Onboarding Guide for Games Licensees

This page covers the hardware and software requirements for Unreal Engine. It also describes what is installed by the pre-requisites installer included in the Unreal Engine installer.

Recommended Hardware

Minimum Software Requirements

Minimum requirements for running the engine or editor are listed below.

The requirements for programmers developing with the engine are listed below.

Graphics Card Drivers

We currently recommend using the latest stable releases from each card manufacturer:

• Download NVIDIA drivers here

• Download AMD drivers here

• Download Intel drivers here

Performance Notes

The spec below represents a typical system used at Epic (a Lenovo P620 Content Creation Workstation, standard version). This provides a reasonable guideline for developing games with Unreal Engine 5:

• Operating System: (2h22) • Power Supply: 1000W power supply unit • RAM: 128GB DDR4-3200 • Processor: AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3975WX Processor - 128MB Cache, 3.5 GHz base / 4.2 GHz turbo, 32 Cores / 64 Threads, 280w TDP • OS Drive 1 TB M.2 NVMe3 x4 PCI-e SSD • DATA Drive 4 TB Raid Array - 2 x 2TB NVMe3 x4 PCI-e SSD in Raid 0 • GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080 - 10GB • NIC 1GBPS on-board + Intel X550-T1 10G PCI-e Ethernet adapter • TPM Compliant

Requirements for UE5 Rendering Features

Some rendering features of Unreal Engine have different requirements than the minimum specifications.

Source Code Branches

You'll notice that we've published UE's source code in several branches.

Branches whose names contain dev, staging, and test are typically for internal Epic processes, and are rarely useful for end-users Other short-lived branches may appear from time to time as we stabilize new releases or hotfixes.

Release Branch

The Release branch always reflects the current official release. These are extensively tested by our QA team, so they make a great starting point for learning Unreal Engine and for making your own projects. We work hard to make releases stable and reliable, and aim to publish a new release every few months.

Main Branch

Most active development on UE happens in the ue5-main branch. This branch reflects the latest release of the engine and may be buggy or it may not compile. We make it available for developers who are eager to test new features or work in lock-step development with us.

Downloading the Source Code

Please follow these instructions to download the Unreal Engine source code.

Additional target platforms

• Android support will be downloaded by the setup script if you have the Android NDK installed. See the Android Quick Start guide.

• iOS development requires a Mac. Instructions are in the iOS Quick Start guide.

• Development for consoles and other platforms with restricted access, like Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, is only possible if you have a registered developer account with those third-party vendors.

Depending on the platform, additional documentation or guidance may be available in the Unreal Developer Network support site, or as a downloadable archive in the section of the Unreal Engine Forums that is dedicated to your platform.

If you don't have access to these resources, first register a developer account with the third party vendor. Then contact your Epic Games account manager if you have one, or fill out and submit the Console Development Request form for Unreal Engine if you don't. Epic will contact you with a formal agreement to digitally sign. Once this is approved, you will receive instructions on how to access source code, binaries, and additional instructions for your platform.

Licensing and Contribution

Your access to and use of Unreal Engine on GitHub is governed by the Unreal Engine End User License Agreement. If you don't agree to those terms, as amended from time to time, you are not permitted to access or use Unreal Engine.

We welcome any contributions to Unreal Engine development through pull requests on GitHub. Most of our active development is in the master branch, so we prefer to take pull requests there (particularly for new features). We try to make sure that all new code adheres to the Epic coding standards. All contributions are governed by the terms of the EULA.

Next Steps

Now that you've downloaded and set-up Unreal Engine, you're ready to build the engine from source.

Footnotes

The first time you start the editor from a fresh source build, you may experience long load times. The engine is optimizing content for your platform to the derived data cache, and it should only happen once.

Your private forks of the Unreal Engine code are associated with your GitHub account permissions. If you unsubscribe or switch GitHub user names, you'll need to re-fork and upload your changes from a local copy.

Read about Hardware and Software Specifications, and make sure that Microsoft Visual Studio is installed prior to building Unreal Engine (UE) from source. Also, depending on your system's specifications, it may take between 10 and 40 minutes to compile the Engine.

1. Inside the root directory, where you downloaded and adjusted the UE Source Code run GenerateProjectFiles.bat to set-up your project files.

   All project files are intermediate ([UERoot]\Engine\Intermediate\ProjectFiles). You must generate project files each time you sync a new build to ensure they are up to date. If you delete your Intermediate folder, you must regenerate project files using the GenerateProjectFiles batch file.

2. Load the project into Visual Studio by double-clicking UE5.sln.

3. Set your solution configuration to Development Editor.

4. Set your solution platform to Win64.

5. Right-click the UE5 target and select Build.

Connect to Epic's Perforce Server

Connecting to the Epic Games Perforce server requires using the SSL feature, and you must be running a 2017.2 or later version of a Perforce client (P4V, p4, or API). You can take advantage of latency based routing to automatically connect to the closest Perforce regional proxy by using the global DNS name. Alternatively, you can connect directly to a regional proxy to ensure you always connect to the closest one.

1. Install the P4V Perforce client for Windows. The client can be downloaded from the Perforce Downloads page.

2. In the Open Connection dialog, enter the following connection info:

   • Server: ssl:p4-licensee.epicgames.com:1666

     The address above should automatically direct you to a regional proxy with the best latency based on your geographic location. If, for some reason, you need to connect to a specific regional proxy, you can connect to them using the addresses below:

     • United States East (Virginia): ssl:p4-licensee-east.us.epicgames.com:1666

     • United States West (Oregon): ssl:p4-licensee-west.us.epicgames.com:1666

     • Asia Pacific Northeast (Tokyo): ssl:p4-licensee-northeast.ap.epicgames.com:1666

     • Europe Central (Frankfurt): ssl:p4-licensee-central.eu.epicgames.com:1666

   • User: Perforce username provided by Epic Games.

