blueprint

[frosty heron]

saving is very crucial for a game, might want to fix that. Maybe make one from empty project

[dark drum]

As a complete guess, I would say you're not actually doing the saving bit correctly. It might even be as simple as creating a new save game object and overriding the saved data with a blank one. Or you have everything using the same slot name which means different actors override the slot leaving incomplete data.

[queen heron]

hang on, lemme look up at the project

[queen heron]

the Create Save node might actually get fired more than once, lets see...

[ashen narwhal]

Anyone know what going on here?

I am making a game which loops a dungeon but after each loop I want to improve the health of the AI but the function triggers but none of the new skeletons get the health buff.

I just get error "Accessed none trying to read property Skele Ref" (Skele ref, meaning my AI)

NOTE: the function is being triggered the manager blueprint, where I activate most events.

[queen heron]

here's the part where it saves into each slot the progress from each difficulty

[queen heron]

make sure that reference node is updated

[ashen narwhal]

Sorry I don't understand? Like the variable isn't live?

[queen heron]

the Skele Ref node may become Null after looping the level

which might explain why you get that error

how are you setting it?

[ashen narwhal]

oh I see, I don't know in truth. I just made a object reference from where one of the skeletons was spawned.

[queen heron]

here's the level blueprint of the first level that creates all the save game slots

[ashen narwhal]

I should add all skeletons who get spawned to an array and then apply the health buff to the array?

[queen heron]

you need "Get All Actors of Class" and promote the array input into a variable

[ashen narwhal]

Yep, I will give that a try

[queen heron]

you can't just set the object reference manually

the game has to find it in the level

[ashen narwhal]

oh I see. Thanks for the advice, I will give it a try.

[ashen narwhal]

Many thanks, by adding these nodes in, the buffs work as in intended.

[lofty rapids]

are you using the ref elsewhere ?

if not you can avoid the set all together

[ashen narwhal]

I don't think so, why? I mean yes for dealing damage and updating its variables but not in this blueprint.

[lofty rapids]

you should be able to drag right out of the out actors, and do a foreach

the reference is kind of pointless unless you use it somewhere else

[ashen narwhal]

What if I want to use it after this? I have plans to give other buffs.

Or should I just repeat the code with the new buff?

[lofty rapids]

i would get all actors anyways, i don't think that ref will be "live"

[lofty rapids]

probably repeat the code if the amount of that class has changed

or you removed one, added something to the game

[ashen narwhal]

ah ok, I will remove it then and keep the BP a bit more streamline.

Thank you, good spot.

[timid rock]

I have a custom gameplay tag source (ItemCategories, visible at top right), yet I cannot see any of it's tags. I have tried restarting the editor.

[lyric quiver]

Will this produce the same float for both outputs?

[lofty rapids]

i feal like it going to be two random numbers but idk

[dim agate]

Check by having it print the results.

[timid rock]

it will be different

[sonic crest]

@queen heron curious question. Why have it separated like this rather than in 1 save game slot

[timid rock]

Any node without an input and output flow (aka a "pure" node) is recalculated every single time something asks for it

[lyric quiver]

ok thanks

[steady night]

hey guys im using pawnsensing component how can i make it not able to se thru walls ?

[queen heron]

Does it not create different save files depending on the slot names?

[dim agate]

Pawnsensing is deprecated.

[steady night]

@dim agate oh so whats new then ?

[sonic crest]

Answering me with a question.
Thanks

[dim agate]

AI Perception.

[steady night]

@dim agate ah okey, i never seen that 1 before ill take a look at it, but im my case using pawnsensing any way to make it no se thru walls ?

[dim agate]

I haven't used pawnsensing so not sure but I think you're better off restarting with AI Perception anyway.

I think if you have hearing enabled it can make it seem like it's "spotting" you through a wall, when using pawnsensing.

[steady night]

aye but in this case im behind a cub and it sees me

but i guess doing own logic is fair

[dark drum]

It does but it's not ideal having to create a new file just to store 1 var in it, especially when they can easily be put into a single save game object.

Stuff like your settings should really go in a single SGO, of which the slot name can just be settings.

[maiden heath]

Hi guys, I have a question, is there a tutorial or documentation for doing a remote control. Because my idea is to make the "UserWidget" commands on another device (e.g. mobile phone or tablet)

[frosty heron]

blueprint is not the place for that imo

[maiden heath]

you say it's more convenient in C++?

[frosty heron]

I don't think it's possible in blueprint unless someone wrote a plugin in cpp and expose it to bp

if there is someone doing it, I really doubt there is something specific like that in market place

[spark steppe]

that's a pretty vague question to begin with

you can do some network stuff with BP only tho

[frosty heron]

Unreal Replication system and Http request only right?

not sure if there's something else on the menu

[spark steppe]

and UDP with an actor for the UDP connection

and probably there's also something for pure tcp

and there's websocket stuff, too (which kinda is tcp after all, just not raw)

[spice shell]

Hey gang, I'm seeing weird results spawning an actor with a Transform set from saved data, which I saved using Get Actor Transform - it's coming out at spawn with a totally different rotation. I'm trying to debug and am seeming to find that when saving, I'm getting a Quaternion saved into the transform somehow (even though a Transform struct has a Rotator?)

Is there something I'm missing about the way that fetching a Transform works vs how it works when spawning?

[errant osprey]

Hey, I'm trying to detect any objects above my character's head and below my character's feet using a sphere collider, but I wanted to know what is the best way to store those detected objects, in a set, array, or a map?

[lofty rapids]

i'm a big fan of arrays

[snow oasis]

I was messing around with a Lightsource that was attached to my Player character blueprint, I was just kind of flipping things on to see what they did and I changed the movability to 'Static' and as you would probably guess I wasnt able to move anymore so I changed it back but when I pressed play again my character blueprint was completely broken with an warning reading "CollisionCylinder has to be 'Movable' if you'd like to move it with CharacterMovementComponent" except the Collision Cylinder was set to Movable and now for some reason my camera is displaced to the coordinates of 0,0,0 of the world space but in the Blueprint it was still using the relative location of the Capsule.

Has anyone else Encountered something like this? if so help would be appreciated.

[frosty heron]

you get the warning when you try to move something that is not set to "moveable". Try to show your CollisionCylinder mobility

if that's already set to moveable, look for any Instance of the class in the world. Then make sure that they are also not set to static

[snow oasis]

It is Set to Movable along with the ones in the the world.

I did google search it and the only related results were from a few years ago that just said it was a bug that should have been fixed with 5.1

They also said to fix it they had to copy and paste their stuff into a new Character BP which I can definitely do but if there are any shorthand fixes I'd rather try that first.

[frosty heron]

I am not aware of such bug or have ever encounter one. If you already set the class to moveable along with the instance placed on the editor, then I have no more clue. Hopefully someone else know

[snow oasis]

Its fine thanks for the Input anyways.

[dry sleet]

mobility just... sucks

so many weird quirks

and bugs

but are you placing the player manually?

or spawning via Player Start?

[snow oasis]

I tried both and both are the same

I’ll just remake the character BP when I sit down to work on it again.

I now know not to ever fuck around with Mobility ever again.

[midnight wedge]

So I have a system in place that works as such: enemies will enter a takedown state, and you hit the takedown key while aiming you throw them to the ground, pin them, and are able to shoot other enemies while they are pinned. Releasing the aim key causes you to automatically finish them off. My problem is that the animation extends out of the capsule, and thus the camera boom is displaced from the character leading to the character being either on the left or right of the screen depending on the direction you aim. I've tried messing with socket and target offsets, actual boom position, and switching to using root motion, but nothing seems to be working. Any ideas?

(Let me see if I can get a vid real quick)

[queen heron]

soo, this is a bit weird
the triggered wire goes where it should depending on the boolean's value
but for some reason, walk speed is run speed and run speed is walk speed

walk speed is 200 and run speed is 700

and I even set the default max walk speed to walk speed float at the event begin play

[frosty heron]

not saying it's the solution but root motion should drive your capsule (assuming the root is animated)

[midnight wedge]

Normally it does, but since the animations are paired root motion causes the two to desync

[queen heron]

issue is now fixed, I removed the variables from the Current output and put "Get Max Walk Speed" from the character movement instead

I still don't see why was that happening tho 🤔

[frosty heron]

looks pretty good apart from the camera position. What if you make the collision bigger instead when doing take down? because the transition looks pretty smooth already.

