I solved Unreal Engine's Package Size Problem...

Get my 12 hour course on how to make 2D games with Unreal Engine:
tinyurl.com/Ultimate2D
Support the channel on Patreon:
/ cobracode
Write up with additional information:
tinyurl.com/UnrealTiny
This video is the Ultimate Guide on how to reduce packaged game size with Unreal Engine and make your executable game much smaller!
🔔Subscribe: / @cobracode
Twitter: / cobracodedev
Discord: / discord
Timecodes:
0:00 Intro
0:38 Binary Configuration
1:20 Disable Prerequisites
2:12 Disable OpenImageDenoise
3:20 Packaging Settings
4:42 Set maps to include
5:48 Forward Shading
6:34 Benefits of small file size
8:28 Disable unused Plugins
10:57 Pakfile Rules
12:55 Compressing
13:28 Size difference per Unreal Version
🎵 Music By:
- Krynoze - Pawmises
- Provided by Lofi Records
- Watch: • Krynoze - Pawmises 🐾 [...
Icons made by Freepik (www.freepik.com) from Flaticon (www.flaticon.com/)
#cobracode #gamedev #unrealengine #ue5

[@CobraCode]

Write up with additional information: tinyurl.com/UnrealTiny Get my 12 hour course on how to make 2D games with Unreal Engine: tinyurl.com/Ultimate2D

[@DAGON992]

man, thanks for the video. I reduced my build from 4.14GB to 1.8GB.

[@alexandruneag4845]

Wow 😮 that's amazing

[@alexcasu5020]

Mine went from 35 GB to 3 GB.

[@sk.mahdeemahbubsamy2857]

​@@alexcasu5020Damn that's crazy🤯🤯🤯

[@jolierouge2463]

By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings.

[@alexcasu5020]

Yeah it was all from the maps I did not use, a lot of packs that had huge demo maps.

[@TheGameCourier]

REALLY helpful for things like game jams that have a file size cap.

[@rrahll]

Thanks Cobra Code!

[@blackshinobi956]

This is awesome, great explanations, thank you!

[@rwp005]

You just earned a subscriber. Excellent vid.

[@TorQueMoD]

Great video! Thanks so much for sharing these awesome tips!

[@EvilReFlex]

Seen a few videos with the same topic, but this here is the best! Thanks for it!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :)

[@strangemodul3]

Fantastic video, thank you mr Cobra. BTW your character in the intro is cute!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D I'll pass your comment through to the artist as well :)

[@arredondojordan]

Absolutely love your videos! This was genuinely such useful information, keep up the awesome work Cobra!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D

[@arredondojordan]

@@CobraCode Also quick update, I used the tip about the OpenImageDenoiser earlier today on my small side scroller project and upon restart my Paper2D.PaperCharacter BP was wiped of all its nodes, as well as a few images I imported from Aesprite. I wonder if the Denoiser has any connection to sprites. No worries though, I wanted to switch the Paper2D class to a Pawn anyways so this was a good excuse to run through it all again. Also maybe ill start looking into version control now haha

[@CobraCode]

@@arredondojordan Thanks for sharing that. Pretty sure it's unrelated to the OpenImageDenoiser and simply a bug that can generally happen. Has happened to me before as well which is why it's always important to have version control set up.

[@compatriot852]

This was something I really wanted to learn more about. Thanks for the guide

[@thepolyglotprogrammer]

Super nice video! Thanks for that!

[@dawidbujak]

Very underexplored topic, thank you

[@iLikeCoffee777]

OH. MY. GOD!!!!!!! Thank you so much! I'm going to watch this again when I'm not smashed to actually fix my project!

[@danelokikischdesign]

This info is amazing! Great Video!

[@patrikbaboumian]

Great video! Thanks for the super useful info!

[@silverhunter4787]

Thank you so much cobra code!

[@mebessusn]

Taking notes on this as I watch the video so I have an SOP to refer to for the future. Thanks for this!

[@Starkiller112]

Thanks bro...

