blueprint

[flat coral]

Like all these are complex traces lol

And I can run like 20 of these guys at a time before I even start seeing problems

[gentle urchin]

Youd add a socket for each face

Name them according to dice value

Then we can getallsockets -> foreachloop-> find the socket with highest Z

[flat coral]

Wait wait but aren't sockets at the mesh level? The faces are all the same mesh, no?

[gentle urchin]

They are

But the dice got 9000 faces

If you wanna iterate them...

I guess you could still do the 20 first

[sand yacht]

Sorry I should have been more clear. I don't mean to have the landscape generate the way terraria has it's generation. What I mean with this is preloading an entire procedurally generated world when creating a new save

[gentle urchin]

Just a regular proc gen landscape

2d by all intents and purposes

[flat coral]

Anyone know offhand what "Removed from world" means and how it's different from "Destroyed"?

[turbid pecan]

Is there a way to do a generic cast in BP?

Like I have two game modes, but I want to be able to have a shared library function that gets the current active game mode and casts to it and returns the “as” result irrespective of whether it’s game mode one or two

[thin panther]

there is no dynamic typing in blueprints

however what you can do is set up an interface that does the functionality you want in the gamemode

you can also make a common parent between the two

[turbid pecan]

I do have a Game Mode parent class

Hmmm

Ok I’ll have a look.

Thanks Cuppa

Damn interfaces are so nice

I keep using them for everything that it makes sense to use on

Makes stuff so much simpler

[gentle urchin]

I dont think i have a single interface across my not so few projects

[wary marsh]

what exactly is the go-to way of saving data for multiple instances of the same actor? Let's say you got an array of ships which all have a name, position, blablabla, would you just create a struct for each seperate ship and save all of those structs in a struct array in the savegame blueprint?

[dire frost]

yeah that's a good way of doing it

[undone bluff]

afaik only relevant to level streaming, when the level it is in gets its UWorld::RemoveFromWorld called

[serene kiln]

Hey all, does anyone know how to set the output directory of a render movie pipeline in blueprints? Ideally like to load the current config then just change the output at runtime

[vague shadow]

is there anyway i can separate global illumination from this? and force the global illumination setting to be high

[undone bluff]

instead of setting overall level you just set the Global Illumination Quality

[flat coral]

The hack way to do it would be to just grab the current value of Global Illumination Quality from the settings before calling that, store it in a local var, then set it back to that after calling overal scalability level

[lament fox]

In my game I want to have a crafting workbench that when I interact with it, it makes a widget visible for the crafting UI. What would be the best practice for creating this widget and making it visible? Do I create the widget in my HUD class or somewhere else?

[flat coral]

Questions you gotta ask yourself:

1. Can the player move around at all while this widget is up?
2. Is this widget exclusive?
3. No, actually though, is this widget exclusive of EVERY other widget that can have input? Can you open main menu when the workbench is open? Can any other menu open in ANY circumstance?

#3 is on there because personally I had a lot of widgets that I figured were going to be exclusive, which ended up being not exclusive in some corner case

[undone bluff]

I'm still struggling getting the input right for my inventory widget

[flat coral]

These things matter because the basic workflow for opening and closing a widget, AddToViewPort and then RemoveFromParent IIRC, are very simple and easy and if you can get away with that you probably should just do that. But if this widget might compete with other widgets, you need some way to ensure they don't open on top of each other, they displace each other gracefully

[undone bluff]

So many considerations there

I actually just have a class for all the non pause menu game UI and in it I have widgets for the inventory and a generic container

[flat coral]

The thing you need to know about navigating UMG widgets via gamepad is that it fucking sucks. It never works right out of the box, and it's a lot of damn effort on EACH widget to make it work how you want.

So if you're working on controller navigation and you're thinking "man this absolutely blows, there must be a better way" there might not be.

[undone bluff]

I got that part figured out so far I think, but my issue is that you can still play the game while the inventory is open on the side and drag out items

[flat coral]

Dragging and dropping is one thing I haven't messed with. I actually considered it for one UI and went a different route just because it seemed too hard to do right

[undone bluff]

Kinda still trying out my different options on what feels right

[random pulsar]

what object reference does casting to widget need in most cases?

[flat coral]

Imma head this off at the pass and ask you a question instead: What do you think Casting does?

[random pulsar]

i use cast for getting the variable,the reference,from that ref i get the information from that object

[flat coral]

Cast does not get anything.

"Casting" takes a reference to an object of an unknown TYPE and, if possible, returns a reference to that SAME object but of the type you specify

When you call cast you're basically saying to Unreal:
"See this object? Please pretend it's a PlayerHUD object."

