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This tutorial shows you how to set up Pixel Mine’s nFringe plug-in for Visual Studio 2008 to work correctly with Epic’s UDK.

Video Version

Subject: Setting Up An nFringe Environment for Epic’s UDK
Skill Level: Beginner
Run-Time: 12Min
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: Goes through the process of setting up an nFringe project.

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Written Version

Subject: Setting Up An nFringe Environment for Epic’s UDK
Skill Level: Beginner
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: One of many ways to set up a development environment for UDK.
Prerequisites: UDK and Visual Studio 2008

Acquiring The Software

1. Visual Studio 2008: If you do not have Visual Studio 2008, and are a student, you can acquire a free copy through Microsoft Dreamspark.
2. nFringe: Download and install nFringe.

Creating Your Game’s Visual Studio 2008 Project

A bit of this is near identical to SneakyToB’s guide. Credit to him for writing it up first.

1. Create a new UnrealEngine 3 Licensee Project
   1. Name: The name of your game.
   2. Location: The path to your UDKDevelopmentSrc folder
   3. Be sure to uncheck “Create directory for solution”
   4. Click OK
   
2. Configure your Visual Studio Project
   1. Right-Click on your project in the Solution Explorer on your left and click Properties
   2. Switch to the General Tab
      1. Change Game -> Target Game to UnrealEngine3 Mod
      2. UCC Path: Choose your UDKBinariesWin32UDK.exe path
      3. Reference Source Path: Choose your UDKDevelopmentSrc path
   3. Switch to the Build Tab
      1. At the bottom, enable Manually Set UCC output Directory
      2. Set the path to your UDKUTGameScript
   4. Switch to the Debug Tab
      1. Set Start Game Executable to your UDKBinariesWin32UDK.exe path
      2. Check “Enable unpublished mods”
      3. Optionally, Check “Log output to file” and set the log path to your UDKUTGameCompileLog.log
      4. Optionally, Check “Disable Startup Movies”
   5. In the Solution Explorer, right click your project name and select Add -> New Folder.
      1. Name this new folder “Classes”
      
3. Set up your Config files
   1. Right-Click your project name in the solution explorer, and select Add->New Folder
   2. Name this new folder “Config”
   3. Right-Click this new folder and click Add->Existing Files…
   4. Navigate to your UDKUTGameConfig folder and add only the Default*.ini files as a link. If you have any files prefixed with UT, do not add them!
      1. You must add these files as a link. To do so, instead of clicking the add button, click the arrow next to the right of the add button. Then select add as link.
   5. Optional – Automatically delete old UTConfig files every time you compile. This makes sure that your Default.ini files will always be used and forces you to edit the correct config.
      1. Right click your project name in the Solution Explorer, and click Properties
      2. Switch to the Build Events tab
      3. In the Pre-Build event command-line, input             del C:UDKUTGameConfigUT*
      
      

Now you are ready for development! Any new code files you make should be put into this “Classes” folder; however, we are not able to compile correctly yet. We now have to make a little code to set up the engine to use our custom code instead of loading the UTGame code. See the next tutorial in the series.

References

Credit to SneakyToB and his first guide to getting nFringe to work with UDK.