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Prerequisites

These are the minimum prerequisites to run Redwood locally. There are more when you are ready to deploy to a Kubernetes cluster either locally or to the cloud, but we recommend starting with these to support a faster development cycle.

NodeJS​

NodeJS is used for the entire backend infrastructure as well as the deployment scripts. It's required when deploying to a Kubernetes cluster, locally or remotely.

Installing Node​

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We require NodeJS v20; note that other versions are not currently compatible with Redwood.

While you can install NodeJS v20 using the official installer from https://nodejs.org, we prefer to use NVM (Node Version Manager). Both will work just fine; NVM just makes it easy to switch and upgrade your version of NodeJS. If you want to install using NVM but already have NodeJS installed using the official installer from https://nodejs.org, you will need to uninstall it before using NVM.

Once you have NVM installed, you can run the following command to install NodeJS v20:

nvm install 20
nvm use 20

Then make sure you can use the node executable:

node --version

Installing Yarn​

Once you have installed NodeJS, you need to install yarn, which is used to install dependencies and run scripts for the backend. We use version 4.10.3+, which you can download by running the following command in the RedwoodBackend directory:

corepack enable

Then make sure you can use the yarn executable:

yarn --version
4.10.3

Unreal Engine​

You'll need Unreal Engine to use Redwood. If you already compile Unreal from source, use that. If you don't, you can start with the Epic Games Launcher installed build. Eventually you'll need to compile Unreal from source when you deploy to Kubernetes.

C++ Compilation tools​

You'll need software to compile C++ since our plugins are written in C++. Depending on your development OS, you have different options:

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That's all of the current perquisites for now! You can now Install Redwood.