Unreal Toolkit is a new project I’ve been working on that aims to make the process of packaging easier and potentially faster. With this program you’re able to package an Unreal Engine game without ever needing to open up the Editor.
Unreal Toolkit uses the Rust programming language for the backend mainly because learning it has been on my mind for a while and also uses the Tauri windowing system which allows me to make the GUI from HTML and JavaScript. I aim for it to be cross-compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.
I’m excited to share this newly created project with the community and looking forward with collaborating with others on GitHub.
Unreal Toolkit allows you to target multiple configurations and platforms, this makes it a versatile tool for game developers like myself. One of the feature of the project allows to remove the crash reporter tool that automatically comes bundled with packaged games. Removing it can decrease the packaged size by around 1.5GB. However this shouldn’t be used for creating shipping builds as it will result in a generic “Unreal Engine has crashed” error for the user and won’t provide any useful information for troubleshooting.
I aim to have the user interface friendly and simple while still allowing advanced features of the Unreal build tool (UBT) to be accessed.
Unreal Toolkit works by first selecting where the editor is located from the settings panel which saves in a config file, then entering where the “.uproject” file of your game is and then where you wish the packaged games to be saved to. Once you have adjusted the configuration settings you want to package with and pressed the package button, the program will run the “RunUAT.bat” with the necessary parameters as to what the editor would use.
The program uses the following command and parameters: RunUAT.bat -project={e.g. C:/mygame/mygame.uproject} -targetplatform={e.g. Win64} -configuration={e.g. Shipping} -pak -cook -stage -build -package -archive -archivedestination={e.g. C:/mygame/packaged}
In conclusion, the program allows you to easily package your game with ease and is still a work in progress. Eventually I would like it to include more features such as building lighting and work with blueprints.
Unreal Toolkit is available at: https://github.com/Jordonbc/UnrealToolkit