Unreal Engine: Installing

<Key struggles with old lock>

<Rusty hinges screech>

<Heavy breathing, muffled by mask> 

<Flashlight turns on>

Oh wow... so much dust in this place. Hard to believe there still are locked rooms in the Zone, huh.

So what was I doing here...

Oh yeah. I had started experimenting with the X-Ray engine.

Then abandoned it because my idea was impossible to implement.

Or at least I thought of it this way.

I was told that in order to add chances for artifacts to randomly spawn on any anomaly, not just the marked ones on the maps, I would have to overwrite all.spawn files made by other modders.

Or patch them, I thought. But how to do the patching?

I could not find an answer to that.

Sooooo... here we are now, six years or so later, a whole goddamned continent away from home and out of work. 

But I have not completely abandoned my hopes of modding STALKER.

With the sequel being built in Unreal and hopefully coming out on December 2023, I think it best to get acquainted with the new engine to be ready to start modding the moment I get my hands on it.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: if you support Russia, FUCK OFF. You're not wanted here.)

So, without further ado, here we go.

<Cleans up desk>

<Unpacks laptop>

<Plugs in to wall socket... incredible, this place has power after all>

Tools for the trade: getting the kit

Gone are the ol' days when you modded stuff with the Notepad app, a monkey wrench, some grease and a lot of prayers.

Nope, gonna mod Unreal Engine, you need Unreal Engine. I guess.

To get it first you have to install the Epic Games Launcher. (Joy. Yet another launcher app clogging up my rig. But whatever.)

At the point of this posting, you had to get it from https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/download - maybe this has changed by the moment you brave stalkers dare to read this. 

There isn't really a lot of insights I could share with you about installing the launcher, it's pretty straightforward. 

You're gonna need an account to use the launcher, too, if you don't have one already.

Buuuut... supposed you've installed it right and logged in, you'll get to a screen not too different from this:

So, what do we have here... Rocket League? Ugh, PvP stuff. I'm a sore loser. (Just the slog it takes to get the seasonal achievements on Destiny 2 is a nightmare.) Saints Row? Heard a lot of it, never played it. Uncharted? Call of the Wild? *scratches head* Genshin Impact? Even if I'm a weeb through and through, I'm *NOT* giving China my money. Anymore than what I already have to. Cyberpunk? Loved it, but can't replay it anymore...

Enough distractions! Where's the goddamned Unreal Engine thing?!

I suppose I don't get any subtlety points for that.

Um... okay. *reddens brightly*

This is... intimidating.

Er, whatever. Let's go there.

Wow... what have I gotten myself into? Looks like a BIG world here...

Oh well. Taking my first steps in Java and Android was like this. But orders of magnitude more boring. 

So, back to the tutorial...

Welp. Looks like I skipped the requirements bit.

To summarize, you can pretty much run this thing on any OS you want. I'll leave the particulars of the platform to you. Me, I'm a Windows user, so I'm going with the vanilla stuff.

The hardware reqs are a thing, tho. Unreal Engine 5 needs at least a 2.5 Ghz quad-core CPU, 8 GB RAM and a decent graphics card. I don't know if these things are available in the Zone, but make sure your rig is up to snuff. 

(And for the love of the Monolith, Aqua, Madokami, Belldandy, the Light or whatever it is you worship, do NOT order computer gear from Sidorovich.)

Ooooh-kay... now... provided your rig somehow can crunch the numbers for this thing, go ahead and click on the big yellow 'Install engine' button. You'll get the EULA thing, and after agreeing to it you'll be able to pick where to install it and stuff.

Then, you sit back and wait. A loooong time. 

Kind of a throwback to ye olde days of dial-up.

I guess I shouldn't complain. That I can actually download stuff from the Zone is nothing short of a miracle.

(In my particular case, I ended up having to leave it downloading and installing during the night. So yes, it does take some time.)

But hey, now I got this thing, so let's try and launch it!

Here goes nothing...

And... nothing happened?

Oh wait. Some small window popped up. Apparently this thing installs some stuff on first run.

And here's, at last, the new project window. Here we are!

 

Alright... now, we got the toolkit up and running. I suppose it's time for wrenches and grease.