[midnight wedge]

didnt think of that!

hmmm doesnt seem to affect anything

Attaching it to the root bone almost works, but it still feels icky (+ theres some funky fresh jitter)

[lost wolf]

how are you pairing your animations

we call it syncing

and it doesn't really affect anything besides the fact that the slave is synced to the master's animation

[midnight wedge]

I have a point attached to the player character that the enemy is warped to with the correct rotation

Then both are played simultaneously

[celest trench]

Does anyone know why my scope would attach like this when both the attach socket and the mesh itself are 0 on any axis for rotation? If I don't attach to the socket the orientation is fine. But the socket is 0,0,0 in the last pic so why would it end up rotating it?

[celest trench]

If I don't attach to socket, you can see the scope works just fine. I don't understand why the socket rotation is off even though it's all 0

[lost wolf]

so the issue is that the camera stays in place when you play montage ?

[midnight wedge]

Yes, and root motion borks everything it seems so Im trying to find an alternative

[lost wolf]

a montage is not meant for gameplay animations

well

it might work

but i would expect it to have issues exactly like this

i think playing a montage is more like playing a static animation on your character mesh but does it actually move your entire actor root

because the camera should be a parent of that

[midnight wedge]

It only does if you have root motion enabled on your montages. I use that quite a bit for dodge and non-cancellable attacks with forward movement (a-la darksouls)

[lost wolf]

does that fix your issu

a synced attacked will not be cancellable

unless if you break out of the montage but then you have to deal with transitions

if you would implement a normal swiping attack with a single actor would you also do it as a montage

[midnight wedge]

Oh yeah its not, my b I was ramblin about stuff that doesnt apply rn

[midnight wedge]

Yeah, thats how I implemented punches

[wicked ermine]

Is “Ultra Dynamic Sky” the best sky and weather in the Unreal Engine 5, or is there another, better package?

[lost wolf]

if that animation would rotate and move your character mesh from the root position wouldn't you have the same issue that the camera would end up in a different location after playing the attack

[midnight wedge]

Though those all use rootmotion

[lost wolf]

try making it use root motion on the parent

and let motion warping position the slave

[midnight wedge]

No, the player returns to the initial location

[lost wolf]

or just author your synced animation like that

[wicked ermine]

Is “Ultra Dynamic Sky” the best sky and weather in the Unreal Engine 5, or is there another, better package?

[thin panther]

reading the #rules and not crossposting is pretty good

though I havent heard of anyone talking about anything better than UDS

It's a very highly reccomended procduct

[wicked ermine]

Ok thanks 👍

[wicked ermine]

What product do you recommend for forestry?

[thin panther]

none

[dire oyster]

hey, is there a way to disable capsule rotation during root motion as I'm only interested in translations

[wicked ermine]

What about Brushify - Forest Pack?

[midnight wedge]

It helps a bit, but theres still a bit of an offset. Also causes jitter when aiming to the right for some reason

[minor pasture]

It seems that I cant get the "SkeletalMesh" component as a child of the root component when the construction script is executed in editor. I can get the rest since they're from C++. Is there any way at all be able to get the SkeletalMesh from the Root Component?

[dire oyster]

my skeleton root has zero rotations but the capsule component rotates a bit when I play the animation as if to adjust to the overall animation. isn't it supposed follow the root 100% ?

[frosty heron]

wdym?

just drag and drop skeletal mesh to construction script?

[minor pasture]

this is for an internal tool, there could be multiple skeletal meshes, I want the script to be able to just detect how many there are and go on from there

[dire oyster]

what is that subtle wiggle during the animation

on the capsule

[frosty heron]

what's the actual goal here, you want to get all the skeletal mesh in the bp?

[minor pasture]

yes, but specifically while in the blueprint editor

[frosty heron]

@minor pasture

[minor pasture]

that will only return components that are created in C++ when run in the constructor script on compile

[frosty heron]

Oh Constructor?

thought you write Construction script

well constructor runs before the game even runs

[minor pasture]

oops yea construction script

[frosty heron]

You want to ref your BP skeletal mesh component in your C++?

This is how I get ref of bp comps in my cpp.
I declare the comp in c++ but it's not set.
It get set in the construction script in the bp class

if I get what you mean

[dire oyster]

root's getting fractional values on export yikes 😬

[frosty heron]

@minor pasture I got everything here in the construction script

[minor pasture]

does it work when you just press compile?

[frosty heron]

what compile?

you mean build from IDE?

I thought we want to do this in bp land

[minor pasture]

this

[frosty heron]

Oh yeah, it works

like why wouldn't it get your BP comp? there's no reason that it won't

[dapper nest]

because you're using finterps wrong. The current value should be the player's current max walk speed, not the variables you put

[queen heron]

yeah.... learned that lesson.... get current value of what you're setting, not what you've prepared

[dapper nest]

yeah pretty much :)

glad you figured it out

[olive sedge]

hi!
is there any way to get the screen size in PX of a widget?

[midnight wedge]

Lezgo gamer I found an incredibly scuffed solution where I constantly update the socket offset of the camera based on the camera's yaw😎

[lost wolf]

if it works it works

[midnight wedge]

Hell yea

The thing is it feels way smoother than it has any right to

[topaz cave]

Is the EColorVisionDeficiency defined as a BlueprintType?

Or can you not create Blueprint variables as that type?

[ancient topaz]

Good afternoon, I really need some help. I want to create a single widget that displays details about the items a character interacts with. The problem is that I can't change the images in the widget, because the image variable that I have set as the image doesn't allow me to load anything from the actor into it.

[opal spindle]

When I switched to my second character, my on-screen button did not work for the second character, but when I switched back to the first character, it worked.

[faint pasture]

What type is that spider man reference?

[hushed berry]

Hello! Is there a way to make this somehow work? I want to Set each button with the corresponding name, but from what I understand It won't work this way as "for each loop" executes until it finishes.

[brazen merlin]

use the Completed pin, not a sequence?

[sweet swan]

I'm trying to dynamically set a rest collection on a GeometryCollection component in a blueprint actor and the mesh doesn't show up, even though it returns the correct asset name when logging as shown. I've seen others with this issue like in here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/dynamically-set-geometry-collection-chaos-physics-values/509907/9

Works fine if I set the rest collection in the component manually. Anyone have any ideas?

[hushed berry]

Doesn't completed fire when the whole loop is finished? Wouldn't I have the button names set to none?

[sweet swan]

what are you trying to accomplish?

[hushed berry]

I want to get a reference to a button from one array, and assign to it a name from another array

[sweet swan]

it looks like you want to set the name for each of those info boxes, instead of the 2nd for each loop drag out from your Names list a get node

[hushed berry]

Nice! That worked

[sweet swan]

and make the array of Text type instead of Name type and you won't have to convert them

[hushed berry]

Didn't see the answer but the previous message helped 😄 Thank you very much.

[junior prairie]

I'm trying to apply some fixed knockback to my enemy actor, so I'm using a timeline and set actor location with some vectors to accomplish it. The issue I was running into was I wanted the actor to get knocked back through a group of the same actor (for a horde shooter), but they would sometimes clip into walls and get stuck. So I set Sweep to true, and they no longer clip into walls but now they don't go through the other actors. I ended up with something like the image below which has the actor move through the other actors but it still sometimes gets stuck in walls. Is there any better solution for this?

this is how it looks in practice, as you can see the enemies sometimes clip into the walls

[shy matrix]

I feel like using a timeline for this is a bit like looking for trouble because it will keep moving your actor independently of anything else. Perhaps Launch Character would be better suited for this. In any case, to allow the hit enemy to not be blocked by other enemies you could play around with collision profiles instead of changing collision settings: during the push back you could temporarily set a collision profile that ignores only pawns.

[junior prairie]

I tried to work with the collision channels but they always seem to still collide with other actors no matter what I changed. I'm using the timeline mostly because a physics based knockback using Launch Character just never seemed to produce a stable, consistent result

but it's possible I just don't know how to best use it

[stuck sentinel]

what is the problem here

[verbal kayak]

flipped normals

[junior prairie]

Also I'm realizing that by setting the collision to physics only, Sweeps are no longer enabled, making checking that setting useless

[stuck sentinel]

wdym

[shy matrix]

Doing it with a collision profile should work but it would require adding a custom profile also to the other enemies now that I think of it, else they will still collide

[verbal kayak]

faces are wrong side

[stuck sentinel]

how to fix

[verbal kayak]

https://www.occasoftware.com/blog/blender-how-to-flip-normals u can try this

also u can enable the normals facing mode in blender settings somewhere

one of those tooltip things in blue on right top corner

then it will show you what dir the faces are pointing

by default blender shows double sided material as its default mesh view

ofc, you could just enable double sided in unreal material to fix that but I think it will not apply well in all situations.

