Packaging process：

In the UE5 project editor, open Project Management, locate the Packaging options, and add the names of the maps I wish to include in the build. As some of my levels are for testing or are ‘box art’ only, they are not included in the final game build. I have selected five levels: the start screen, the player’s room, the supermarket level, the player’s room after a successful game, and the player’s room after a failed game.

Next, go to the Project Settings and locate the Map options. Within the Map options, change the Start Map and Default Map. As I am using the first-person template included with UE5, the default map is the level from the template, so I need to change this to the level for my game’s start screen. This way, once the game has been packaged, opening the game will display the start screen rather than the template’s default map.

I encountered an issue during the final step of the build process. In the project editor, I clicked on ‘Platform’, selected ‘Windows’, and then built the game directly. Although the game built successfully, when I launched it, the NPC movement paths and the player’s movement path were still visible on-screen as small red dots, which significantly detracted from the player’s experience.

Issues and Solutions：

1. Based on my own research and the experiences of other UE5 developers, I have found that after selecting ‘Windows’, you must also select the ‘Shipping’ option. The ‘Shipping’ option removes the ‘Development Only’ elements from the game, which are not intended to be visible to players. Consequently, the movement paths of NPCs and players are removed.
2. After successful packaging, the cutscene turned into a black screen and failed to display. This was because I had named the folder containing the cutscenes incorrectly. In UE5, only if the folder containing the videos is named ‘Movies’ will UE5 automatically include it in the game package. If the folder has a different name, the videos cannot be included in the game package. I therefore renamed the folder and changed the video storage path. After repackaging, the cutscene was successfully displayed.
3. The player’s pick-up function stopped working after packaging. After reviewing the Blueprint for this feature again, I identified the cause. I had been using ‘Debug left mouse’, which is a development-only option. When I packaged the game, I selected ‘Shipping’ mode; as mentioned earlier, because I was using a development-only Blueprint, the feature was not included in the packaged game, rather than being non-functional. I changed ‘Debug left mouse’ to ‘Left mouse button’ and repackaged the game, and the feature was successfully included in the final build.