Load external game package inside Unreal Engine

Hi All,

I have been racking my brain and searching endless amounts of forums for several weeks and still have no joy.

Could anyone please advise on how I would go about creating an ‘Interface’ in Unreal Engine that enables the user to load external game packages instead of levels?

i.e. I would like to create something similar to the Oculus / Steam VR library, where the user is able to display, point and load a game from a library

I have zero experience with C++, is this possible with blueprint scripting alone? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

My initial guess on this would be a big No, you won’t be able to achieve this with blueprints alone. Build the library (user interface, click events etc.) you can do with Blueprints alone for sure, however, to load an external executable you will need to somehow perform a system call, and that is where you will need C++, at least that is the way I see you doing this.

The other aspect of this that I can think of is how are you going to read the information required to build your launcher? I am thinking in terms of thumbnails, names, text, executable path, and any other relevant information you might need to display and launch a game. Do you have this information available? Do you need to scan the filesystem and extract this information from executables yourself? If if you have this information already, yes you can use blueprints, but you still need a way to import the data.

Hey Mcleary,

Thanks for your reply and detailed answer - yeah I was afraid of that. With regards to the information that is being read, I want the user interface to be able to select and load games (locally) that I have already built and packaged in Unreal Engine. Therefore would have all the thumbnails, relevant path information etc.

My long-term goal would be to develop an interface that calls games from a secured server, but I would be more than happy to get it working locally first.

Would you please be able to point me in the direction of any C++ resources that offer similar functionality?

Cheers!

Before pointing you to C++ resources I would like to know if you have any experience with programming. Fortunately, UE4 does not use any highly advanced template metaprogramming techniques in the gameplay related code. But it would be good to know if you know about basic C++ and object-oriented programming.