[shy matrix]

About launch character I know what you mean and thats kind of the point of it: you let physics handle the collision for you. Having a timeline means that no matter what is in between your start and end position, the enemy will still forcefully be pushed back. But maybe that's fine for your game, so I would first and anyway try to solve the collision issue

Was just doing some research and found this
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Collision/IgnoreActorwhenMoving/

Maybe worth a try

[junior prairie]

Yeah for this particularly game mechanic, I wanted it to be consistent knockback that moves through other actors but doesn't go through walls

I'll try that!

[shy matrix]

Thing is, you'll have to most likely set this also on the other enemies, just like you would have to do with the collision profile

[junior prairie]

yeah I should be able to swing that

will keep you posted

[sage lagoon]

My latest forum post after a while:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/traditional-rpg-random-enemy-encounters-ue-5-3/1677390

[junior prairie]

you beautiful genius!

this worked like a charm

[rich ferry]

I have a system to place a decal at the endpoint of a projectile path, but it doesn't seem terribly accurate. I can verify the projectile prediction is perfect (the white line), but the decal seems to "snap" to certain positions without closely following the given location. You can see here the difference between the red ball where the projectile landed and the decal. It's not consistently off in any one direction, the inaccuracy will vary. Any ideas?

(@scarlet root wanted a look at this convo)

[waxen fog]

how can i access properties of a child actor component in the parent component event graph?

[rich ferry]

The component should have a "get child actor" node, or similar

I can get you the exact name in a sec if needed

[rich ferry]

Yeah it's a blue oval node, just like grabbing any other variable

[whole jay]

I know this is probably asked often, but where can I find a good resource for learning UE5 BP as a near complete beginner? My boyfriend sent me SmartPoly but then criticized him for using casting instead of interfaces and like 10x more for not being efficient etc, I'm really trying to find something that teaches Blueprint and not just specific "how to open a door using inefficient casting" tutorials (but having those in there as well is good)

[thin panther]

casting is by no means inefficient

[rich ferry]

Realistically, casting is fine as long as you're not doing it repeatedly, like on tick or something

[thin panther]

but the best beginner resource is in the pins of #ue5-general

[thin panther]

even casting on tick is perfectly fine

it is not an expensive node

[rich ferry]

ah

Then where the hell does all the aprehension come from lmao

[thin panther]

it just gets heavy in memory cost if you cast to an unloaded class that contains asset references

[rich ferry]

ah

[thin panther]

as you may have guessed from the above, having a base class with no asset references, but the code you need can virtually nullify this

Interfaces are the good one when you need to decouple things, the behaviour isn't reusable enough for a component, and the functionality needs to apply to a range of base classes

for instance, interaction

[whole jay]

He said using interfaces is typically more efficient and better because you can call to a specific part of a blueprint, but also have a section in your character BP that is for something like, "press F to interact" and then call to that using line tracing
While smart poly had you setup an F key and cast for each individual BP

And he said "If you have a blueprint for example that's really large, and then you cast to it, it has to load it again each time your interact with it and make your game lag"

[thin panther]

that's not true

that load only ever happens once, if the class is unloaded, and remains for the duration of the play session

granted using casts is bad for interaction systems, but for a different reason

[whole jay]

When should you use casts vs interfaces? I know like, for something similar to "press F to interact" is better with interfaces

This is the code he was criticizing

The highlighted stuff I did myself

[thin panther]

casts are great when it can feasibly hit in your inheritance structure. Take a weapon for example, you could have a base weapon with a function called attack, and then implement it on your subclasses. Then to make your weapon attack, you may just cast to the base class and call the function.

Interfaces are good when you don't have that hierarchy. An interaction could feasibly apply to a weapon base, an NPC, a container, a vending machine, a door, a window, a vehicle etc.
An interface is better in this instance as it doesn't care what the class is

[whole jay]

So like, creating a base attack function, and then casting to that blueprint and multiplying damage etc based on the specific weapon?

[thin panther]

sort of, though your weapons could just handle this themselves

[whole jay]

Could you not also do that with interfaces?

[thin panther]

you could but there is little point

it's more work, for something less efficient

an interface can replace a cast anywhere you want. It just shouldn't

[whole jay]

Why is there so much discourse with using casting? I see they have a bad rep of them creating hard references (which I don't really know what that means in terms of performance)

[lunar sleet]

It means nothing for you, don’t worry about it until it becomes a problem

[whole jay]

But you can see why this creates a block when trying to begin learning because x person says cast, z person says don't cast and use interface, and it's hard I guess to find a good point to start and which references are good or inefficient or true about it

[thin panther]

The bad rep happens because nearly all of the people creating the tutorials are beginners, and have no clue what they're on about, or how to spot the bad in what they know

There's 0 barrier to entry to post a tutorial on YouTube

so this leads to popular myths circulating and circulating

[lunar sleet]

Premature optimization is your enemy and the cast perf impact is overstated. If and when you get to the point of it becoming a problem, which you will determine through actual profiling rather than guessing, you can refactor your code as needed

[buoyant moat]

Aside from perf hit, casting usually hints at bad design

[thin panther]

Hard refs can very much be a problem, when they're referencing assets. Assets are heavy. You still get the hard ref problem otherwise, but it's effects are negligable, as you're loading some extremely light things
Typically if you find yourself using a cast chain, it can be a good interface candidate. Instead of going cast to door, no, cast to chest, no, cast to player, it is a good candidate for an interface call.
Soft refs are another way to avoid the hard ref thing. If my blueprint needs to choose from 4 meshes for something, but only ever uses 1, a soft ref ensures that the only one that is loaded is the one I want at the time.

[thin panther]

Not at all, both of those things are categorically false

[verbal kayak]

hmm

It all depends, there is some use for casting but yeah simple "tasks" would be interfaced

[buoyant moat]

I disagree.

While you can use it and there are cases where it is necessary, most of the time (and what you will end up finding in those types of tutorial) the data is not injected as a dependency. If you use composition with Actor Components or indirection via BPI, you shouldn't need to do that

[thin panther]

You can't fight an engine that was built on OOP

[whole jay]

https://tenor.com/view/thanos-memoji-gif-23490017

[thin panther]

Inheritance and casting is fine when you use it where you're meant to

[verbal kayak]

yes exactly

[thin panther]

You obviously should put reusable behaviours in components and use interfaces for class agnostic behaviour

[verbal kayak]

👍

[thin panther]

But when you've got something limited to a certain type of something, it's a perfect candidate for an inheritancy chain

(though don't go too mad with that, also for performance reasons)

(super deep inheritance trees for the sake of it slow down a GetActorOfClass tenfold)

[whole jay]

What do you mean by an inheritance chain? What would be an example of this when using casting?

[rich ferry]

Yeah if you know factually that a function will only ever interact with one kind of object, casting is fine. There's nothing to be agnostic about.

[verbal kayak]

parent bp which has child and that child has another child an so on ->

[thin panther]

So basically going something like Weapon_base, Weapon_rifle_base, Weapon_SniperRifle_Base, Weapon_SniperRifle_50cal_base, etc. etc.

indirection for the point of indirection is pointless

[verbal kayak]

I've noticed more I use unreal engine, the less I cast 😄

[thin panther]

I noticed the more I use the engine, the less BP i use :P

[verbal kayak]

that is just awesome

[rich ferry]

Very true

[lofty rapids]

i cast like crazy, still have not learned interface yet

[verbal kayak]

c++ has only entered my picture last year 😛

[rich ferry]

There's not much to learn, just read the official doc page on interfaces and you'll know how they work.

[lofty rapids]

i try to not atleast cast on tick

just cast on begin play and use a reference

[rich ferry]

Yeah thats a good way to do it

[verbal kayak]

yeah even default unreal template bps do that

[trim matrix]

casting on tick wouldn't be bad anyways

"Casting once or every frame don't make any difference. Casting in bp loads the object into memory already (because of the hard ref). If the object are already loaded then there is no more price to pay.

Tick is bad or Casting is bad are myths from youtubers. Check the pinned article of this channel "

[lofty rapids]

great because i use it all the time, and the performance isn't bad

[stuck sentinel]

please help

i already changed the wheel radius

[whole jay]

So I'm watching a video by Reids Channel and what he says is that you want to use casting whenever you are having code only interact with something within a hierarchy, but to use interfaces when you want that functionality to be able to interact with things outside of a specific hierarchy, for example if you want to make it so that a projectile recolors only furniture, you would use casting, but if you wanted to be able to recolor furiture, pawns, etc to use interfaces

But the question I have is that like, in what kinds of cases would you want a functionality only to be limited to a certain hierarchy?

For example making an attack function for your weapon, wouldn't it be better to have an interface for damage instead so that you could create a variety of functions for damage?

