Clarify Plugin Installation

[Xenovore]

I grabbed the latest release build "SkookumScript-4.27.2-92997dc.7z" and unzipped it to the UE plugins folder "UE4.27\Plugins". UE finds it there, so I loaded up my project, enabled the plugin, and restarted UE. But then when I try to load my project again with the SkookumScript plugin enabled, it says it fails "... module 'SkookumScriptRuntime' could not be loaded..."

I've read through the install instructions on the main SkookumScript website, trying different things, but there's no clear solution to make the plugin work.

Any help would be appreciated, and for future reference, I suggest updating the .md file here (if not info on the website) with the details. (And putting the instructions directly in the "SkookumScript-4.27.2-92997dc.7z" file would make sense too.)

Thanks!

[error454]

Hello!
Well, it has been a minute since I've been in 4.27 and SkookumScript😅

From what I remember (and I very well could be wrong here). Installing the plugin in the engine, requires that all of the plugin binaries are built & good. Most likely what is happening here, is that back in July of 2022, I screwed up the release of the plugin and the SkookumScriptRuntime binaries didn't make it. I don't have a 4.27 environment anymore to verify.

I know that the plugin works perfectly as a project plugin in 4.27, since that is how I always used it/tested it. Meaning it gets installed into your project/plugins folder. Unfortunately this does require that you convert your project to a C++ project if it is not already 🤷‍♂️.

Sorry, but this stuff is somewhat old and janky, I'm really curious what your interest is with it coming up on 2025.

[Xenovore]

Hi, thanks for the quick reply!

I know that the plugin works perfectly as a project plugin in 4.27, since that is how I always used it/tested it. Meaning it gets installed into your project/plugins folder. Unfortunately this does require that you convert your project to a C++ project if it is not already 🤷‍♂️.

I did put the plugin in the Engine, since I have more than one UE project I'd like to use it with. I guess I'll have to drop in one of my projects and see if it will work from there.

Sorry, but this stuff is somewhat old and janky, I'm really curious what your interest is with it coming up on 2025.

My project has been in the works, very slowly, for a few years now. I did try to convert it to UE 5 but ran into a number of issues that ranged from speed bumps to show-stoppers. I decided it wasn't worth sorting out -- 4.27 already has what I need, and it works.

I've been coding everything with Blueprints, which are nice for a lot of things, but... not so much for others (as we all know).
So, I've toyed with the idea of using a scripting language a few times (and looked at SkookumScript in particular a couple times), but each time I felt like "Naw, I'll just deal with Blueprints". I'm finally to the point that I really want something better than Blueprints and not C++ (which I have a lot of experience with, but the iteration times with UE are annoying-ly slow).

Skookumscript seems like the sweet-spot. I know it's kinda been kicked to the curb, but I really wanted to give it a chance. And I'd love to see it continue as a game scripting language; it interests me way more than alternatives like Lua, or Verse. (I am not impressed with Verse so far, not to mention its (lack of) availability...)

So anyway, there's the story. =)

The alternative that I'm willing to try is to build the plugin from scratch from the repo source. But it's not clear to me how that works yet...

[error454]

Skookumscript seems like the sweet-spot. I know it's kinda been kicked to the curb, but I really wanted to give it a chance. And I'd love to see it continue as a game scripting language; it interests me way more than alternatives like Lua, or Verse. (I am not impressed with Verse so far, not to mention its (lack of) availability...)

I hear ya, I've been in the same place. One thing you might also consider is AngelScript:
https://angelscript.hazelight.se/
https://github.com/Hazelight/UnrealEngine-Angelscript

They have a 4.27 plugin as well. I haven't personally used them, but I have a colleague that is very enamored with the product and it sounds like it is dog-fooded very well (they use it in shipping products). It doesn't have the concurrency features of Sk (which to me is the big attraction) but it does seem much better supported and integrated - and at the end of the day is a much better alternative to pure blueprints.

The alternative that I'm willing to try is to build the plugin from scratch from the repo source. But it's not clear to me how that works yet...

Essentially when you install the plugin into the project folder, it guarantees that plugin gets recompiled. So this method is building the plugin from scratch. The only complication is that the IDE for the project was originally made using UE4 Slate, and so it was a separate project that has just been packaged up and had the binary included. We have a separate github repo for the engine source used to build the IDE - you don't have to build that from scratch although it does tend to have some quirks that a reasonable person might be inclined to hack on if they were going to be using it for an extended time.

[Xenovore]

Thanks for the heads-up on AngelScript, that does have potential (although it requires a custom fork of UE4). It's definitely not as succinct as SkookumScript, and yeah, lacks the features.

Oh and, I did try putting the Sk plugin in my project (and made sure it was removed from Engine/Plugins), but it resulted in the same error: "...module 'SkookumScriptRuntime' could not be loaded..." =/

[error454]

2 things come to mind.

1. Right-click on the SkookumScript folder and make sure it is not set to read-only. It's possible the binaries aren't able to be overwritten during compile.
2. Can you share with me the output of the visual studio build log?