[random pulsar]

ok,so if i need the ref here how do i get it?

someone told me if i make a variable of this type this aint work

[flat coral]

Honestly like 90% of programming is "I've got this value over HERE, and I need it over THERE" and trying to make that as un-gross as possible

[undone bluff]

Playercontroller > get HUD

Let the hud manage the widget and just communicate with it using an interface

[random pulsar]

added it but when i drag from HUD and type my widgets there is nothing,seems like i don't understand it

[undone bluff]

It's a reference to the empty generic native HUD class

As far as your actor knows, at least

You could cast from it to your specific HUD class

But I'd recommend using an interface

Look up blueprint communication, it's vital

[rugged wigeon]

It seems unlikely to me that you would need an interface to talk to your hud

[flat coral]

Ya that's usually a pretty safe cast

[rugged wigeon]

interfaces are for situations where you don't have certainty about what you're talking to

[undone bluff]

Fair, casting is ok here

[flat coral]

Worth saying, interfaces are my least-favorite method of generalizing functionality

[undone bluff]

But, I like to not put a dependency on my HUD and all its widgets and just leave the flexibility

[rugged wigeon]

Interfaces are likely applicable for components talking to their owning actor. Other than that, probably not a ton of use cases

[undone bluff]

Well that's not true

[gentle urchin]

wouldnt that be dispatchers ?

and anything the owner needs, it can read?

the owner is likely (?) project specific anyway, so not much gained by avoiding dependency ?

[rugged wigeon]

owners typically know which components they have, but components don't know which owner they have. If they do, they're probably poorly designed

[gentle urchin]

(CMC cough)

in some cases, it can be warranted

[undone bluff]

Player components are fine

[flat coral]

The disadvantage of interfaces is that you need to write the function every single time you want a blueprint to implement it.
That, in turn, demonstrates WHEN to use an interface: When every class that implements it is GOING to need a different implementation

[undone bluff]

If it goes on anything else I try to have the component unaware of the owner

To whatever degree is reasonable

Inventory component base class that works with anything and player inventory subclass just for the player controller for example

[rugged wigeon]

which confuses people to no end

[flat coral]

I really don't like the pattern of "Interface implemented by owning actor, which is then called by components", but that said I have used it a few times

I always make sure it's optional though. Component needs default behavior for when the owner doesn't implement the interface

[rugged wigeon]

Well the likely use case is the default implementation for the interface is on the base classes of the actors

You probably should not have a large number of totally unique actors with a component

[flat coral]

Oh I do though!

In fact I have components so powerful that I can attach them to StaticMeshActors in the level editor and instantly get functionality

Like I've got an ActorHealthComponent which tracks damage and destroys the actor when hit, and I can put that on any object in the world to give it that functionality.

Also got a UsableComponent which makes an object interactable, which doesn't do anything on its OWN but I've got a subclass that can open a lore pickup or start a dialog on interact. None of these need ANY functionality in the owning actor (though some have it optionally)

[gentle urchin]

so you've subclassed the component?

instead of the implementing actor?

guess that keeps them reusable but

what happens when you want them to .. do both ?

you add both components?

[flat coral]

Yep. An actor can have any number of usable components, they have a Priority field and both focus and interact respect it

[brazen pike]

using inheritance to avoid inheritance

[flat coral]

That lets me do things like have a laptop with a lore pickup in the form of an email open on it, but once you get the lore you can ALSO pick up the laptop as an item to sell

Even my UsableActor component is itself a subclass of a higher level component which handles glow-on-focus objects

Which is a subclass of the ROOT component that handles glowing in general

[gentle urchin]

Somehow i feel like you're leaving out some big caveat to your setup x)

[flat coral]

I mean, if I am it's because I forgot it lol

[undone bluff]

Is that per component or the whole actor?

struggling getting a nice setup for this specific thing

[gentle urchin]

tbh i havn't even considered subclassing components xD

[flat coral]

Per component. There are multiple types of glowing components, for example flash on damage, or periodic glow. They can all be different colors and coexist peacefully. Glow-on-focus is specific to the usable component and respects priority of usability.

[prime grove]

hey does anybody knows where can i learn UE5 for free?

[kind estuary]

@gentle urchin I remember reading posts of yours talking about this.
im making a 2d game tile based. Im using no collision. Just checking tiles and who is on the tile.
And the meshes are instances of an ism.

