Optimized Release Builds?

[michael.johnson]

When making a build in either release or development mode, I noticed that some assets aren't loaded from an optimized format. Materials for example are loaded from XML.

C# source code and fbx source assets are also copied, they don't seem to be used at least but why are they being copied to release builds?

Is there some hidden settings that I'm missing?

[silent]

Hi Michael,

Build tool currently works in very simple manner. You can manually configure it to exclude FBX and other additional files. We do have plans for future improvements (including packing into UNG, checking dependencies and so on), so don't worry - everything will be covered. Another potential big optimization is baking all the landscape layers into a singe one.

Compress XML to binary representation can slightly increase the loading times (but in case if you have thousands big node files). 

Please, feel free to post your suggestions what else can be done on build step :)

[michael.johnson]

I think at the very least source code should be omitted from the build step by default, why would you want to give users the whole source code of the game?

Every asset should be compiled into an optimized format, no need to compress an xml when you can serialize the data in a way the engine can quickly load in at runtime.

Additionally an option to pack every loose compiled file into a large container file. Ideally a good game build would only contain. Game.exe, Game.dat, DLLs.

[stas.denisov]

Yea, source data should be definitely excluded from builds and used only in compiled/object form.

[paul.abrams]

Personally whatever happens, I ask that we keep mod support in mind.  I've just now got the engine to test.  And am really hoping it's not as locked down as ue4 is, which is the whole point of me trying this out personally.  If there needs to be a better way to lock this down for optimization reasons, maybe it could be an option.  Including source might need to be optional as well.  Though i'm not really into C# personally am more into C++.  But I heard exposing C# allows for easier mod support for some types of games.