Like fire would be outside of the weapon hierarchy

(mind you i am a beginner so if something i say doesn't make sense or seems simple i am learning )

[thin panther]

an attack can end with an interface call

an attack doesn't mean damage though

your overriden attack on a sword means swing

your overridden attack on an RPG means shoot an explosive projectile

your overridden attack on a rifle means shoot a line trace

then you could use your damage interface on the thing you hit because damage is class agnostic, launching an attack isn't

[stuck sentinel]

pleaseee help

[trim matrix]

we can't help for everything... an entire car system is too big and complicated

[stuck sentinel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6vvnLRzjvY 12:45

its a 15 minute video its very simple just the collision why are the wheels going through the ground

wheels rotate correctly the car moves corretly its just that the collision is scuffed

[lunar sleet]

it’s very simple
lol

Collision can be quite complex, pun intended

It might not even be a collision issue. You might just need to raise the car’s mesh within its bp

[wraith loom]

How do I use the Z-pin for an Input Action? The swizzle modifier allows me to use the Y-pin, but is there a way to use Z?

[foggy escarp]

Make sure that it's the type for 3d

[wraith loom]

It is

[foggy escarp]

Do you have a separate input action for each direction.... Forward, right, up?

[wraith loom]

No, I know I could do it that way, but I it would be nice to have it all in one input action. Right now I have one input action for left right forward backward, but I want to add up and down.

[foggy escarp]

Keyboard?

[wraith loom]

Yeah

[foggy escarp]

So for up/down, I think it's swizzel zxy or the other one

[wraith loom]

These are all the options.

I can just add a seperate input action it's fine

[foggy escarp]

Okay, I've done both and find it more free to have separate.
But you would choose swizzel modifier and then it gives the option with the modifier for the type.

[wraith loom]

Ah okay thanks.

[frosty heron]

Damn this got published in official learning site?

using player character too as example 💀

[remote meteor]

there are certainly good places where interface would make sense, though not alot of it..

🗿

[frosty heron]

Definitely but now I get where the Stop Casting myth articulates

[gentle urchin]

Didnt you know that casting was bad

Which rock have you been hiding under lol

I invented the "Interface pattern ™️" to solve all casting issues forever

[silent stag]

Hey, i want to create a train that follows a spline path, but from what I've seen, they often use the tick function to make the train follow the path. However, this cause performance issue. Is there a better way to make this?

[gentle urchin]

Tick is the best way to do it

You want to update the train every frame

To make it look smooth while moving

[silent stag]

this is not a answer my question

[gentle urchin]

Tick as an event in itself doesnt cause performance issues

Its whats put on there

And if it needs to be there

Anything interpolating smoothly must be done on tick

[faint pasture]

The first question to answer is, do you want the thing following the spline to be in a different position every frame?

If the answer is yes, then it will be getting updated on some tick somewhere. If you don't need it to be updating all the time, just temporarily while the movement is happening over a predetermined amount of time, use a timeline.

Timeline is effectively a temporary tick with attached curves that can do things.

[remote meteor]

#blueprint message
gonna slap this here again and again..

[faint pasture]

Tick is perfectly fine and is 100% necessary for things that need to update per frame. That is pretty much the definition of tick, it is the thing that happens per frame.

When people say that using tick is bad, what they really mean is using tick for stuff that doesn't have any business being on tick is bad.

Position updates pretty much by definition want to be updated every frame

[gentle urchin]

You could move the workload to the gpu but

Far less control

If its many many trains and carts youd probably benefit from aggregated tick

[silent stag]

Thank you

[solid vault]

why does this not work ?

[silent stag]

It's only one or two train but it's multiplayer game and when i test it with tick on my level it's effect my fps already

[solid vault]

it moves forward and backward but left or right only hop in place

[dark drum]

Then you need to look at the logic used to update the train. Are you having to do a lot of calculations to work out its new position along the spline?

[gentle urchin]

If its just a train and no carts that should be just about 2 vectors interpolating per train

Nothing that should chug performance

[dark drum]

Use one launch node. Using two is redundant as you can just plug the Y into the first one.

[solid vault]

ahh oky

[prisma walrus]

Requesting assistance with the following: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/creating-and-loading-a-game-save/1678158/2

[dark drum]

What's the retriggerable delay for? Seems redundant as the update pin updates each tick when fired. (Also you should avoid tiny delays, I personally don't go less than 0.01)

[remote meteor]

assuming your PlayerPOS is correct, you want to use its location,
unless the location is always relative to CharacterRef, you dont have to transform it

[silent stag]

thats custom event , retriggerable delay for making it like tick

[dark drum]

Like tick is worse for performance than actual tick. 😉 Also, as I mentioned, the update on the timeline updates each tick anyway so what's the delay for? It looks redundant.

[prisma walrus]

Hi, thanks for assisting! If I change it to the following, the effect is the same unfortunately

[silent stag]

I will remove that and move all to tick function. One last question when I work on the project for more than a week, fps drops a lot. It gets fixed when I delete the save file. Is it normal for this to happen?

[dark drum]

When you say the save file are you referring to saved game data?

[silent stag]

yes

this saved

[dark drum]

Oh the 'Saved' folder. It's hard to say but it could be large auto saves.

[prisma walrus]

This is the Player POS btw (I've already tried moving it higher to no avail)

[silent stag]

Thank you

[stuck sentinel]

i am

[hexed stirrup]

Hi there, is there a way to access CameraBoom's Enable Camera Rotation Lag via a blueprint?

[frosty heron]

Should be. Get a ref to the camera boom then type it

[lusty shard]

Pros and cons of game mode vs game instance for storing variables?

My understand is that game instance is for storing variables that persist between level loads, but don't really know benefits of game mode or game instance beyond that

[opaque mauve]

does anybody know how do i make my player pawn appear on outliner when i press play?
ive tried various setting and filter, nothing works
does this happen on the latest update?
or is it just happening to me

[shy matrix]

ha, nice!

[lusty shard]

Send a screenshot of your player spawn point in the world and a screenshot of your game mode values.

[undone sequoia]

guys why this set timer on event doesnt work on my AI it works at me but on placed AI not

😄

it doest not even execute LineTrace

[stuck sentinel]

can i set a blueprint actor for foliage?

[opaque mauve]

is it just me?

[lusty shard]

And what about world settings?

[opaque mauve]

isnt this what you were asking for?

or is it another?

[frosty heron]

It's not even about pros and cons. Their purpose is entirely different

If you need to store something in presistence object then game instance your only choice in bp

Game mode is per level basis

It's kinda easy to know what should goes where

If you have rules for the game ( eg round limit , etc ) then game mode is the place

[lusty shard]

World Settings is a Window option

[lusty shard]

So sounds like instance is a sublevel that stores stuff from itself between level changes? How do you tell instance to keep something between level changes?

[opaque mauve]

okay i dont know which is relevant, so i just screenshot it all

i hope its the one youre looking for

[lusty shard]

Yea the game mode override there has your same lawn. Assuming you want pinventory4 as your player?

[opaque mauve]

yes

[frosty heron]

Game instance is presistence object. It's created when you run your game before your level even open. It get destroyed at when you exit the game. Changing level doesn't affect game instance

[gentle urchin]

game instance is more like a persistent object that exists from the start of the game to the quitting of the game

[lusty shard]

Ok and if you put print strings in pinventory4 begin play event, does it print?

[gentle urchin]

so anything stored in it is kept untill the game is terminated

it's unwise to try and store references there unless they're also persistent(which they mostly will not be)

but anything else is fine

[lusty shard]

So game instance is not really about 3d or level management of the game, but more for storing variables between level changes.

[opaque mauve]

yep

it does

[gentle urchin]

it also has some built in stuff for network errors and travel errors ,

[stuck sentinel]

so the paint density is max why is it so not dense

[gentle urchin]

Actor rules ?

[stuck sentinel]

wdym

[gentle urchin]

scroll down a tad

on the left side menu

there should be specific density or similar there aswell

for each individual actor in the foliage painter

[lusty shard]

Looks like your character is in the screen there

[gentle urchin]

there we go

[stuck sentinel]

what

[gentle urchin]

10 trees per 1 kuu

increase that number

for higher density

[stuck sentinel]

to how much

[gentle urchin]

play around with it

find a setting that fits you as a "max" density

[stuck sentinel]

i made it 100000

nothing changed

[gentle urchin]

then you control the brush density as a secondary control

Radius, decrease

[stuck sentinel]

NOOO

my game

10000 trees in 10 radius

gg game

[gentle urchin]

Ctrl + <

z

[opaque mauve]

ohh, i think u misunderstood my question, yes the character appears inside the game

but it doesnt appear in the outliner

here

[lusty shard]

Maybe someone else can help with this.. but post a screenshot of your world outliner with a search "pinv".