To have better performance, im considering creating a UObject for each one of them instead of an actor.
Store the UObject in an actor manager, and in the UObject i have the reference for the index in the ISM.
Is this okay? Am i missing something here?
I think i read that you did something like this in the past.

[flat coral]

I don't even know where to pay to learn UE5

[undone bluff]

how do you handle assigning components that you want to glow?

[flat coral]

Oh I think I misunderstood, the component makes the actor glow

[undone bluff]

oh so the whole actor glows?

yea that's what I meant to ask

[flat coral]

Yeah. I don't have a use-case for making like one part of an actor glow, all my usables are, like, a button, or a tablet, that's pretty self-contained

[undone bluff]

I often need to assign individual components to actor component functionality

and there seems to be no really nice way

[gentle urchin]

My current solution uses actors, but it could easily be replaced by uobjects

[undone bluff]

I wish there was an eyedropper for component references like with actors

[turbid pecan]

On the subject of interfaces, I think it’s nice to use them where two things don’t share common behaviour but need to interact.

[kind estuary]

ah

[flat coral]

These crates in my smoketest level are for testing glow. The front one has every type of glow component.

[kind estuary]

should i use actors?

[gentle urchin]

Up to you really

[kind estuary]

they are better for replication

[gentle urchin]

are you planning on replicating?

[kind estuary]

though they are more memory intensive

[gentle urchin]

it's always a tradeoff

[flat coral]

This feels like premature optimization.

[kind estuary]

maybe in the far future

[kind estuary]

indeed

[brazen pike]

You probably want to decide earlier rather than later if you are doing replication

[gentle urchin]

^

[brazen pike]

tacking on replication far down the line is almost always a bad idea

[kind estuary]

maybe i should go with actor they are veryintuitive to me. Though doing it as objects could be a good exercise. I hear i need to learn to work with uobject

though uobjects are weird

[gentle urchin]

especially if it's something like VAT ISMs with big numbers

Mass is also a thing

[kind estuary]

so its not possible to replicate uobject?

[gentle urchin]

It is

definetly

[flat coral]

Fuck UObjects tbh 🙂
If they were any use, things like GameMode would be that instead of an actor

[strong rover]

Surprise movie night so I came back a few hours later than I expected 😅
Looks like the guy no longer wanted help, good stuff.
Thanks again for the help.

[gentle urchin]

Whats your target number Wolf ?

how many npc's are you aiming for

workers or whatever

[kind estuary]

like 30.000 per player

though then depends on how many players

since its already 2d and tile based

[gentle urchin]

gosh

[kind estuary]

and no collision

[gentle urchin]

well best of luck xD

[undone bluff]

that should be super doable

[kind estuary]

so i can replicate them in the future @gentle urchin

[undone bluff]

just likely not replicating them individually I'd think

[kind estuary]

https://tenor.com/view/bobawooyo-dog-confused-dog-huh-dog-meme-shocked-dog-gif-16713203299056947073

[gentle urchin]

I'd like to see an RTS with 8x30k replicated easily

[faint pasture]

Wherever you are. Just open it up and go.

[gentle urchin]

I'd imagine it taking atremendous amount of work to get that right

but idk

[random pulsar]

is there a way to refresh the icon of the actor blueprint?

[faint pasture]

never, you'd have to do some sort of lockstep thing

[undone bluff]

you'd probably just replicate the commands for a start

[kind estuary]

Adriel, was it you who made an rts with uobject + ism?

[faint pasture]

unless they change very rarely then you could do some other sort of system like diffing

[faint pasture]

nah that's not me

[kind estuary]

i thought it was squize

i have little experience in replication/multiplayer

but if you guys say a uobject can be replicated

then whats the issue?

[gentle urchin]

Im not replicating anything tho 😄

[faint pasture]

Might be simpler just to have some fast array of structs IMO

What are you actually trying to do?

something akin to Factorio?

[kind estuary]

this @faint pasture

im half way through the basic setup

[faint pasture]

yeah nah just make an array of structs for your tilemap

or a struct of arrays

or hell, just use a map

[kind estuary]

thats already done now the thing is the units

[faint pasture]

units can just be plain old structs too

depends on your system though

[strong rover]

I'd recommend you first install UE5 and start a "3rd person" project.
It comes with the core essentials ready for you to mess around with.

Start reading up on this page.
It's a lot of reading but then this is a tool made for many different kind of specialists to work on multimedia projects, if it were easy there wouldn't be jobs.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/understanding-the-basics-of-unreal-engine/

Once you know how to open a blueprint, wire up a few things, or do some basic geometry and you're getting a little impatient, start looking for things on Youtube like:
"UE5 Level Design Basics."
"UE5 How to make an automated door." or somesuch.