[@brandonjacksoon]

Thank you, mr. Cobra Code!

[@alexlealch]

Great tuto, thanks

[@screenapple1660]

Very useful tutorial.

[@arrowsdev]

This is the best video about this subject so far

[@CobraCode]

Thank you so much :)

[@RockyMulletGamedev]

Awesome ! Thank you for sharing the results of your investigation !

[@hachikothemaster4643]

wow, someone featured shows themselves :) nice to see these days :D

[@RockyMulletGamedev]

@@hachikothemaster4643 Cobra Code is bating me in with great content XD

[@brandonjacksoon]

Always helpful!

[@zatelliti]

This video is GOLD

[@VEETEEGameStudio]

10/10 video 👏

[@limarest761]

Great content! We recently participated in a game jam and the finished game was 600mb which kinda stood out among games made with Unity and Godot. But with these tips the size could've been reduced significantly

[@MangaGamify]

It would be helpful, if I can remember how under stress & pressure

[@notthings6443]

유익한 정보 감사합니다.

[@YannSchmidt]

This video is a gold mine ! Thanks a lot for your hard work and research.

[@StevenDiLeo]

This is great, I almost started learning unity a while back specifically due to the file size differences when exporting, I’d rather stay in one engine to master one. Thanks for this! ❤

[@Crisos2]

Very usefull Thanks

[@dreamingacacia]

I only did to the "set maps include" part. I think I won't use forward shading because I might use something which will be costly if I use forward shading. Well it's still too early, so once I've got the vertical slice I'll try with forward shading and see for myself if I want to use it.

[@rifat.ahammed]

Thanks

[@amgarten]

Heey! First of all thanks for the video, great job as always! So, I bought your Udemy course on how to create 2D games 2 days ago and the content of that course is amazing! Do you have any plans on updating that course and cover more topics or delve deeper into them? Sorry for my english, it is not my primary language

[@CobraCode]

Thank you so much :D Currently there are no plans to update the course since the new versions of Unreal didn't really add anything that would improve much. Once there have been big changes I might revamp the course though. Currently I plan on making a premium beat 'em up course and a JRPG course, but there are still many things I need to figure out.

[@amgarten]

@@CobraCode Can't wait to buy those as well! Keep it up, bro :D

[@phirenz]

Might want to take a look into running all the executables and DLLs though UPX. If unreal isn't already doing equivalent executable compression, the on disk savings could be huge, with basically no downside

[@sethgarry7526]

Quick question: Let's say I was about to release my first indie game project. Will the amount of gigabytes my project takes affect how it operates on Steam? If so, should I do these data saving methods before or I after I start working on my game?

[@kayag8]

Can anyone tell me what pc parts to get to be able to run the latest Unreal? I heard its like 150gbs just for the base program. I wanna buy a new computer to be able to run it smoothly.

[@ashalireza873]

Thank you for the video on reducing Unreal Engine's package size! It was super informative and easy to follow.

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :)

[@Pewsplosions]

Nice. Still a little larger than I'd like but definitely more reasonable. I always hate when people say size doesn't matter these days. Even with a 1tb drive if every game is 50gb, that is less than 20 games on the drive. Sure download speeds are faster these days but who wants to waste 30 minutes finding something to uninstall plus the download and install process? And especially for indie devs, if I'm scrolling through my installed games and one game is 30 GB and another is 150 MB (and my desire to play them are roughly equal.) The 30 GB is gone without a second thought. Just having your game be installed longer on a player's system automatically increases the chances they'll play it more. I probably have 20+ games on my deck that will likely be there forever because they're small enough (

[@batuhanatamal]

@CobraCode 8:49 I can see the Judgement set from WoW made by @Tomkektv. How did you get the model? Did you ask him or is there a download link for it?

[@CobraCode]

Good eyes xD He has all of them available on his patreon, even if you're not a paying member.

[@Ehren1337]

Please make how to make map like yours in short details?