[stuck sentinel]

thank you i fixed it

how do i add collision

[opaque mauve]

aww, okay2, but thank you for responding anyways

[lusty shard]

That is crazy.. bottom right of world outliner, do you have any filters set?

[opaque mauve]

nope, i disable it all

does this happen to you? or is it happening to just me?

[lusty shard]

Sort of happens to me. I have a weird issue lately where my BP-character eye lid is closed in world outliner even though it is visible in the level.

From main viewport, If you press play, then f8, then click on your character, does it highlight/select in world outliner?

[stuck sentinel]

how do i apply collision to foliage

[opaque mauve]

yes it does

LOL

but it doesnt appear inside the outliner

wtf

xD

[lusty shard]

Check only selected for your filters in world outliner and try again?

[opaque mauve]

omfg

its there

why is it not there by default

why is it yellow tho

any idea?

i think thats the one causing it to not appear

[frosty heron]

Yellow means the actor is spawned at run time

[lusty shard]

I think yellow is spawned stuff

[waxen gull]

The static mesh asset requires collision shapes, and the instanced static mesh foliage requires collision to be enabled
Collision should be enabled for all channels if collision preset is set to Block all iirc

[opaque mauve]

haha okay2, thanks2 man, i didnt know about the f8 thingy

but thank you

much appreciate it

[stuck sentinel]

im trying to sculpt but there is this invisible thing in the air

yo how do i reset location to 0

[frosty heron]

You set the location to 0

Can find most of what you need by right clicking an empty space and type something relevant

[chilly plover]

Is there a way to get better debug information on errors?

[tiny meteor]

depends on the error, if its in blueprint you can use blueprint debugger

[wind sentinel]

Helloo, does anybody here know how I can remove a specific array element from a widget? (for example in a quest log, when the quest is completed I want to remove the quest from the quest log)

[tiny meteor]

you can use the remove from parent node passing in the widget reference

[frosty heron]

break points? watch list

[grizzled roost]

How can a pawn check if the path from it's current location to the target is valid?

[frosty heron]

Are you using NavMesh?

[grizzled roost]

Yes.

[frosty heron]

I will check my code, sec

@grizzled roost 🍝 the highlighted area gets executed when path is not valid

[grizzled roost]

That's all I needed to know, thank you so much!

[trim matrix]

Do tick and begin play get called on simulated proxies as well?

[grizzled roost]

What's is the Tether Distance input by the way?

[frosty heron]

No idea, I never test

maybe i can look inside

[grizzled roost]

Documentation doesn't say anything.
As long as it doesn't affect anything if left untouched it probably doesn't matter.
Let me know if you find anything.

[frosty heron]

@grizzled roost Real documentation is in the source code

Finds path instantly, in a FindPath Synchronously. Main advantage over FindPathToLocationSynchronously is that * the resulting path will automatically get updated if goal actor moves more than TetherDistance away from last path node * @param PathfindingContext could be one of following: NavigationData (like Navmesh actor), Pawn or Controller. This parameter determines parameters of specific pathfinding query */

No

everyone run their own begin play
But remember that they will have a copy of the character too, so when that character exist in ther machine, begin play will get called on their machine

[grizzled roost]

Good point, I should read that more especially since I do know C++.
Does it say anything about the tether distance though?

[frosty heron]

Finds path instantly, in a FindPath Synchronously. Main advantage over FindPathToLocationSynchronously is that
* the resulting path will automatically get updated if goal actor moves more than TetherDistance away from last path node
* @param PathfindingContext could be one of following: NavigationData (like Navmesh actor), Pawn or Controller. This parameter determines parameters of specific pathfinding query */

[thin panther]

you get the benefit of seeing how things are done, but in this case, the downside of seeing the AIModule code

[frosty heron]

heard it's atrocious, but I wouldn't know what's bad or good 😄

[grizzled roost]

How the fuck did I miss that while reading it?
Oh well, that does answer my question.
Thanks again.

[manic hamlet]

I have a widget_blueprint called "Buff" with a variable "stacksize". I want this to "hook" somehow to the PlayerBlueprint function of "get damaged" so that it reduces the stacksize of "buff".
Gameplay example:
Player presses 1 to get Armour buff and gets 200 armor with 5 stacks. Each time player gets hit the stack should go -1 and at 0 stacks the player loses said 200armor.

How do i do this "hook"? (I assume I need to do something on "EventConstruct" that makes the "LoseArmorStack" function "listen" to the "GetDamaged" function, but how? 😄 ) pls reply or tag in response 🙂 thanks

[frosty heron]

are you fammiliar with event dispatcher?

[manic hamlet]

nope

[frosty heron]

well you can start learning them then, that's what you can use to hook things up

[manic hamlet]

but i know where to find it LOL

[frosty heron]

look up some videos that explained how to use them

or maybe some docs

[manic hamlet]

aight,imma google and tag you if id be lost 😄

[dull dawn]

hi i have this simple code in which i have 6 transforms and i want to assign each of these transforms randomly to each of the output locations without it being ever repeated

[gentle urchin]

Temp array -> random -> store random -> remove random from temp array

Continue untill array is empty

Repeat as desired

[rugged wigeon]

alternatively, make the array, shuffle it, and assign each element in order

[gentle urchin]

Or that

[dull dawn]

what is the difference between shuffle and random

[gentle urchin]

Flawless

[rugged wigeon]

random gets a random element

shuffle randomizes the order of the array in place

[gentle urchin]

Spyware your method is ofc easier

Less nodes -> less spaghetti-> less prone for errors 😄

[dull dawn]

would this work or am i missing something

[lofty rapids]

your missing actually assigning the locations

[rugged wigeon]

that also won't work because there's no reference to it, so it gets forgotten

[dull dawn]

oh yeah im dumb

[lofty rapids]

you may need to promote to variable

[rugged wigeon]

make this a function that is not pure, which returns the arrray

BP shuffle is annoying because it mutates the array in place and does not return a refernce to it, so your function needs to look like:

1. Make the array as shown
2. set that array to be a local variable in the function
3. call shuffle on it
4. return that local variable array

[frosty heron]

no point in thhat, Store your array as Squize Suggested

store first then you can shuffle

[rugged wigeon]

nono don't store. do it in a function. It seems very unlikely that you will ever need this array variable again, so you don't want it as a variable. you want it as a one time calculation.

[lofty rapids]

functions ftw

[rugged wigeon]

of course if I were in charge, you'd be able to make graphspace level local variables and do this in a collapsed node instead of a function because its only going to be used once... >_>

[lofty rapids]

id probably make a function that creates the array, shuffles it, then outputs six values you can just plug in, leave out the gets in the code.

[gentle urchin]

Collapsed graph vs function...

I dislike collapsed graphs

Id do function all day long

[lofty rapids]

i just been programming a long time, i'm used to functions and how they work

blueprint function library ftw

[frosty heron]

well the programmers says bp gonna be spaghetti either way

but I have spaghetti in both world

[rugged wigeon]

frankly thats because those programmers are bad programmers

[frosty heron]

so I don't know how to not make one

Don't agree with that

[rugged wigeon]

the answer is collapsed nodes. it's always the answer. every singular task or calculation should be either a well named collapsed node if done once; or a function if done multiple times

[lofty rapids]

makes sense to just used collapsed if it's just a one off

[gentle urchin]

Why not function it either way ?

Whats the benefit ?

[rugged wigeon]

functions occupy the name space and get messy. You don't want a ton of functions. It's not the end of the world, but if something is only used in one part of the codebase, it's nice to have it be right there. The purpose of collapsing is to hide the implementation details so you can just read the top level descriptor of what it's doing.

[frosty heron]

I mean that's a function is too anyway. You just read the name

[lofty rapids]

my bp looks like spaghetti sometimes but i learned to resuse variables instead of draggin from way away

helps clean up quite a bit

and i just try to keep my nodes looking clean for my own personal ability to see wtf is going on

[rugged wigeon]

yes, but then the function is there in your name space and auto complete. annoying. Collapsed nodes also help you with flow control.

very nice, including use of negative space to help inform whats happening under the hood.

[frosty heron]

well that's true

[rugged wigeon]

imo almost any use of branch aside from the most obvious should leverage something like this

[dull dawn]

made a function and stored all transforms in a variable what do i do in the event graph

[rugged wigeon]

1. rename the function to something sensible

[lofty rapids]

you want to return the shuffled array

[rugged wigeon]

^

[trim matrix]

bro's still on that...

