Ready your engine - Initial setup - (Unreal Engine module)

Last updated on March 9, 2024

Introduction

To complete the Byte Wars tutorials for Unreal Engine, you will need Unreal Engine version 5.1.0 or later built from source. This tutorial will walk you through setting up Unreal Engine.

Important

Byte Wars is not compatible with Unreal Engine installed via the Epic Games Launcher. You will need to build Unreal Engine from source. Follow the Unreal guide to do this before proceeding with this tutorial.

Follow the flowchart below to ensure your Unreal Engine is set up correctly.

Check your engine version

If you already have Unreal Engine 5 from source installed on your computer, you can check its version from your Unreal Engine local repository folder in Windows Explorer, e.g., %ENGINEPATH%\Engine\Build\Build.version. See below for an example.

{
    "MajorVersion": 5,
    "MinorVersion": 1,
    "PatchVersion": 0,
    "Changelist": 0,
    "CompatibleChangelist": 0,
    "IsLicenseeVersion": 0,
    "IsPromotedBuild": 0,
    "BranchName": "++UE5+Release-5.1"
}

If the version is at least MajorVersion 5, MinorVersion 1, and PatchVersion 0, then you can move on to cloning and running Byte Wars.

Download and build your engine

If you don't have Unreal Engine version 5.1.0 or later built from source, this section will walk you through the process of setting it up.

danger

This process could take up to eight hours, depending on the speeds of your internet and hardware.

Set up Visual Studio

note

While you are free to use your IDE of choice, we recommend you use Visual Studio for simplicity, compatibility, and ease of use. The Byte Wars tutorials for Unreal Engine uses Visual Studio.

Unreal Engine is designed to integrate with Visual Studio as its default IDE. Follow the Unreal guide for setting up visual studio to work with Unreal Engine.

Download Unreal Engine source code

Follow the steps outlined in the Unreal guide for downloading the Unreal Engine source code. Ensure that you're downloading version 5.1.0 or later.

Build Unreal Engine from source

Follow the steps outlined in the Unreal guide for building the Unreal Engine from source.

Once you've installed and built Unreal Engine from source, recheck your setup with the flowchart in the Introduction.