[@hugojackson6822]

That thumbnail though 😂👌👌👌

[@johnp3103]

Thank you Cobra Code! I am packaging my Android game and trying to reduce the size as much as possible. For a very simple game that started over 120MB, I am down to around 80MB. I feel like I should be able to squeeze a little more out of it. Do you have any plans to do a mobile version of this video? Or do you have any resources you can share for further research please?

[@CobraCode]

Hey! I did try to quickly cover mobile as well, however I already banged my head against the wall for 3 weeks at the point doing this research and was at the end of my rope after the android build process didn't go smoothly. I might revisit this some time, but for the time being you can check out all the sources I linked in the write up. There are a couple of more things you can do specifically for mobile to maybe squeeze out a little bit more.

[@johnp3103]

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll check out the resources you mentioned. Great content - keep up the good work!!

[@exanoid1]

thank you for the zhuge liang's isekai dance

[@MoshiMoshiDoppio]

Hey im not sure if im mis-remembering this but I seem to remember you having a shorts video on making more interesting prototypes but I cant find it anymore.

[@CobraCode]

Hey! I set a bunch of shorts to private and only kept the most popular ones around since I decided that shorts just aren't working for this channel. I set that one back to public for you :) kzbin.infoYc4r2dyEWv4

[@MoshiMoshiDoppio]

@@CobraCode thank you I appreciate that a lot!

[@darknetworld]

That a lot work and detail which is cool. But there should be guide for depend on the 2D and 3D is not easy task. Didn't think the plugin is good and bad if they are not use.

[@CobraCode]

Hey, yeah really knowing which plugins you can safely turn off is probably the hardest thing to follow along with. Sadly it's very case by case and there's no perfect answer and I don't think we could even just make a list to share around because it will be different for everyone. On top of that the active plugins will also change with new versions of Unreal, so it would be too much of a hassle to maintain as well :(

[@darknetworld]

@@CobraCode yeah it hard but what if there someone script it. As well detail how those export in people to understand. I meaning using python to config to export it. or javascript. I thought of minecraft server mods that I found people does work hard to develop easy of used. But I guess it those plugin dep libs is challenging. I R&D on python which is simple and hard but there people does automate scripts. As well there other script build from different platforms. It a lot of work.

[@abdullahsohail5395]

please make a video about andriod packages

[@karetsu5435]

I have a problem in one of your courses you explain how to perform hitbox and triggering however for only one enemy (bp_shark) and I want to perform it for my parent (BP_Enemy_Base) in such a way that 3 of my enemies inherit these functions however I have no idea how to do it when I use the attack the name of the enemy is not displayed. Would anyone be able to help me

[@CobraCode]

Hey, I believe in that case the best thing to do would be to just change the name of the BP_Shark we made to BP_Enemy_BASE and then create multiple children from that. The shark we made has all the stuff we need for hitboxes, etc and this should be in the enemy parent. You can then make children and just change the parameters for the animation blueprint, the AI controller etc.

[@touristhawk]

how about the unused assets? if we check the included maps do have to delete unused assets or we can leave them?

[@CobraCode]

I believe an asset will only be packed in if it's being referenced SOMEWHERE, which will most likely be in a demo map. Would have to run more tests to 100% confirm that though.

[@zuzubazandi]

Can you do s 2d boss Level pls

[@robson_cs]

Are there any other specific optimization settings for mobile? I followed the entire optimization process, managed to create a game in Unreal Engine 5.2 for Android, resulting in an installation file (.apk) of 47.4 MB, which, after installation on the device, occupies 129 MB of space. It's just a 2D pixel art game, so 129 MB seems quite excessive.

[@CobraCode]

I haven't looked too much into mobile specific things, but I believe there are a couple of more things you could do. You can check out the write up in the description and look deeper into all the listed sources.

[@whynotcode]

Definitely annoying how big the Unreal and Unity projects are… and when you build Unreal from source it doesn’t take long to fill up a TB SSD. Thanks for tips.

[@kmtsvetanov]

Hello. Is there a way to remove all components that you end up not using from the downloaded marketplace?

