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Side-by-side Engines

In the preceding topics, you learned how to set up and configure the O3DE engine as either a source engine or a pre-built SDK engine. You also have the option of registering both engines in a side-by-side configuration. This is one way to isolate your engine source code development from your project development.

For example, if the engine source is in C:\o3de and the pre-built SDK engine is in C:\o3de-install, you can give each engine its own engine name so that you can register both in the O3DE manifest using the o3de script’s register command. To test your engine modifications, you can build a test project using the source engine project creation instructions, which builds the engine in the project directory. When you’re ready to update the SDK engine that your production project uses, you can build a new version of the SDK engine from C:\o3de using the INSTALL target. This updates the binaries in C:\o3de-install.

To update the name of an engine

  1. Open engine.json in the engine root directory and change the engine_name field.

  2. Register the engine again from that directory.

    scripts\o3de.bat register --this-engine

    scripts/o3de.sh register --this-engine

New projects that you create from this engine will use the new engine name. To update the configured engine for an existing project, open project.json in the project root directory and change the engine field to use the new engine name.