[rugged wigeon]

and then (3), is transforms a local variable? If so, you need to add your details to make the intial values before they shuffled inside the function

[rugged wigeon]

hey man, folks are new

unless you meant me ranting about bp design >_>

[dull dawn]

i added the initial values in the transform

[lofty rapids]

i guess you don't need to return it if it's not local, if it's local you'll need to return it

but why even use the function now if the variable isn't local to the function, you have the array you can just shuffle and pull gets from it

[lofty rapids]

the idea is after you shuffle it, you can pull out the indexes, 0,1,2 etc... and they will be randoms that don't repeat

[dull dawn]

thats the thing im not getting how do i add the input when there is no returning value from the shuffle and how do i return a value

[rugged wigeon]

you return the whole array

and then call get from the array to get element 0 then element 1 and so forth

[lofty rapids]

the array shuffles in place

so you just drag from the array after you shuffle

[rugged wigeon]

you may ask yourself "why would it work like that? why wouldn't it return a shuffled copy of the array rather than changing it under the hood?" and you will not receive a good answer

[lofty rapids]

and when you click on the function, you can set your inputs, outputs

[frosty heron]

@neon lion This is the difference btw.
The blue pin is AActor*
The Actor class is TSubClassOf<AActor>

[winter garnet]

There are functions and functions. Some will use whatever you pass them to generate a new value; others will change these values directly. Shuffle is an example of the latter.

Take a Sum function as an example. You can pass X and Y and it gives you back a Z with the result. It's an immutable operation.
But you can also pass X, Y and Z, and make Sum apply the result into the variable Z you're passing. It's a mutable operation.

But whatever - your problem right now is not with Blueprints or Unreal Engine, but with programming in general. I'd say you'd make a better use of your time if you shift your attention trying to learn the very basics of programming rather than Unreal specifics.

[dull dawn]

i have this here but its not taking in any value

[deft summit]

has anyone combined triplanar projection with cell bombing? for me it looks good on the material editor but the landscape is a flat color .....

[neon lion]

thank you ❤️

[winter garnet]

Click the Return Node node and in the Details Panel on the right you're going to see some things that allow you to add Output Values.

[dull dawn]

done

[rugged wigeon]

drag the shuffled array into it

[dull dawn]

is this right

[lofty rapids]

yep

[rugged wigeon]

looks good so long as new var is populated with the right starting options

[frosty heron]

@lofty rapids That's why you have more performance in cpp lol

[rugged wigeon]

give things names

[frosty heron]

can't pass by ref all the time in blueprint

so u make copies of your 10000 strings

[lofty rapids]

well big loops in general just break bp

[winter garnet]

Is there even one single case where you can pass refs in Blueprints and expect it to work properly?

[lofty rapids]

hmm, interesting

[frosty heron]

I think so, never tried tho

sometime I see the window and there is a check box that says pass by ref

[rugged wigeon]

this is actually not true

[dull dawn]

how do i convert the array to single values

[rugged wigeon]

passing by ref is usually more expensive

[rugged wigeon]

drag out from the array and call "Get (a copy)"

to elaborate, passing by reference means that you need to need to look up the reference for every operation. this is much more painful than just passing the value unless the value is very large. You should NOT try to pass by ref unless you have to.

[dull dawn]

doesnt look optimized but this should work right

[winter garnet]

The pointer can be cached though

[lofty rapids]

in theory, if your values are correct, any reason you just didn't hook up zero ?

[winter garnet]

For each loop

Again: save you some time and read some programming basics

[lofty rapids]

why for each ?

maybe on the actors

[winter garnet]

Why not?

[remote meteor]

first time i hear pass by ref is usually more expensive
its only "more expensive" when the data type is less than 8 byte,
looking up, every operation also needs to look up, your cpu work with nothing if it pass by copy? lmao

[dull dawn]

like this

[rugged wigeon]

it is perfectly fine from an optimization perspective. don't do the loop

[dull dawn]

i see

[lofty rapids]

i mean to clean it up you could put the actors in an array and use the index in a loop

[dull dawn]

eureka it worked

[lofty rapids]

but the gets are probably fine

[winter garnet]

Why an Array then

Don't understand you Blueprints people

[lunar sleet]

From a spaghetti perspective you can promote the element to a var and clean it up if you want. Or at least use redirectors

[lofty rapids]

so they can shuffle a set of numbers and get them all in a random order

[remote meteor]

when working with bp, the real reason to determine whether its by copy or by ref is if you want any changes to propogate back to the original, thats it.

[frosty heron]

@dull dawn

[lunar sleet]

Then don’t come to this channel 😛

[rugged wigeon]

what feels odd is that you're writing 6 assignments manually. if you needed to ever do a different number of assignments then it would need to be abstracted into sokmething different

[winter garnet]

Ok NeoExcidious

[lofty rapids]

select node, something i have not used much

[frosty heron]

Once I know it, I used it a lot

[rugged wigeon]

you'll usually only need to do such stuff for setups

[lost wolf]

spaghetti maxi

[winter garnet]

What's the relation, though?

[lost wolf]

its time to touch grass

[dull dawn]

nice imma follow that

[winter garnet]

It probably is

[rugged wigeon]

it usually is for primitive stuff. cheaper to pass an int than a reference to an int. Also generally safer. You shouldn't be mutating an int in place.

[dull dawn]

i learnt a lot today thankyou all so much 😊

[frosty heron]

what about string tho?

well I personally don't account to performance when I am still a beginner but when I am passing my Inventories or other big component, I will deffinitly pass it by ref whenever possible

if it's just the lightweight primitive comp then I wouldn't care

[rugged wigeon]

not sure off the top of my head; but my larger point was that passing by value is definitely not going to be the bottleneck of your performance.

[lofty rapids]

loops just break bp

because if it doesn't finish in a certain time

it says infinite

[rugged wigeon]

really?

[winter garnet]

lol

[rugged wigeon]

how much time...?

[lofty rapids]

idk

i think the loop has to finish within a certain amount of time or it craps out

[rugged wigeon]

I have never encountered that. It sounds like its probably a pretty safe rule actually?

[frosty heron]

He is going over the limit

[rugged wigeon]

like, way, way too long

[frosty heron]

there is a number you can set in project setting

[remote meteor]

it really comes down whether if you need any changes back to the source
in c++ atleast, theres usually 2 ideas when it comes to looping an array of larger data type size, for example
for(auto& Item : Array) or for(const auto& Item : Array), they are both by reference, but if you dont need changes you can use the const version

[frosty heron]

yea like 10k by default if im not mistaken

[remote meteor]

also long processing wont cause infinite loop

repeatedly calling the same function does

[frosty heron]

how to make it pure read only?
const auto& const Item?

[lofty rapids]

loops are just a lot slower in bp as well

[lunar sleet]

The for each loop function is made to run in one tick

[lofty rapids]

i can generate 10000 strings in c++, in bp i can hardly do 1000

as far as quickly

[remote meteor]

const auto& Item this is fine for types that are larger than 8 byte, if its smaller than 8 byte, and you dont need the change propogation, then just copy it.

[lofty rapids]

and in c++ it doesn't time out, it just takes longer

[lunar sleet]

Well bp is about 10x slower so yeah

Ava they prly didn’t restrict the cpp one to 1 tick

[remote meteor]

also, in VS2022 you can check a type's size, im sure rider has it.

[lofty rapids]

right so generating 50000 for instance i can just wait for it, but in bp it breaks

honestly i generate about 10 for a level

100 for a long level

but the idea is that i can if needed generate larger ones

and i tested the large size just to see the performance

just a, so i can if i want kind of thing

[rotund nacelle]

Can you please tell me how to configure the variable vector? I get data in BP character and I want to use this data in BP actor. What should I put in the Target node? Or how should I configure the variable so it can be used in other blueprints

[lofty rapids]

well for one thing your execution isn't hooked up to the set

but you can cast to the player character on begin play

then use the reference on tick

[cobalt gulch]

How do I detect if a player is a meter away from an object?

[lofty rapids]

i mean calculate the distance ?

i think unreal is in cm

[rugged wigeon]

give them a collision box and tect overlaps

that is 1m wide

[remote meteor]

if you can have a reference to the BP_YLW_Spirit in BP_PlayerController you can straight away set its actor location

[cobalt gulch]

I don't really wannna do it this way tho

[remote meteor]

adding a collision box is the last thing you want to do for an actor that moves

its worse than ticking trace

only use it if you have absolutely no choice

[frosty heron]

DistanceTo node?

[rugged wigeon]

I'm unclear what else you would propose to detect nearby objects.