Welcome to being a UE5 newbie.
You can now do next to nothing but you know how to start the engine and can understand the very basics of the interface.
Pick a direction, and keep reading on the official documentation, keep Youtubing tutorials.
With a few weeks, you can do basic stuff.
By a few months, you might reliably be able to make your own stuff!

... And keep back-ups, maybe hook up to Version Control (Github, etc) so you don't lose your hard work.

[gentle urchin]

I'd probably aim to replicate as little as possible

[flat coral]

Honestly that's my advice on UObjects summed up: "Are you sure you can't just use a struct?"

[kind estuary]

i thought about that, though structs are bit more clumsy in bp. hence why i consider the uobject

[faint pasture]

Give an example of a unit

[gentle urchin]

• ID
• Health
• Vector2D Location
• Vector2D Direction
• ActionPoints (Move, Attack)
  ?

[kind estuary]

A unit is like a plane turned to the camera, instance

has no collision

has the tile he is on

[faint pasture]

no i mean the gameplay elements of a unit

[kind estuary]

yes

[faint pasture]

do they attack, have spells, have buffs and debuffs, what data do they have?

[kind estuary]

that

[kind estuary]

they attack

and move to tiles

[faint pasture]

Yeah just use structs

[kind estuary]

what about if the game becomes good and i need to make it multi?

[faint pasture]

Struct Unit
ID
Name
HP
Attack
Defense
OnDeathEffect
WhateverElse
Location
AimDirection

[faint pasture]

it'll be 100x easier to network an array of structs than anything else tbh

you'll still have objects involved for the visualization of them, but the actual gameplay logic is just numbers shuffling around

you're rendering with an ISM right?

[kind estuary]

yes

[faint pasture]

For each Unit in UnitArray -> update the ISM

done

it'll run fast as hell too

[gentle urchin]

probably some singular lerps during movement

atleast client side

[faint pasture]

yeah you'll have to split out the background sim from the rendering a bit but you get the picture

[gentle urchin]

noot sure i'd imagine this with 30k but oh well

[kind estuary]

singulair lerps?

[faint pasture]

imagine a city sim

[gentle urchin]

if they're all clumped up together on one tile, sure

[faint pasture]

you can EASILY have a city sim with 100k agents running around, no problem, if they're just 100k entries in an array

then for rendering, you just gotta show the ones nearby etc

[kind estuary]

im planning on 1 unit per tile

to avoid stack of dooms

[faint pasture]

so a player can see how many tiles at a time?

your pathfinding is gonna be hell lol

[kind estuary]

it can zoom in and zoom out

so it goes like a 100 tiles+

[faint pasture]

yeah for sure just use structs IMO

[kind estuary]

pathfinding is done

[faint pasture]

in fact you'll probably want a SoA I'd guess

done?

[kind estuary]

converted from c++ pure

[faint pasture]

you're saying you can have 10k agents navigating without the cpu exploding?

[kind estuary]

so its like this

i have no nav mesh

i get the path

using A*

then the unit goes

"unit travelling" 🏃‍♂️

has a an array of tiles checkpoints, it checks the tile it goes to before it moves if its now occupied

[faint pasture]

and you've tested with 10k agents trying to do that?

[kind estuary]

i tested with many tiles

i think it wont change

because it just checks the tiles if they are occupied

[faint pasture]

how often?

To make something this big you will 100% want to be doing a managed tick sort of approach where you do everything in one big fat loop, doing all the phases in order, almost like an ECS.

It'll actually be very simple code

[kind estuary]

lets say you are making a move from tile 0,1 to tile 0,6. You select unit, and then click on tile 0,6 to move.
Does path finding calculation returns path. All tiles are empty so you can move directly. You start moving, but just to make sure, you check tile 0,2 if it is free? Just in case someone move there meanwhile. It is free? Then move there. 🏃‍♂️ Takes about 5 seconds to move there, then check the other tile.

until you are on your destination

so you move from tile to tile but each tile it takes a while to reach it

[gentle urchin]

At this speed, how can you even think about 30k?

Even 300 will be painfull to play with

[strong rover]

I thought it was 30K 'units' inhabiting one tile at once, moving tile by tile as a horde.
Must've misread.

[gentle urchin]

Any number in one tile-space is fine

But if they wont stack on a tile... ugh

30000*5 seconds is forever for moving them 😅 thats the part i dont grasp

In Civ you reach what... tops a hundred units ?

