Welcome back everyone in this video we are going to show how to package a project into its own executable so that you can distribute your fine work to others so that they can play it on their computers. Now what is packaging? Well packaging is a process that ensures that all code and content is up to date and in the proper format to run on the desired target platform which for us is going to be our computers now, I am working on a Windows computer so that is the one that I will be making a package for. Now before we can package our project and ready it for distribution here, there's a few things we need to get in place I need to add some script just to make it so that we can see our mouse cursor and exit out of the game should we want to hit the Escape key and quickly exit out so we're going to take care of that first.

Area I'm going to work within is our w BP Start Menu, open up that guy and we're going to jump on over to the graph. And in some empty space, there should be some event nodes here by default and there's one called event construct that I deleted out between some videos. We're going to add it back in here, right click. It's called event construct. This is sort of the Event Begin Play for Widget Blueprints, you can think of it kind of like that. And right below this, I'm going to right click and I am going to get Player Controller.

And I'm going to drag out of here so that I can set show mouse cursor. The show mouse cursor property lives within our Player Controller. So we want to say that when we start up our main menu here our start menu that we yes We can see the mouse cursor in in our package project. This is something that you want to do before you package it. So the left click and drag, hit that C key, show mouse cursor. Let's Compile and Save that.

Okay, that one's good. Next thing I want to work within is our Start Menu level. Let's jump on over to there and then I want to access I have some lights in here for some stuff I was messing around with gonna delete that out quickly. I'm gonna jump into my Level Blueprint. Doc this along the top and in here, I'm gonna find some empty space, right click, type in escape. In off of this, simply drag out a wire and type in quit.

I want to make it so that if we press the Escape key what While we are in our start menu that we will quit out of the game. So let's Compile and Save that. So next thing we need to do is jump on over to our framework blueprints going to open up our BP Player Controller. And this is the Player Controller that is used when we are on level one. This one is not used in our start menu, if you remember right, just going to jump back to our Start Menu over here. In our world settings here, we are not using our BP Player Controller here, which is why I put the ability to quit out in the start menu Level Blueprint.

However, when we are in a level, I'm going to put our quit out functionality using the Escape key right here in our BP Player Controller. So I'm going to right click, type escape. drag out a wire, type in quit and that should be all we need. Do in this one. Now I understand that you can, you know, pause the game with your Player Controller when we are in there using this functionality. And you can press quit from the pause menu screen, but I just want to give players an easy way to quit out of their game as well in my package project.

Okay, so with that done. The next thing we need to do is access our project settings. So I'm going to exit out of here in here. And along the top toolbar, you've got your settings, we'll come into Project Settings. And over in your maps and modes right over along the left hand side, you need to set a game default map now this is the map that will open when you open up or you click on your executable for your project that we're about to create. So we want to make sure that this is set to our start menu.

We've got our editor start up map which is the one we're going to default when we Open up the editor. The game default map is the map that we default to when we start up our executable project. So make sure you set that to be Start Menu. Also, just as a quick sanity check, make sure you've got your Game Instance class set down here to be BP Game Instance. And then these are my other Project Map mode settings as well BP game mode gameplay is my default game mode. This is my default player, controller, etc.

So make sure those line up. Next thing we need to take care of is jump on over to our packaging settings right over here. And we've got this build configuration option over here that's currently set to be development. I'm going to change this to shipping now what is the difference? Well, when it's set to development, you can actually Things like console commands, which I didn't talk about in this course at all. But that's basically a way to add some cheats to your game if you need to, or access some information like frames per second, that sort of thing.

You can also see any print string nodes printed out to the screen if you are in build configuration development. However, if you are in shipping, you're basically saying no, my product is ready for the store shelf. I don't want to see any of that stuff. So I'm going to set mine the shipping because yeah, it's good to go right. Next thing we need to do is right below this, we need our staging directory. When we package our project, where do we want it to go?

I am going to be putting mine on my desktop. But if you click these three buttons, you can determine where you want yours to live. So just for easy access. I may recommend putting it on your desktop as I am and what else we got here. full review If enabled, a full rebuild will be enforced. Yes, I think that is a good idea to fully rebuild your project I would recommend doing so.

Next thing we need to do is determined our supported platforms. So next option down over in the project settings. Again, I am working on a Windows machine so I'm going to uncheck all platforms. and uncheck everything here except windows. With that cross our fingers here, hopefully everything should be good to go. Jumping back to our main editor coming under our file menu.

Right down here we have the option to package our project and you can see there's an exclamation point next to everything we said was not windows but windows does not have that exclamation point. Next to it. We can package for Windows 32 bit or 64 bit platform, I have a 64 bit platform. I don't know what you have newer computers should be 64 bit but older Windows platforms, you may want to go 32 I'm gonna go 64 and when I click on this is gonna say Where do you want to package your project once again, I'm gonna say desktop is just fine. And I'm gonna get this little message saying we are packaging the project for Windows 64 bits. Now this process can take some time depending on how many assets you have in your project.

You can show your output log if you want to see what it is all going through at the moment. I am going to pause the video here and come back when this is finished seeing a little bit. Okay, my project is just finished packaging up and I got a little notification in the lower right hand corner of my editor as well as actually heard a sound effect play as well when my project finished packaging, I have since to close out my output log here it had some legacy warnings dealing with some soul city assets that were not my problem. I'm not going to worry about those for now, but I am going to jump on out to my desktop. And what I'm looking for is this folder right here called Windows. No editors.

If you are looking to distribute your project to friends or family members, send, send them this whole folder of goods because inside of here is your project application. As well as some other folders. All you need to do to play your project is double click on this. There we see our main menu and if I was to just simply hit escape from here, it will back right out because we just added that functionality. I'm going to double click again. In order to actually interact with the button, I must click on the screen first.

So I'm going to click, choose level one. Let's give this a quick spin. At open, open, make sure everything looks like it is working. All right, frame rate seems to be going just fine. And everything seems to be in fine working order. So know that if you wanted to distribute your projects, send them this whole folder, you can't just send out this application.

These folders are needed as well. Guys, that is going to do it for this entire project. A big thank you all for joining me and all the kind comments that you have passed along. If you'd like to learn with me in the future. I would love to have you back again. I'm always creating new courses online, so feel free to seek me out again.

My name is Mr. Juan Dre. Thanks for learning with me, see you next time