Creating single executable for your game
I'm ready to play my game internally to get some feedback on the core mechanics. Problem is, packaging your game in UE4 creates a directory of, well, stuff. There's engine stuff, extras, your exe, etc. Ā Here's what a bare bones packaged game looks like:
That's right - 756 files, 64 Folders. There's no way I'm going to list those by hand.
Additionally, there are some prerequisites that might need to be installed for a computer that UE4 bundles with the output but has to be run separately.
This is OK for me but if I'm asking someone else to try out my game they're going to expect a single file that just Installs everything. Like how you installed games before Steam existed. Anyway, I decided I needed to create an exe that was going to install the prerequisite's needed for Unreal, then install my game. Creation of the installer also needed to be automated so I can just run the thing every time I package my game for release.
I searched the UE4 forums and found there's a great set of open-source tools now to do this called WiX (Windows Installer XML) toolset (http://wixtoolset.org/). Unfortunately the documentation is pretty damn sparse - and thatās coming from someone who used to deploy Linux for embedded devices for a living. Once I read a few tutorials and skimmed the documentation I came up with a basic architecture for how to accomplish this feat.
So the basic idea for my little side quest was to use what's called a WiX bootstrapper that chains together the prerequisite executable from Unreal, and the msi that's created for all the files generated for the packaged game.
Now there were youtube tutorials and blogs on how to do parts of this, but none of them automated the process into a single solution file (also many of them were people who didn't seem to understand the WiX file syntax and ended up manually copy & pasting file contents about just to get their stuff to work).
At the end of the day I used a few different tools in the WiX toolset.
A WiX Setup Project; This project template in Visual Studio is used to create the MSI for your packaged game.
Heat.exe; This guy is the HARVESTER (I thought of this guy the entire time). The basics is it takes your packaged UE4 directory as input and spits out an XML file (.wxs) that describes your files and directories to the WiX project.
A WiX Bootstrapper Project; This template in Visual Studio is used to create the final exe.
First create the setup project by opening Visual Studio then File->New Project.
Give the solution a name and name your project. In my case I called my project Stellar. Next, in the Product.wxs file that is in this new project. Replace the Name, Version, Manufacturer, Title with whatever you want for your project. Then for the ComponentGroupRef Id change it to GENERATED_UE4_GAME_PACKAGE. This is going to be the ID you feed into HEAT when it harvests your packaged game directory.
Finally, add the following:
<Property Id="WIXUI_INSTALLDIR" Value="INSTALLFOLDER"></Property>
Ā Ā <UIRef Id="WixUI_InstallDir"/>
To support the WiX UI you'll need to add references to the extension dll's. Right-click References -> Add Reference and under the Browse tab select WixUIExtension and WixUtilExtension. Then click Add, then click OK.
You can choose which type of UI you like best but I stuck with the simple WixUI_InstallDir type.
Here's my final Product.wxs file Ā (UpgradeCode is not shown as that is auto-generated):
Now, create that system environment variable that points to your packaged UE4 game location. In my case its this:
Go back to Visual Studio and open the properties for your project. Under Build Events you'll want to include parameters to run HEAT. Heat is run in the pre-build event so that your XML files are generated before WiX goes to put the MSI together. Paste this line into there:
"$(WIX)bin\heat.exe" dir "$(UE4_GAME_PACKAGE_DIR)" -cg GENERATED_UE4_GAME_PACKAGE -gg -scom -sreg -sfrag -srd -dr INSTALLFOLDER -var env.UE4_GAME_PACKAGE_DIR -out "$(ProjectDir)GeneratedFilesList.wxs"
To explain some of these:
Now if you were to build the project at this point it'll generate the file list but the Product.wxs won't be able to refer to that file. Thatās because that generated .wxs needs to be compiled and linked along with the rest of the project. To do that open up the Project Properties and go to Tool Settings. Add the wxs file to the compiler, and the compiled object to the linker. Make sure you have All Configurations selected so this works in Debug & Release builds:
Great! If you've made it this far you've got a solution that automatically takes your packaged UE4 and creates a single MSI to install your game! If thatās all you wanted then you can stop here. Otherwise, soldier on to the...
The final step is to create a bootstrapper to chain this & the prerequisites together into a single exe.
In the same solution go ahead and right-click the Solution and select Add->New Project. Then select the WiX Bootstrapper Project from the list and give it a nice name. This project is what creates your top-level exe file.
In this new Bootstrapper project first right-click theĀ projectĀ -> Add Reference and add a reference to the extensions dll's you'll need (WixBalExtension, WixUIExtension):
Then right-click->Add Reference and add a reference to the previous MSI project you made in the solution (the one we made to create the Game's MSI). It should be the only one listed in the Projects tab of the Add Reference box:
Okay, now open up the Bundle.wxs file and replace your Name, Version, Manufacturer. Under the Bundle tag add IconSourceFile="myicon.ico". You can generate an icon .ico file using http://icoconvert.com/ then put it in your bootstrapper project folder.
Also since this is a RTF license bootstrapper template we can include our license file and logo png. Here's what mine looks like:
The logo png should be placed in the directory where this bootstrapper project is located. Also put your license rtf file there to describe whatever it is you need to for your licensing.
Finally we come to the guts of the bootstrapper, the CHAIN. The Chain describes the order of exe's, msi's you are chaining together, in order. For us thatās just the UE4 Prerequisite exe and our MSI we created in our other project. I went ahead and uses environment variables here to avoid any issues if I ever move things around:
One thing to note here is I'm referring to the x64 version of the prerequisites because my game is 64-bit.
Thatās it! Go ahead and build the Solution and you'll get a nice little EXE under your bootstrapper project \bin\Debug\. (Or \bin\Release if your building a release configuration).
Here's what the results look like for me:
And then when that completes, the game is installed.
You can see my game is now under Program Files and is listed under Programs in the Control Panel.
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