[lunar sleet]

1uu == 1cm iirc

[lunar sleet]

The function

[rugged wigeon]

I suppose it's ok if there's exactly one player

[rugged wigeon]

called on tick? Is that really more performant than having a collision box?

[remote meteor]

could elaborate abit more on the use case? enemy detecing player? healing area? explosion aoe damage?

[lunar sleet]

Idk, is he using it on tick or is it called at a certain point 🤷‍♂️

[rotund nacelle]

No, I can't

[rugged wigeon]

fair enough. I made assumptions.

[lofty rapids]

hmm, ok

i'm saying thats one way to get the variable cast

but i would cast on begin play, and use the reference

if you can't because it doesn't have begin play ?

[remote meteor]

the reason why collision box is the least performant, is when the actor moves, you have to :-

1. Update Scene Location, to move the collision box
2. Update Scene Collision, trace and check if there is an overlap event,
3. When other actor moves, it has to check whether it has overlapped this collision

[rugged wigeon]

but is that worse than checking overlaps in a sphere every tick with a spheretracecast or something?

[frosty heron]

what's wrong with casting on tick?

[lofty rapids]

i don't think it's a problem, i'm just saying it would be better to use the reference from begin play imo

[rugged wigeon]

I could imagine some of the things you listed having some time saving cache under the hood, but I have no idea how its implemented

[rugged wigeon]

i meant like a raycast or whatever they call it here. trace?

[frosty heron]

Oh, I thought casting classes.
I heard from Adriel that raycast is pretty cheap

[rotund nacelle]

I may have misunderstood you. But?

[frosty heron]

do it on tick no prob

[rugged wigeon]

nothing wrong with it per se, just checking for a thing to happen every tick is intrinsically is worse than react to an event. I'm not clear about the internals here and what compares. My gut says a stationary collision boundary should be faster than a trace every tick?

[grizzled roost]

@frosty heron Interestingly enough, the IsValid node didn't give me the result I wanted, but the IsPartial node did.
I didn't even know that node even existed, or what it even does.

[lofty rapids]

well for one thing you want the bp the variable is located in not playerstart

[remote meteor]

that is correct if your actor doesnt move, and the size of the collision is small enough, not otherwise

[frosty heron]

I can't remember, it's been long time since I used it.
But for my case I can't accept Partial path.
The A.I will still try to reach me when I am on underground level. So the A.I just got stuck on the roof

Kinda did both checks, If Is Valid (True) if IsPartial (false)

[rotund nacelle]

it works. Thank you for explaining.

[grizzled roost]

Had to put a NOT node in front of IsPartial because it works in reverse for some reason, but it works, unlike IsValid which only worked if the player was outside the Navmesh entirely.

[rugged wigeon]

can you say more?

[lofty rapids]

hopefully your not crossing beginplay and event tick like in this picture ?

[rotund nacelle]

yep

[remote meteor]

collision(primitive component) is a scenecomponent, whenever the actor transform is update, you will have to update the scene component's transform. for collisions, when their transform is updated, it does a trace check for overlaps/blocking. Movement on the other hand is a ticked operation, so when for example, the player moves, the capsule collision is updated and tracing whenever it's moving.

there is also another cost that when other collision moves, it has to check for surrounding collision, more collision in the area = more checks.

the more object/trace channels you have, the more heavy this operation will gets

[rugged wigeon]

does it have some sort of caching such that it only needs to check reasonably close collissions? or is actualyl a global search

[remote meteor]

this is the part i have not confirmed yet, but logically, it should be global

[rugged wigeon]

hmm interesting

why do you say more channels == heavier operation though?

shouldn't more channels effectively add filters to allow for fewer trace checks?

[cobalt gulch]

yo

[frosty heron]

@cobalt gulch You Load and set the save game object Once, that's it

[rugged wigeon]

e.g. if you're tracing something that applies to only 5% of actors, then checks are reduced 95%?

[frosty heron]

don't call Load From Slot ever again after loading

[dire oyster]

hi, how can i detect if an actor is rotating to the left or right from this?

[frosty heron]

you will bring forth a new Save Game object and it's not the same as what you load previously

[cobalt gulch]

so this is not correct?

[frosty heron]

@cobalt gulch gotta see everything again

[frosty heron]

Everything including thhe save and Load function

[lofty rapids]

possibly using dot product of the right vector

[cobalt gulch]

how can I only do this once?

[frosty heron]

Show me all the function. Save Load, etc

I will try to correct it if I can

[remote meteor]

in collisions, it would have to check for each channels and object type in the first place

[dire oyster]

okay thanks ill give it a shot!

[frosty heron]

Init and Load is fine

[lofty rapids]

never tried it but dot product will tell you if it's in the same director or opposite with + - numbers, idk much about it but it seems to work out

[rugged wigeon]

but it would do that before checking if the geometry collides, which is more expensive presumably. So channels shouldn't be "increasing" the cost of doing a trace.

[prime fox]

hello everyone, could anyone help me figure out animation blending? i am new to unreal engine. i have a created a working locomotion system walk-run-sprint-dodge and want to incorporate attack animations. problem is after i blended my attack animation to the upper body of my skeleton my character no longer moves without the attack button being pressed. any help?

[frosty heron]

@cobalt gulch

[rugged wigeon]

attacking is not something you do with a blend. attacking is a montage.

[dire oyster]

I dont wanna know if the actor is facing the other, I want to know whether it is turning left or right

[prime fox]

i am sorry, i created a montage for the attack anim

[rugged wigeon]

think of montages as one time discrete actions, and blending and animation graph stuff as a recurring state

[cobalt gulch]

I can't get the mouse sens variable from the save ref

[remote meteor]

you can just check for positive/negative from the delta rotator

[dire oyster]

ok

[cobalt gulch]

nvm i have to cast right?

[lofty rapids]

you probably want to cast, then promote to variable, instead of setting the variable and then casting, or you'll have to cast again

[frosty heron]

Show me your Save Game Object, it should contain the float variable to store the mouse sensitivy value

[rugged wigeon]

you rigged up the slot in the anim graph?

[dire oyster]

something like this right?

[frosty heron]

depend on the type of Save, I can't tell w/o looking at it

[frosty heron]

Ok wait, this is wrong

[daring merlin]

honestly would be cleaner to create a dedicated GetSaveGame func that'd handle all the casting and loading for you.

[prime fox]

i created an "UpperBody" slot for the attack and kept the default for the legs

[frosty heron]

Chhange Save variable to TheDropperSaveGame type

When you load, Load from Game slot -> Get thhe return value -> Cast to TheDropper Save game -> Set save to it

[remote meteor]

you could just use CompareFloat

[rugged wigeon]

sounds good so far. show your anim graph where you pipe it in

[brazen merlin]

And also set the slot in the respective montage asset?

[prime fox]

oke

[frosty heron]

No

You are setting the value to it self

what you want to do is to get the value from your game instance

[frosty heron]

Get Mouse Sensitivity in GI -> Plug it to Save's Mouse sensitivity

[frosty heron]

cast

[frosty heron]

Don't forget to set Save

[cobalt gulch]

save after load?

[frosty heron]

no

Set Save Variable

[frosty heron]

you should add prefix to make variables easier to read. eg BP_DropperSaveGame

[prime fox]

this is what i got from the tutorial i watched on anim montages

[brazen merlin]

Did u set the bone name for your Layered Blend per Bone?

[cobalt gulch]

ah it doesnt work, it's not loading/saving

[prime fox]

yes

[prime fox]

spine_01

[frosty heron]

gotta see everything again

[brazen merlin]

Why is there a slot after the layered blend node?

[prime fox]

ill explain

[remote meteor]

that is for the full body slot usually

[frosty heron]

@cobalt gulch The slider?

[frosty heron]

You still haven't fix this btw

[remote meteor]

make sure montage is set to play in upperbody slot too

[frosty heron]

still setting the value to it self

[frosty heron]

Ok , try to understand what you are doing here.
You are setting the Mouse Value in GI right?

So now what u want to do is to get the Mouse value in GI to the Save Game Object

[prime fox]

so i followed a tutorial on locomotion for root motion. i set up the blend space and animation blueprint like he did and all was working fine, here is how it looked when working 100%

[frosty heron]

Fix this one

[cobalt gulch]

got it! missed that aha

[frosty heron]

u are already in GI right?

no need to get and cast

just get the value right away

[cobalt gulch]

yeah

good point lol

[frosty heron]

Test it anyway

[prime fox]

but the tutorial i watched on animation montaging just did so on top of the 3rd person template project, so i didnt know what i need to link exactly in the animation blueprint

[frosty heron]

Everything seems to be in order

just make sure u can visualize the change

[cobalt gulch]

Yep it works!