[@CobraCode]

AFAIK They'll only be packaged in if they are referenced somewhere. (Would need to test to be 100% sure though) That is one reason we set up which maps to package, to make sure we don't have anything unused being referenced and packaged in.

[@kmtsvetanov]

@@CobraCode It's just that after I clicked "Add to project" and use just one tree I end up having way more size. Have to test it again but yeah. Maybe it's something in my project settings

[@rremnar]

Thanks for sharing this; but what a pain in the ass. I wonder how many dev studios even know to do this.

[@CobraCode]

I checked through the folder structure of a couple of UE games I own on steam. It seems some studios are aware of the prerequisite installer and others are not. The UE versions used for the games where still older, so none of them had OpenImageDenoise.

[@user-cy9qi8kj2g]

Share with Wildcard employees

[@CreepyCurlew]

What do I do if my project is over 60gigybites

[@CobraCode]

Does it have a good reason to be that large? In some cases there isn't much you can do about it if you use really high quality textures. If you're still just messing around and unused assets are the culprit setting the maps to package like I said in the video will do the trick. There are also other techniques to make textures smaller, but that might impact quality.

[@CreepyCurlew]

@@CobraCode thank you, the project just stopped working so I am going to have to remake it 😭, so wish me luck

[@Napert]

6:57 who do you think you are, Todd Howard?

[@fabulamcafee]

i finished one map and my sampleShooter is already at 25 GB . . .

[@thanatosor]

So smallest size is around 150mb ?

[@CobraCode]

Without doing anything too crazy, yeah. You could go even further, but you'd risk completely breaking things.

[@williamgrenville1203]

I wonder if this would help warzone mobile 😂Activision take note of this 😊

[@anonymouseovermouse1960]

The more i'm forced to work with Unreal, the more i want to learn Godot

[@vaisakhkm783]

What? I never worked in gamedev, but that doesn't make sense consider both project reputation...

[@anonymouseovermouse1960]

@@vaisakhkm783 I don't work professionally either, i'm an amateur. But just from the perspective of trying to achieve something specific in your game, Unreal is a massive pain in the ass when it comes to feature bloat and undocumented bullshit. Also Unreal is an extremely rigid system when it comes to doing anything with the renderer. The only answer becomes "just rewrite half the engine bro" very quickly, especially because Unreal has metric fucktons of overhead for every little thing imaginable, and other aspects of the engine are just clearly underdeveloped (which has led Epic Games down the path of AI-powered supersampling due to the horrific performance of Unreal's renderer). Godot lack features, yes, but from what i understand, that makes it a tool which allows you to do things more precisely without constantly having to fight the current implementation.

[@razorgmyt6772]

@@anonymouseovermouse1960 unreal is not bloat, the fact that there are characteristics that YOU and only YOU do not use does not make it bloat, and that in godot you don't fight HA you haven't used the engine much from what I see

[@anonymouseovermouse1960]

@@razorgmyt6772 Me and ONLY me? Excuse me? Then why the fuck are there literal widely used console commands, engine settings and project settings in the fucking engine for people to adjust to fit their project then, numbnuts? Why does the (annoyingly sparse) official documentation for unreal engine give instructions on which console commands, .ini settings and project/engine options to enable and disable according to what you need to accomplish? But i digress, your arrogance was not my point. I never said that unreal itself is bloat? What the fuck would that even mean? I said that unreal *contains* too much bloat, and that the console commands, .ini settings and engine/project options are not enough to make the engine modular enough to develop precisely the kind of features for one's game as is possible in engines with a less rigid structure, such as godot, and even unity. You ever wonder why unity was much more popular among indie devs than unreal? And why most AAA studios have their own in-house engines instead of using unreal? It's because unity is extremely modular, and it's capable of much more than unreal because of this. The only advantage unreal has is that it has extremely developed features for games with very narrow requirements, namely, realistic-ish looking graphics, at a massive cost to file size and performance. And get the fuck out of here with that trash, you sound like a 15 year old. I bet you don't even know about the severe bandwidth cost of the various screen buffers of deferred rendering. I suggest you keep your mouth shut until you read more about game engines, you fucking child.

