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Locally Cooking a Mod

Cooking in ADK​

To cook a Mod locally, click the cooker icon on the top bar (same as Play in PIE).

Cooker Icon

This will open the Cooker Dialog window.

Cooker Dialog

(1) Select a Mod to cook and (2/3) determine if you will be testing this on a dedicated server. If so, make sure Windows Server is checked. Windows Client will cook all files, while Windows Server will only cook files required for dedicated server. (4) Set the number of cook processes to the amount of RAM you have available divided by five.

(Total RAM - Used Ram) / 5 = # Cook Processes

(5) Start the cook and (7) monitor the cooker output. If, for any reason, you need to (6) cancel the cook, do so by clicking the Cancel button.

When the cook finishes, it should open a File Explorer window to the packaged .zip files. If not, check the log output for any errors. If there are no errors, check ARKDevkit\ModTools\Output\<ModDirName> to see if the files were updated. If so, the cook succeeded. With the cooked zips, you may proceed to testing with locally cooked files.

Cooking outside ADK​

Interactive Shell​

There is a script located at ARKDevKit\ModTools\Scripts\CookMod.bat, you can run this to get an interactive shell that mimics the cooker in ADK.

===============================
====== Mod Cook Settings ======
===============================

Cook Platforms:

[1] Windows Client [Enabled]
[2] Windows Server [Enabled]

Mod Information:

[3] Mod Name [None]
[4] # of Cook Workers [3]

[5] Start Cook
[6] Exit

[ERROR]: A valid mod directory has not been entered

Selection:

Use the selections, primarily providing a Mod Directory Name, then select [5] Start Cook. Again, the cooker will place the files in ARKDevKit\ModTools\Output\<ModDirName>

Headless (unattended)​

Use the following command, filling in the properties appropriately, assuming you have ADK installed at C:\ARKDevKit

C:\ARKDevKit\Engine\Build\BatchFiles\RunUAT.bat BuildPlatformUGC -Windows -WindowsServer -Mod=ModDirName -NoCompile -OutputDirectory="C:\ARKDevkit\ModTools\Output\ModDirName\\" -AdditionalCookerOptions="-CookProcessCount=3"

Take note of the arguments and their options, filling in the values appropriately. For example, if the Mod directory name was MyMod, replace ModDirName with MyMod in both places (-Mod, -OutputDirectory).

Again, the cooker will place the files in C:\ARKDevKit\ModTools\Output\<ModDirName>