   • Password: Perforce password provided by Epic Games.

3. Click OK to connect to the Perforce Server.

   Click the image for full size.

4. When connecting to an endpoint for the first time, you must explicitly trust that endpoint.

   • The Epic SSL fingerprint is 45:0D:78:E2:0E:9E:E4:82:45:80:16:36:29:5E:54:4D:66:31:6C:43.

   • P4V will prompt you to trust the new endpoint.

   • Command line p4 uses the p4 trust command: $ p4 trust -y.

1. In P4V, choose Connection > New Workspace to create a new workspace for the engine. Enter the information below and click OK to create the workspace:

   • Workspace name: Give your new workspace a name.

   • Stream: Click Browse and select //UE5/Release-Latest from the list of available streams.

2. In the Depot pane, expand the Filter Depot menu and select Tree Restricted to Workspace View.

Download Unreal Engine

Epic Games distributes Unreal Engine to licensees via the //UE5/Release-Latest stream in the Perforce depot. This contains the entire engine along with several additional projects in the form of example games, samples, and demos. You have the option of downloading everything or picking and choosing only the parts you want or need.

To get set up as quickly as possible, we recommend you only download the bare minimum to start with and then download other parts on an as-needed basis. This can dramatically reduce idle time spent waiting for the download to finish. We also provide a //UE5/Release-Latest-Minimal stream to help with this.

1. Right-click on the stream you want to download and choose Get Latest Revision.

2. The latest version of all files will be downloaded.

Running the Editor from the Command Line

Running the Editor from the Executable

Running the Editor with No Arguments (Stand-alone)

If the editor is not set to open the most recent project at startup, running the editor executable without any arguments will launch the Project Browser. From here, you can create a new project , open your existing projects , or open content examples and sample games .

When you launch Unreal Engine, the Unreal Project Browser opens automatically. This is where you can:

• Create a new project.

• Open an existing project.

• Manage existing projects.

The diagram below illustrates the steps to create a new project in Unreal Engine.

To create a new project, follow these steps:

1. Select the development category (1) that best matches your industry and project goals.

   You can select from the following categories:

   • Games

   • Film, Television, and Live Events

   • Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC)

   • Automotive, Product Design, and Manufacturing (APM)

2. Select a template (2) for your project. The templates you can choose from are based on the category you selected in step 1.

   Unreal Engine contains a number of project templates you can use as a starting point for your own projects. To learn more about the different project templates available, refer to the Templates Reference page.

3. Configure the Project Defaults (3). In this section, you can select your target platform (that is, the hardware where your game or application will run, like a computer or a mobile device), configure quality and ray tracing settings, and more.

   Some of the settings below may not be available for certain templates. For example, the Handheld AR template can only use Blueprint implementation.

   You can configure the following settings:

   Setting	Description
   Implementation	Select how you want to implement your project's logic, such as character movement, level transitions, and so on. You can choose from the following options: Blueprint, if you want to build your project in the Unreal Editor, and use the Blueprint Visual Scripting system to create interactions and behavior. C++, if you want to build your project by programming with C++ in Visual Studio. For more information about these implementation methods, refer to the following pages: Blueprint Visual Scripting Programming with C++
   Target Platform	Select the kind of platform your project is intended for: Desktop Mobile
   Quality Preset	Select the maximum quality level, based on which platform your project targets. We recommend that you choose: Maximum, if you are developing your project for a computer or game console. Scalable, if you are developing your project for mobile devices.
   Starter Content	Select whether you want your new project to include starter content. Starter content includes some simple Static Meshes with basic textures and Materials. It is useful if you want to start learning and experimenting straight away, without worrying about sourcing and importing custom content.
   Ray Tracing	Select whether to enable or disable ray tracing for your project. For more information about ray tracing in Unreal Engine, refer to the Hardware Ray Tracing and Path Tracing Features page.

4. Select where you want to store your project, and give your project a name (4).

5. Click Create (5) to finish creating your new project.

Result

Unreal Engine creates a new project with the settings you configured, and then automatically opens the project.

Unreal Engine (UE) uses a custom building method using the UnrealBuildTool (UBT) which handles all the complex aspects of compiling the project and linking it with the engine. This process occurs transparently allowing you to simply build the project through the standard Visual Studio build workflow.

UnrealBuildTool uses the *.build.cs and *.target.cs files to build the game project. These are automatically generated when a project is created using a C++ template, or when the CPP Class Wizard is used to add code to a project created from a Blueprints Only template.

Build Configuration

Unreal projects have multiple targets, including Editor, Client, Game, and Server, described by *.target.cs files. Furthermore, each of these can be built to different configurations. In Visual Studio, this manifests as a Visual Studio *.vcxproj file with different configurations for each target. The solution configurations are named as [Configuration][Target Type] (for example, "DevelopmentEditor" for the default editor target, and "Development" for the default standalone game target). The configuration you use will be determined by the purposes of the build you want to create.

Every build configuration contains two keywords. The first keyword indicates the state of the engine and your game project. For instance, if you compile using a Debug configuration, the build process forgoes optimization making it easer to debug. To be clear, every configuration, even Shipping builds, produce symbols for debugging if built form Visual Studio or if Project Settings > Project > Packaging > Project > Include Debug Files is turned on in the Unreal Editor. This means that you can still debug Development and Shipping configurations, they just may not be as easy to debug as the Debug configuration. The second keyword indicates the target you are building for. For example, if you want to open a project in Unreal, you need to build with the Editor target keyword.