Skip to content
/ Nano Public

A tiny template for tiny Unreal games.

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

pfist/Nano

Folders and files

NameName
Last commit message
Last commit date

Latest commit

 

History

19 Commits
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Repository files navigation

Nano logo

Nano is a tiny project template for people who want to make tiny games with UE4 and UE5. It was created to support developers competing for the Tiny Award in Epic's Unreal game jams, which requires your game to be under 150 MB. The Tiny Award tends to raise a lot of questions in the community about how to make a game so small, so I created this template to give people a head start.

⚠ If you're going for the Tiny Award in an Unreal game jam, you'll have to skip Unreal Engine 4.27 because Nano won't get you below the 150 MB limit. It currently works with 4.26 or older, as well as Unreal Engine 5 Early Access.

Benchmarks

Here's how Nano compares to the Blank template that ships with UE4 and UE5. Numbers are based on the Shipping build configuration.

Unreal Engine 4.26

Blank Nano Space for your game
64-bit 211 MB 113 MB 37 MB
32-bit 176 MB 95 MB 55 MB

Unreal Engine 5 Early Access

Blank Nano Space for your game
64-bit 240 MB 127 MB 23 MB
32-bit N/A N/A N/A

How it works

To help achieve its small size, Nano comes out of the box with the following configuration:

  • Windows only
  • DirectX 11 & 12 only
  • Shipping build config
  • No editor content
  • Default game map set to Entry (an empty map included with the engine)
  • Shared material code & libraries
  • Compressed cooked packages
  • Oculus VR and Steam VR plugins disabled
  • Magic Leap plugins disabled
  • No prerequisites installer

Note: Excluding the prerequisites installer means your game may not work for players who have never played a UE4 or UE5 game before. This is fine for Unreal game jams because the rules don't require you to include it, but if you want your game to be accessible to more players, consider packaging a second build that includes the prerequisites installer.

There are ways to reduce the size of your game even further — such as blacklisting engine content — but this template focuses on modifications that have significant results while remaining safe and usable for most developers.

Installation

To use Nano, download the latest release and copy it to the templates directory (e.g. Epic Games/UE_4.26/Templates/). Once you do this, Nano should appear as a template option in the New Project dialog.

Unreal Engine 4

New Project UE4 screenshot

Unreal Engine 5

New Project UE5 screenshot

Packaging your game

Visual Studio is required to package your game with Nano. I use Visual Studio Community 2019.

If you're a Blueprint programmer like me, fear not! You don't have to use Visual Studio or write any C++; just install it with the appropriate components selected and you should be good to go.

Nano uses the Development build config out of the box so you can use Print String nodes, console commands, and other development-only features. When it's time to package the final version of your game, remember to set your build config to Shipping to get the smallest size!

Unreal Engine 4

Select Game development with C++ in the Workloads tab.

Visual Studio config for UE4

Unreal Engine 5

Select Game development with C++ in the Workloads tab, then add .NET 3.1 Core Runtime in the Individual Components tab.

Visual Studio config for UE5

Credits

  • The font used in the Nano logo is Playlines by PutraCetol Studio
  • Whomever at Epic Games wrote this article on reducing your package size
  • Heff, Tate Hartel, and AzorMachine from the #game-jam-chat channel on Unreal Slackers for their tips on reducing package size