Every single step in game development is hard as an elephant's butt. I thought creating Windows package will be one day adventure . Ha-ha.
Unreal Engine 4 is an amazing tool but sometimes it goes crazy and produces weird errors you would never fix without forums. Imagine you get an error with a long trace. BUT! Every single line refers to UnknownFunction. How can you fix a problem if even your debuger have no idea where it comes from.
I spent 12 hours to find the solution. And the solution were weird too. At first we need to download 3Gb of debug symbols. Then we need to attach Visual Studio to the editor process. Then launch the game and catch an error. With symbols installed we can finally open C++ code in VisualStudio. In this code we need to watch a data that now stored in function parameter, and it will be a blueprint's varuable name. Then we trace back and find blueprint's name in the same way. But it's not the end. After all this investigation we need to open blueprint the error comes from, manually delete variable and all it's references, create new one with another name and then... OMG. It's over.
I was so happy when packaging finally was done. But when I launched the game bugs attacked me again. My music visualizer, character's flashlight and localization systems were broken. My butt was on fire. I think I could fly to the Mars before Elon Musk just on the butt explosion force. I came too far and had no choice but fixing all that horrible bugs.
As I found my visualizer system was built on plugin that doesn't work in packaged games. Idk why someone made a plugin just for editor but whatever. I used another approach and built my music vis on the submix analysis system that works in packaged games.
Another problem with localization for my Russian comrades came from project's settings where we need to manualy add localization support for languages we use. This option was hidden in advanced settings part and I didn't notice it before.
And finally flashlight didn't appear in packaged game because for some reasons this option was disabled in it's point light's settings.
All fixes took me a while to do. So only yesterday, in Sunday, I started the alpha test among my friends. I know that if game works fine on my PC it can be absolutely broken on another PCs. When alpha testing will be finished I'm going to make an open beta-testing and then start Kickstarter campaign.
One of the problems with funding: Kickstarter doesn't work with Russian banks. I can't just create a fancy page on KS and work on taking backers attraction. I need some reliable agent who lives in USA or Europe. I must know that he or she will not run with game money when I get funded. Oh... I hope there are organizations that could help.
Today I made a footage of the second quest in Storoj. Fraps can capture packaged game and that's why it was possible. Quality is not good because I set a low resolution to have more FPS. Next time I'll film in 1440x900.