuildingEscape (new C++ Basic Project with Starter Content)
  2. Unreal Editor sets up and compiles a lot of files, then eventually displays the two chairs, the table, the sculpture, a floor, and a sky sphere.
  3. Close the Unreal Editor, go back to the Epic Games Launcher, delete the BuildingEscape project.
  4. Launch the Unreal Editor again, create the same project with the same name again.
  5. Unreal Editor does what looks to be mostly the same work, then displays an entirely blank, dark project.

I also tried to create a new project named BE and confirms that it opens and displays correctly (shows the Starter Content: chairs, table, sculpture, floor, sky) and compiles correctly. Then I tried to clone the BE project to a BuildingEscape project (I deleted the old, non-functional one). While that did give me the default starter content scene, the BuildingEscape project was uncompilable because UE, when cloning projects, does not rename the C++ files behind the scenes, so the BuildingEscape project had a lot of source code with BE references which ultimately would not compile (wrong name).

The solution:

  1. Deleted the non-working, correct-displaying BuildingEscape project and re-created a new one again (blank, dark).
  2. After having that blank, dark project opened, minimize the Unreal Editor window.
  3. Opened Finder and browse to the directory where your project files are.
  4. Opened the BE folder (the one that works) and opened the Content folder within it.
  5. Copied the StarterContent folder from the BE/Content folder to the BuildingEscape/Content folder.
  6. Restored the Unreal Editor window and noted that the StarterContent folder now shows up in the Content Browser pane.
  7. In the Content Browser pane, I opened the StarterContent folder, then opened the Maps folder, then selected the Minimal_Default map.

As soon as I did that, the screen displayed the same, correct starter content (two chairs, table, etc.). I was also able to build and compile successfully again.

So that is the workaround. Sort of sad that it has to be that way at all, but better to have a workaround than to not have one at all.

Final note: this workaround works the same for 4.16.1, 4.16.2, 4.16.3, and 4.17.0.

you may delete the folder “[ PREVIOUSLY USED NAME ]Editor” in “~/Library/Preferences/Unreal Engine/” to resolve the issue.