Building On Centos
Contents
CentOS 7 - Unreal Engine 4 Guide for Release Branch (last updated at time of writing 4.15.0)
Foreword
This guide is being created to help troubleshoot problems that the Unreal Engine is currently having in regards to running on CentOS 7, for those people looking to have official tech support when running professional applications from Autodesk such as Maya. CentOS 7 is the best option, while not currently offically supported yet by Autodesk, Autodesk does have a long history of only providing support for the RedHat distro and recently CentOS. I'd also like to note that this guide is not an official document from Epic on running the Unreal Engine 4 on CentOS 7, but a user created guide to attempt to help this application succeed on Linux in general.
Also I'd also like to note -- not all computers are going to be able to run Unreal 4 as a game or editor. Even if you can install Centos 7 x64 on your computer, that doesn't mean your hardware will be power enough to run Unreal 4.
CentOS 7 Installation
If you need help because you've never used Linux at all or are just new to Centos, I suggest reading this article from Unixmen.
http://www.unixmen.com/linux-basics-install-centos-7-machine/
Starting with a Clean Slate
Installed CentOS 7 and only worried about the installation and formatting of the main system drive. The system was installed as a "Development and Creative Workstation" and included the following package groups were checked from the menu on the right side.
Compatibility Libraries Development Tools Graphics Creation Tools Office Suite and Productivity
Note - The user that was created during the install process was also made an administrator by checking the box.
This process should install 1538 packages.
Update
After rebooting I opened an console and ran
$ sudo yum clean all $ sudo yum update
Adding Some Repos
Reasons to have Repos
Now that the system has been updated it's time to add the additional repos EPEL, Nux-Desktop and Mono-Project. For those that don't know, a Repository is another source of linux packages designed for a specific distro. This allows you as a user to install software that doesn't offically come from CentOS or Redhat without having to build the software from source code. Offical repos come added to a system when you install to do thinks like provide updates. Extra Packages Enterprise Linux (EPEL) adds some additional packages that aren't included in CentOS 7 and have been tested by the Fedora Community for RedHat 7, such as mono and clang. The Nux-Desktop repo aims to bring better multimedia packages to Enterprise Linux includes programs such as Steam, vlc and other multimedia software that you'll find useful when working with the Unreal Engine 4, such as HandBrake to better encode videos produced by Unreal's Matinee. These repos work well together and trying to not overwrite the base CentOS 7 packages. This means that your software won't break because of library incompatiablities.
$ sudo yum install epel-release $ sudo rpm -Uvh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-1.el7.nux.noarch.rpm
And a special thanks to JKnife who has provided the community with repo that contains mono 4.2 and clang 3.5.
$ wget http://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/jknife/ue4deps/repo/epel-7/jknife-ue4deps-epel-7.repo $ sudo cp jknife-ue4deps-epel-7.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/jknife-ue4deps-epel-7.repo
Adding some software
After adding the repos, I installed the following.
$ sudo yum install steam vlc hexchat ntfs-3g mesa-libGLU libXScrnSaver
If you plan on having Autodesk Maya installed, then you should also run the following command to install some font's that aren't checked as dependencies when you install Maya.
note - Maya LT is not supported on Linux.
$ sudo yum install xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi libXp
Steam
I'm not sure I really have to explain Steam. It's the Steam client from Valve.
VLC
Installing vlc allows you to watch the videos created using Unreal 4 Matinee.
HEXChat
Installing xchat will allow you join the IRC chat at irc.freenode.net #UE4Linux
System Libraries
ntfs-3g is installed so you can see any windows drives on your system.
mesa-libGLU was installed because it is needed if you intend to use Blender. libXScrnSaver was needed by the Unreal Editor. **this could be due to my system having an issue with the some centos updates**
Installing your Video Card
Now it's time to install your video card, the open source video card drivers may work alright but often times better to get the closed source Nvidia and Radeon drivers, especially if you are using professional applications such as Autodesk Maya.
Please note that while some repos provide these graphics drivers in packages for CentOS 7, these repos may overwrite packages provided by RedHat, CentOS and Fedora and can effect the stablity of your system. Meaning - you may want to look at how to install the drivers by making a package for your system directly from the installers provided by Nvidia or AMD. This may mean you need to re-install the driver with every kernel update as well.
Installing Unreal Engine 4
Now that you have the system installed and the correct video card drivers and the case insensitive filesystem ready it's time to get the source and build Unreal Engine 4.
Getting the source
Created a directory to save the clean branch in my home Directory.
$ cd Documents $ mkdir Epic $ cd /home/$USER/Documents/Epic $ git clone https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine -b release $ cd UnrealEngine
note - on a clean install A dialog box popped up to input your github username and password because the Unreal Engine repo on github is private.
Getting the Dependencies
System Required Compilers and Dependencies
Getting Dependencies - if you are trying to go with what RedHat, Centos and Fedora provide to keep it simple and stable, which installs mono 2.10.8 and clang/llvm 3.4.2, Unreal Engine will not build for you. Both package versions are known to have some problems on Mac and other Linux distros. With the Additional repo from JKnife that I talked about earlier in the guide you can run the following to install what is needed to build Unreal Engine 4. (These commands also work if you've installed the official mono-project repo like I have)
$ sudo yum install mono-core mono-devel dos2unix cmake gtk3-devel clang
note - mono, gtk3-devel and clang all install additional dependencies.
Unreal Engine 4 Dependencies
Next you have to generate your Oauth token on github's site.
https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
Then export your Oauth key with the following command
$ export OAUTH_TOKEN=YourLongStringOfNumbersHere $ cd $ cd UnrealEngine $ ./Setup.sh
Now we can generate the make files in order to start building Unreal Engine 4.
$ ./GenerateProjectFiles.sh
It should now run and update the dependency files you need if they are out of date.
Building Unreal Engine 4
Since we're already in the correct directory, the follow command should be the last step in order to have the editor build in CentOS 7.
$ make
This could take a while depending on your machine. On an AMD FX 4150, I walk my dog, get some food, maybe watch a tv show and come back.
Running Unreal Engine 4 Editor
This step is one of the easiest steps but it's important to see what is working and what isn't working currently with Unreal Engine 4 on the linux platform.
$ cd Engine/Binaries/Linux $ ./UE4Editor
Learning From This
I still hope this helps people, and improves the Unreal Engine 4 Linux experience.