Creating a Standalone Mod

[Anciello]

I've looked at many posts on here already regarding creating a standalone mod, but it seems there is no clear tutorial on doing so.

If anyone is familiar with the Torque 3D engine, there is an option in there where you can cook out a very bare-bones standalone game, and from there you just add your own coding, assets, etc. It also gives you your own .exe file for the game. This is essentially what I am looking for in the UDK, does anyone know how exactly to do this?

Thanks to whoever can help me out with this.

[G0rdon]

i think you need to use UnrealFrontend its located in the binaries folder

[Anciello]

I've tried doing that, but I do not know what things need to be set to what in order to churn out a barebones standalone.

[Crozz]

I've not seen any tutorials on that either. I know the editor quite well but I don't know the simplest things like creating a menu, how the folder structure should be like, how to configure the ini files, how to hook your code up to start a simple "empty" gamemode so you can start coding etc etc etc.

[Anciello]

I followed Bob Gneu's tutorial (http://blog.gneu.org/2008/12/mod-switch-%E2%80%93-introduction-first-steps/) over a month ago for creating the directory and files, but my team has gotten to the point where we need to bring in our custom character mesh, and it's just not working.

It works perfectly when we put the character under the UTGame directory, but its not working within ours. This is why I'm hoping baking out a barebones standalone from UTFrontEnd could help us with this problem, as well as any other future problems we could encounter.

Let's figure this out!

[cmc]

Hi, first thing I want to try out with the UDK is to create a simple stand alone. Here is what I did.

1. Create a level with a box, place a light then build the lighting.
2. Place a PlayerStart in the room.
3. I save the level as "test.udk" in the UTGame>Content>Maps.
4. Start the UTFrontEnd.
5. Click on Cooking tab. Not the Cook tab or it will start cooking!
6. Under Maps to cook, I type "test".
7. Next click Cook and it will start cooking.
8. After cooking is done, click on Package Game to open a menu.
9. Type in the Names and click on the Package Game button.
10. It will start to create a installer.
11. When done, look at the right side of the FrontEnd where there are many messages.
12. One will tell you where the installer is place.
13. Start the installer and it will install the standalone game.
14. Start the game, instant action. Go to MAP. Make sure it should show the map "test". If you package the game without properly cook the map, it will still create a standalone game but without any map to play.

I found this out after many trials and errors. I am also a total newbie so I know nothing more than the above. Hopes it helps. I look forward for a proper tutorial to create a basic standalone game.

The main problem I encounter is what to type under Maps to cook. The arrow button doesn't show the available maps to cook. It just show what I previously type in the box. The documentation on this is "This text box contains a space delimited list of maps that will be cooked". It doesn't tell me what to type. At first I thought maybe to type in the path of the map file but it didn't work. Then one of the screen shot from the documentation show just the word "test". Therefore I create a map call "test" and type it in and it works. So, must I always save my maps in that specific location? How does the FrontEnd finds the maps?

Btw, the FrontEnd can be access from the Window Start>Unreal Development Kit>UDK-2009-11>Unreal Frontend.

Also after installing the standalone game, you can start it from the Window Start. However to uninstall it, you will need to go to the Window Control Panel.

[Angel_Mapper]

The only thing you need to do is cook your game's maps with the UnrealFrontEnd, and put your code packages in the ModEditPackages list in UTGame/DefaultEngine.ini (delete UTEngine.ini so it can generate a new one).

Then package it up with the UnrealFrontEnd. All of the cooked maps, any assets they need, your script files and the ini files will automatically be packaged up.