You probably don’t need this

Rivet provides an automated process for building Unreal dedicated servers without building the engine from source.

If you’re not using Rivet, you traditionally need to build Unreal Engine from source to build a dedicated server.

This is only needed if you’re using an Unreal Engine fork or need access to functionality that Rivet does not provide.

This guide will walk you through building Unreal Engine from source in order to build Linux dedicated server packages.

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Step 1: Install Visual Studio prerequisites

See official guide

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Step 2: Download the Unreal Engine source code

See official guide

  1. Connect your Epic account to GitHub
  2. Clone the UnrealEngine repository to a permanent location. Make sure you’re cloning the release branch. This will take a long time.

You will build the Unreal Engine source code in a later step.

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Step 3: Download and install the Unreal Engine cross-compilation toolchain

Download the cross-compilation toolchain corresponding to the version of Unreal Engine you downloaded in the previous step.

Download here

Make sure you have the correct version installed or else Unreal Engine will say it’s not installed in a later step.

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Step 4: Build the Unreal Engine editor

See official guide

  1. Install Visual Studio prerequisites
    • TODO: See Setting Up Visual Studio -> C++ Tools
  2. .\Setup.bat
  3. .\GenerateProjectFiles.bat
    • You’ll see a warning: Some Platforms were skipped due to invalid SDK setup:
    • Make sure that Linux is not listed here. If so, then step 1 was not done correctly.
  4. Open UE5.sln
  5. Wait for Indexing folder UnrealEngine to finish
    • You can see this by clicking the messae tab in the bottom left
  6. Set Solution Configuration to Development Editor
  7. Set Solution Platform to Win64
  8. Right click UE5 target in right sidebar and click Build
    • Takes 10-40 minutes depending on your hardware
  9. Right click on UE5 in the sidebar and click Debug -> Start New Instance
  10. Unreal Engine is built to at UnrealEngine\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UnrealEditor
    • Create a shortcut somewhere for quick access in the future

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Step 5: Build your project’s Linux dedicated server

See official guide

Once you have Unreal Engine built from source, open your project and package it for Linux.

  1. Select Platforms > Linux > Debug
    • If deploying to production, select Release instead. We use Debug here so we can catch any crashes while testing.
  2. Select Platform > Linux > MyProjectServer
  3. Validate the config looks like this: Linux server paltform config
  4. Click Platforms > Linux > Package Project
  5. Package the project to MyProject/Binaries/Linux/Server. This path is important since the Dockerfile we provide relies on it.

If the Linux option does not show up or gives you errors, you may have installed the wrong version of the Linux toolchain. Go back to Step 1 then restart Unreal Engine.