{"id":1789,"date":"2017-02-11T17:34:27","date_gmt":"2017-02-11T16:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mi.hdm-stuttgart.de\/?p=1789"},"modified":"2023-06-09T14:20:35","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T12:20:35","slug":"uat-automation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mi.hdm-stuttgart.de\/index.php\/2017\/02\/11\/uat-automation\/","title":{"rendered":"Automate deployment with the Unreal Engine using the Unreal Automation Tool (UAT)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Unreal Engine 4 from Epic Games is a powerful tool to create any type of game or even application, however the implemented\u00a0automation and build system is barely documented, if at all. This post will show the necessary steps to\u00a0build, cook and package a game using the Unreal Automation Tool (UAT) \u00a0and gives a brief overview over the somewhat hidden tools.<\/p>\n

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Terminology and Engine Types<\/h2>\n

Before we can start to delve into the\u00a0automation system we need to define some terminology. The central tool we are going to use is the Unreal Automation Tool (UAT)<\/em>. This tool is the primary entry point for any sort of automation inside the engine aside from building and packaging an application. The UAT provides commandlets<\/em>, which are usually a set of commands to be run inside the engine’s ecosystem. The UAT is started using the appropriate script for the underlying operating system (*.sh for linux, *.command for mac and *.bat for Windows), which are located in Engine\/Build\/BatchFiles<\/em>. For UAT this would be the RunUAT<\/em> script. Appending -list\u00a0<\/em>returns a list of available commands. More information for UAT can be retrieved using the -help<\/em>\u00a0switch.\u00a0<\/em>The same applies for each commandlet, just write RunUAT <Commandlet> -help<\/em>. To get more information and possible switches for this command.<\/p>\n

It is important to know on which type of engine the UAT is run. There are three different engine types and they require some changes to the command line depending which is used.
\nThe first and most common engine type for smaller projects is the so called\u00a0Rocket<\/em> build. The rocket build is what you get, when you install the engine via the Epic Games Launcher. This is a pre-built, ready-to-use version of the engine. Depending on the choices you select in the launcher, it contains all necessary dependencies to package a project for all desktop applications and mobile targets.<\/p>\n

The next type of engine is the\u00a0source build<\/em>. This build type is what you get when you clone or download the Unreal Engine repository from GitHub (if you have linked your GitHub account to your Epic Games profile).
\nThis is the most versatile type of engine as the source of the engine can be changed and recompiled. Licensees for console development also get access to extra source code to be compiled in for console support. While this engine type is the most versatile it comes with the cost that everything needs to be compiled, an editor build usually takes from 15-60 minutes, depending on the system used and\u00a0takes up\u00a0more than 4\u00a0times the size of\u00a0pre-built engines.<\/p>\n

To\u00a0speed up development for your team one can create an\u00a0installed build\u00a0<\/em>from a source engine.\u00a0The supported platforms can be chosen upon creating this build. This type is supported starting with 4.13 and can be easily created, see this link for more information<\/a>. This build is very similar to the rocket build, however it can contain own changes and additional target platforms.<\/p>\n

One last tool we need for automatic deployment is the Unreal Build Tool (UBT)<\/em>, which, hence the name, is the main tool for building source code inside the engine.\u00a0It looks like the UAT is currently meant to be run from inside the editor. When trying to package a project just using the UAT it will\u00a0fail (on a clean version of the project) because of missing editor dlls of the project.\u00a0To create the missing dlls we need to use the UBT to build the editor target for our project and we are good to go.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Building the Editor Target<\/h2>\n

Before we can launch the UAT we first need to compile the editor targets for our project to get up-to date versions of our editor dlls. To build those dlls we run the UBT for our project editor target for our operating system (e.g. Win64) in the development configuration:<\/p>\n

Build\/BatchFiles\/Build.bat <ProjectName>Editor Win64 Development <PathToProjectFile>.uproject -WaitMutex<\/code><\/p>\n

For a clean build either the Clean<\/em> script can be run before or instead of the build script the Rebuild\u00a0<\/em>script can be used. The\u00a0-WaitMutex\u00a0<\/em>switch tells the build tool to wait for the global mutex for this UBT instance. Omitting this switch lets the UBT return with an error if it is currently used elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Step 2: BuildCookRun<\/h2>\n

The\u00a0complete packaging\u00a0process is available using the\u00a0BuildCookRun<\/em> commandlet inside the UAT. As the name of the commandlet suggests this is a three part process.<\/p>\n