Installing

Redwood requires using Unreal dedicated servers, which normally requires you to compile the engine from source.

To make onboarding as simple as possible, we provide a prebuilt version of Unreal Engine that includes closed-source versions of the Redwood plugin and backend. This means that you don't need to compile Unreal from source, but you will need to download the ~50GB (uncompressed) evaluation version. If you'd like to evaluate Redwood on your custom source of Unreal, send us an email and we'll be happy to discuss options with you.

note

The reason why this version of Unreal is much larger than the one Epic Games provides is due to having additional build targets. Epic only provides the Game target for Windows and Linux, but this version also provides prebuilt binaries for Client and Server targets for Windows and Linux. Compiling from source will be a smaller initial download than installing using this method, but you will end up using more disk space as you compile for those targets.

Running the Installer

If you followed all of the steps in the Signing Up section above, you should see that your GitHub account is properly configured and there is a link to the Redwood Installer under Step 3:

Click the Download the Redwood Installer link and run the RedwoodInstaller-Setup.exe file that gets downloaded. This will automatically install the Redwood Installer to your AppData folder (i.e. C:\Users\<your-user>\AppData\Local\Programs\unreal-editor-sync). When it finishes installing you should see a window similar to this:

You can find a detailed description of each of the fields below, but we'll continue with the installation.

1. Make sure Evaluation is set for the Branch.

2. Click the Browse button next to Install Directory and select an empty directory where you'd like to install the ~50GB (uncompressed, without debug symbols) version of Unreal that includes Redwood.

3. If you want to download debug symbols (an extra ~90GB uncompressed), check that checkbox. You can always enable this later and only the additional data will be downloaded.

4. While you're more than welcome to skip this step, we recommend disabling Windows Defender Real-time protection temporarily (or any other antivirus program you have that does real-time scanning) as it will slow down the install process drastically as all of the content being installed is being analyzed by Windows Defender.

   1. Open the Virus & threat protection center
   2. Click on Manage settings under Virus & threat protection settings
   3. Switch Real-time protection to Off

5. If the Installed Version says "Ready for install", click the Install button. This will take a long time, especially if you have a slow internet connection. If you see that the progress bar hasn't moved in more than 20 minutes, please reach out. If your internet cuts out in the middle of installing, you may need to start again, but reach out first as there may be a way to not start from scratch.

   warning

   Do not press any of the buttons or close the Redwood Installer while it's installing/updating (i.e. if you see a progress bar below the buttons). This may result in a corrupt install and you may have to reinstall it from scratch. You can minimize it however.

6. Once the installer is complete (the progress bar will disappear), press the Refresh button to verify the Installed Version matches the Latest Version (it currently doesn't automatically refresh).

Just so you know what to expect, these are screenshots of the various phases of installing/updating with the Redwood Installer; "Updating version" takes the longest:

success

The evaluation version of Redwood is now installed! Be sure to register the installed version, but you can now run the Start UnrealEditor.bat script in the directory you selected as Install Directory to start the engine.

Before you can set up a Redwood project, you'll need to download some Prerequisites.

Registering the installed version

For the Epic Games Launch and Windows Context Menu options (e.g. "Switch Unreal Engine version..." when right clicking a .uproject file) to work, you need to register the installed build. You don't need to do this manually however as the Redwood Installer has a Install to Registry button when you finish installing:

This will register the Install Directory with the key RedwoodInstalled.

Redwood Installer Fields

Branch - This is the upstream branch you're targeting. For the sake of this guide, you want this set to Evaluation. If you purchase a copy of Redwood and don't compile yourself from source, you would change this field to download the full version of Redwood when you get access.

Install Directory - This is where you want to install Redwood locally. It should either be an existing empty directory or a directory with an existing Redwood installation.

Installed Version - This is the Redwood version for the current value of Install Directory; sometimes the value is a message with further instructions.

Latest Version - This is the latest version that is found on the server for the selected Branch.

Include Debug Symbols - This is whether or not you want to download PDB and DEBUG files for the engine. This will increase the download size quite a bit, but is necessary for diagnosing crashes in the engine.