Visual Studio (VS) has long been a crucial tool for working on Unreal Engine (UE) projects using C++. Over the years, as UE has grown so has VS, and as both programs have evolved there are times when tweaks need to be made so that the two programs “play nice.” This page is meant to be a guide to those using older versions of UE and/or VS, and to give guidance on making the two programs run smoothly together.
Using Visual Studio 2017
Helpful Information
- In VS 2017, support for C++ is now part of optional workloads that aren't installed by default.
- For detailed instructions on adding C++ tools to your existing VS installation, see Install C++ support in Visual Studio on the Microsoft support page.
- If you have not yet installed VS or the Unreal Engine, see the Options for a New Visual Studio Installation section on our Setting Up Visual Studio for Unreal Engine page.
Using Visual Studio 2015
Helpful Information
- To configure UE 4.20 to generate a VS 2015 solution and project files, do one of the following:
- Select the version of VS you wish to use as your preferred source code IDE in the editor (from the editor preferences window)
- Modify the relevant section of the BuildConfiguration.xml file
- As of version 4.22, UE does not support VS 2015.
Using Visual Studio 2013
Debug Support
VS has support for extending the debugger with visualizers that allow easy inspection of common Unreal types such as FNames and dynamic arrays.
Installing the UE4 Visualizer for Visual Studio 2013
Copy UE4.natvis to either of the following locations:
- [VisualStudioInstallPath]/Common7/Packages/Debugger/Visualizers/UE4.natvis
- [UserProfile]/My Documents/Visual Studio 2013/Visualizers/UE4.natvis
Copying the file to your Visual Studio install directory may require administrator permissions.
Helpful Information
- Open source versions of UE (available through GitHub and Perforce) are integrated with VS2013. Earlier versions of UE integrated with older versions of VS aren't covered in this document.