[trim matrix]

how does he change the mouse sensitivity? is it just the user input mapping?

[cobalt gulch]

There is one problem though, whenver the game is reopened and the sens was changed previously on a different save the slider defaults to a sens of 1 instead of whatever it should be on

[frosty heron]

That's what I was gonna say about the visual part lol

[cobalt gulch]

see here it should be on the very left of the slider, instead of where it is

[frosty heron]

you never tell the widget to update the value on load

[trim matrix]

and then load it when reopening the tab

[frosty heron]

simply setting the float not gonna magically change your slider value

[remote meteor]

widget on construct, get the value from GI, set the slider value

[frosty heron]

You can load it anytime, just know your flow

[brazen merlin]

I do not know what is in your locomotion and dash animgraphs, BUT I dont think its relevant.... montage "interrupts" the main animation graph. Layered blend per bone is like a mask for the skeleton. How is the montage being called, in what bp, how is it setup?

[trim matrix]

well, creating a widget every single time is so bad

[frosty heron]

@cobalt gulch #blueprint message

[frosty heron]

gotta give context

[trim matrix]

you should hide it not creating it every time

[frosty heron]

I have widgets that need to be added and removed at run time

[chrome karma]

hello there!!
need little help
i have a button BP that has a State Boolean and ive made an interface to connect it to another BP That checks the state of the button if active by printing hello world but its not working

[prime fox]

what would you like me to show you?

[frosty heron]

something like your Inventory menu, can be toggled I agree

[remote meteor]

yes please, dont keep creating widgets, removing from parent and keeping the reference is good

[prime fox]

this?

[remote meteor]

Pre-Construct and Construct are called when the widget is added to the viewport/playerscreen

[frosty heron]

Trigered Run every frame, use started instead

[frosty heron]

That will work

[prime fox]

illl try that

[remote meteor]

so you want to update your slider on there (open)

[brazen merlin]

Cool, glad its simple..ya never know... lol, lets take this to #animation channel, more appropraite

[prime fox]

ok

[trim matrix]

construct = the node called: create widget...

[remote meteor]

triggered only runs every frame if your trigger type is Down

[remote meteor]

construct calls on adding to viewport, aka when the SWidget is actually being created
im saying you should keep the widget reference alive even if its removed from parent, and use the same widget object to add to viewport again when you need it

collapsing and setting to whatever visiblity is fine, but you would need to implement your own "init" functions

and its literally the same, and removing and adding

when it comes to redraw cost

[trim matrix]

if you remove it from parent, it's going to be completly deleted, I don't think you can work with it again

[remote meteor]

only if you did not keep the object refence to the widget

[trim matrix]

it's going to give you an error if you try to use it

[remote meteor]

no it does not

[frosty heron]

Nope, go try it. Get the ref to the widget and add to viewport again

[remote meteor]

widget comes in 2 parts

UWidget and SWidget

you want to keep the UWidget alive, by keeping the reference after you call CreateWidget, here is when Initialize is called

when you call AddToViewport, SWidget is only created, thus Construct is called

and when you call RemoveFromParent, only the SWidget is destroyed

[trim matrix]

then why when I remove from parent a widget and try to use it again, it gives me an error and I must add a check if the reference is valid

[remote meteor]

the UWidget is only destroyed if you dont have a hard reference to it

[frosty heron]

can't see what you actually do. But I can remove and add anytime no problem

#blueprint message

[chrome karma]

ive made something like this

need little help
i have a button BP that has a State Boolean and ive made an interface to connect it to another BP That checks the state of the button if active by printing hello world but its not working

[dusk saddle]

can someone tell me why this isn't working

[frosty heron]

The actor that it overlap with is not of type Baby_Blueprint

or the overlap never happend

print string other actor before the cast, make sure the Event is executed

[dusk saddle]

ugh... found it i didn't enable generate overlap events

[frosty heron]

@trim matrix

[trim matrix]

does it 'cost' a lot doing that?

[frosty heron]

You won't lose a frame imo but I never test

better than creating new widget again

[tender epoch]

I have a question regarding copy pasting a blueprint node Export Level Sequence FBX on blueprint parent class Actor, but i am getting error it couldnt be pasted. Using UE5.2 and I am following this tutorial: https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/r2RD/unreal-engine-sequencer-scripting-foundations and im referring to Importing and Exporting from Sequencer through FBX.

[trim matrix]

I have never thought about that, so basically you are creating the widget 1 single time, and then adding it/removing it whenver you want. Is that correct?

[trim matrix]

for sure

[frosty heron]

No, I create the widget once when it's not valid

then afterward I just toggled betwen remove from parent and Add to viewport

[trim matrix]

but it's never not valid? just the first time

[frosty heron]

well it has to be created somewhere

it will be valid when the ref is set

[trim matrix]

okk

[lofty rapids]

it's pretty much creating it one time, once it's created it's in the ref so it's valid

i usually put the reference in the HUD

so that i can access it from anywhere np

[frosty heron]

even if you remove from parent, it never delete the widget. You can still access anything from it, as the object is still there

to properly "delete" widget, you need to remove it from parent then set the ref to null

when the widget is unreachable it will be garbage collected

[cobalt gulch]

Hi folks i'm not sure if this is the correct channel but how can I display an animated material inside the widget?

[remote meteor]

a UImage can accept a Material that has a domain of User Interface, if that is what you need..

[cobalt gulch]

How can I use one of these premade materials within the ui? It doesn't seem to work properly for me

[dusk saddle]

can someone help me, like what do I put here

[trim matrix]

stoping a reference doesn't work... bruh

[frosty heron]

The material must be User Interface domain. If you need to see reference of UI Materials, I suggest to download UI Material Lab from Sample Project

[dusk saddle]

how do i stop a sound though

[frosty heron]

You can make audio component in the BP then store a reference to it.
When you want to stop the sound, you get the audio comp variable -> Stop

[timid rune]

Does anyone know why setting the input key selector style during runtime makes it invisible no matter what the settings are, and then causes the game to crash when clicked? I tried to set the text style and that works just fine.

[wooden cave]

this is the default chaos vehicle template, this only makes me able to look left-right, ive tried also adding to the input mapping context the desired mouse rotations and doesnt matter what i try, i cant figure out how to make the camera look all directions, sames as a racing game camera would do

[wooden cave]

if change the last one from "axis1d" to "axis2d" it doesnt like it, this is the error i've been facing

[lofty rapids]

maybe refresh, but what does the error say ?

right click, refresh node if you can

[frosty heron]

Break the action value

[wooden cave]

i did click refresh and error still happening

[frosty heron]

Well what do u think

U r trying to insert a 2d value to a float

[wooden cave]

well, im asking because i dont understand fam

yeah i breaked that link

[lofty rapids]

it's invalid types

[wooden cave]

now camera wont rotate even left-right

[frosty heron]

Show pic

[lofty rapids]

right because you need to use the values, but you should have two axis

[wooden cave]

just breaked the link for action value

and camera aint moving now

[lofty rapids]

that's fine it's just not plugged in

[thin panther]

well yeah, you've not told it to move any

[frosty heron]

Drag the action value to empty space. Type break

[thin panther]

you can also just right click the pin

and break it in place

[wooden cave]

when breaking only fives me 2 axis, its normal?

only x/y

[lofty rapids]

ya you set it to 2d

up down / left right

y / x

[wooden cave]

so like this should be correct, right?

[thin panther]

try it

if one of them isnt the value you want, plug it into a different one

[wooden cave]

yeah camera aint moving any axis

[frosty heron]

Plug one of the axis to yaw

Btw u can create a third person template and copy what they have

[thin panther]

much simpler

[wooden cave]

this now moves camera left-right but none of the other axis work

[thin panther]

third person template is one of the few with good C++ code too

[thin panther]

well yes, you haven't plugged in any other axis

[frosty heron]

Ye cuz u always set the other 2 axis to 0

[wooden cave]

you didnt get me there

i meant, plugging the other action value into either of the rest ones

doesnt do anything

[lofty rapids]

this is what the template does

[thin panther]

controller input is definitely the proper way to handle this

[lofty rapids]

try to print string the values, see if they are working

[thin panther]

calls to set rotation are overriden by controller rotation

[trim matrix]

put the y with the y

[wooden cave]

then why tf default ue bp its not using it xD

[frosty heron]

Adding local rotation sounds wrong too

[wooden cave]

i tried xD, doesnt work

[trim matrix]

what are you trying to rotate?

[frosty heron]

@wooden cave #blueprint message

Copy this exactly. Change your node

[trim matrix]

use the free template lol

[thin panther]

then make sure you're inheriting controller rotation on the pawn