[@CobraCode]

@anonymouseovermouse1960 Can we please keep it civil here? razorgmyt6772 comment was a bit snarky, but you didn't need to bite the bait that hard. It's fine if you don't like Unreal, but you're obviously looking for trouble coming to an Unreal video talking trash. Not saying you don't have a valid point, but you're the one escalating the conversation to name calling and using profanity. We can have discussions about the pro's and con's but no lashing out here please or I'll have to intervene.

[@FlockersDesign]

Okey already a mistake use project launcher this only takes the content use unlike the normal build option So makes the game even smaller

[@e-frame5344]

Hmmmmmmmm

[@kabargin]

lol dude saves 50 megabytes when megascans of dozens of gigabytes can be used in the project.

[@CobraCode]

Like I said multiple times in the video this is for special use cases. If you want to go Triple A you don't have to worry about this much. If you want to make 2D games, mobile games, Low Poly 3D or something small for game jams this is for you.

[@countercode]

Super mario bros was 96KB lol

[@sixiangyang]

thanks man ,you are beautiful.♥

[@schweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

add linux support again you monster poor steam deck :(

[@magnomliman8114]

no every one can download with 8mb/s like you many country's still have slow internet :/ like my country

[@Wyklepheph]

I’m sure this is useful but -100% for the super misleading title. Makes it seem like you did something to fix a problem, not just list off settings to turn solutions, that UE created, on or off. Like I don’t want to discourage anybody from putting out useful content but OP made it seem like I was going to learn something technical about how UE bundles data but nope, just some dude who apparently needs to manipulate people into watching videos. “I cured cancer” (explains how to cut tumor off with a knife)

[@CobraCode]

Hey, thanks for the feedback. The original title of the video was 'How to Reduce Package Size with Unreal Engine 5 - Ultimate Guide' and it performed absolutely horrible. So I changed the title about 5 hours after release and now it's one of my best performing videos. Do you believe it's for the greater good to let all of this useful information and 4 weeks of hard work and research time go to waste just to have a technically accurate title? Or make a slightly sensational title to make sure the video gets the views it deserves, so the algorithm picks it up and properly shows it to all of my subscribers and other people in need of this information? I wish it wasn't like this, but sadly this is how KZbin works and I've experienced this many times.

[@Wyklepheph]

@@CobraCode hey, that’s fair. The only issue was I spent like 6 or 7 minutes watching the video before I realized the video wasn’t going to get into what the title makes it seem like it’s about so I kinda felt like a little robbed. It’s possible you stated what you’d go over at the beginning and I wasn’t paying close enough attention, so if you did my bad!

[@agoshable]

Wait, what? 150 MB for blank project? So it's 150 MB of air! Hilarious nonsense! Didn't know UE devs have such standards :).

[@CobraCode]

It's actually 90MB of the best shader code in existence + some other stuff :) All the things that make Unreal Engine look so much better than any other engine are in there.

[@jmvr]

​@@CobraCode but it's still an empty project, and it's not using any of those shaders and other code. At most, there's a crash handler, a window handler, and some OpenGL/Vulkan/DirectX handling. It'd be nice if Unreal didn't include any unused shaders/code in the build.

[@kuromiLayfe]

@@jmvrdon’t worry it is just the spyware they add for free in the engines assembly code

[@razorgmyt6772]

​@@kuromiLayfe found the unity dev

[@knuckles7410]

So you're fighting for 100megs with the risk of fucking up your project file for games that nowadays are close to 50 gigs? What's the point?

[@CobraCode]

Pretty sure you didn't watch the entire video since that is being addressed

[@BirbicusButticus]

Y'know, just because storage is a lot more abundant doesn't mean devs should roll around being wreckless with it, ffs! Games DO NOT need to be 100+GB in size!