And the lategame there gets pretty slow

[grizzled gyro]

Hey Guys! I need some help with the new Chaos Vehicle Controller. Im a 3D Artist and kinda bad with the blueprint Logic ... has Anyone here worked with that System before and can spare 5 minutes to look at my project ? any help appreciated 🙂

[gentle urchin]

Gotta ask the question so we know what we're saying yes/no to

[kind estuary]

thats right...

have to rrethink that

[kind estuary]

its like civ

but realtimish

[gentle urchin]

Ish

[kind estuary]

so far its just a battle

[gentle urchin]

Sounds like a horrible inbetween place 😅

[grizzled gyro]

Well Im trying to get my own model into the system but its wont move at all except from a little physics wobble. im thinking it has something to do with its size since its a huge ship. I tried giving it alot of thurst but that didnt work , neither did playing with some mass values

[gentle urchin]

Also #chaos-physics

[kind estuary]

yup maybe it will suck...

[gentle urchin]

I initially thought it was bp related 😅

[kind estuary]

but here is the thing

i see all these tactical battle games and they look beautiful

but they take too long or are boring because of turn based

so just make them move from tile to tile

in real time

but taking some time before moving to each tile

[faint pasture]

So what happens when 10k units are bunched up like a Chinese traffic jam to get through some area

[kind estuary]

violá problem solved

[faint pasture]

It'll work fine CPU wise if you're smart about it

but you'll have to do some batch processing and divvy up work a lot

[kind estuary]

there lets say you want to move to a tile and another unit is already moving in there, your unit waits, or goes around the other unit.

[faint pasture]

It'll look like this:
Tick / Timer / Whatever:
calculate all immediate orders
do movement updates
do some part of pathfinding
do some more work
move some more work

[kind estuary]

so at best we calculate the path finding only once

[faint pasture]

Yeah, the goes around

[kind estuary]

or twice

[faint pasture]

or 30k times

since the thing you're going around is also pathfinding and going around things

it can work if you divvy it up, maybe calculate 100 paths per frame or whatever

[dense bone]

How to execute some code when other actor has reached specific distance from player?
I know that I can do that with get distance, but the question is when should I fire this check?
My current idea is bad. I want to run function on tick that gets all actors of class and then calculate distance between them.
Is there a better way to detect when actor is enough far away?

[faint pasture]

thats' still 2 seconds between pathfinds per unit, maybe more

[kind estuary]

no he pathfinding only once at the start

[faint pasture]

what happens when someone moves in the way?

[gentle urchin]

They wait

[faint pasture]

wat

waiting is fine, he said go around so that implies recalculating path

[kind estuary]

yup waits 🫷

[kind estuary]

it can also recalculate the path

its only once

[faint pasture]

but the other 9k guys did the same thing and now they're in the way

[kind estuary]

then it goes all the way as long as it dont hit another block

[gentle urchin]

Knowing paths, you can even predict whos there

[faint pasture]

what I'm getting at is this is absolutely NOT an easy problem. This will be a ton of work

but it'll be doable

do it all data oriented

[twin shale]

I need a sanity check...Since when is 4-2=0?

[faint pasture]

arrays of structs

this is C++ land btw

[strong rover]

Never "On tick" is the answer I can always give.

These kinds of calculations depend on how accurate you need it to be. Is it a space-faring game where there's a pulse with a 250 meter radius and it has to hit on the edge?
Or is it more loosy goosey? If Loosey Goosey is okay, start with 0.2 seconds.

Have a countdown run endlessly and that's when you do a quick "Distance upkeep" phase.
You can later keep the stopwatch on just the player and start optimising with arrays of relevant units, etc.

[faint pasture]

tick is fine

depends on how many things have to check, and how important it is to be fast

[kind estuary]

okay so imagine a game of chess, where units move slowly from tile to tile

[faint pasture]

if it's important and there's not many (a fighting game), then tick is absolutely fine

[gentle urchin]

I never trust bp debugger

[faint pasture]

how many moves per second if there's nothing in the way?

[kind estuary]

5 seconds per tile

[faint pasture]

oh ok

you got gobs of time

[kind estuary]

let me see if i find an example

[faint pasture]

yeah i get it

yeah you'll be fine

[kind estuary]

like in crusader kings

[faint pasture]

just batch things and do your pathfinding between the moves

[kind estuary]

but instead of a country its a tile

[faint pasture]

do all of them move at the same time or spread out over time?

[twin shale]

I can see why, lol

[kind estuary]

they move at the same time

[faint pasture]

OK then you'll need that in your pathfinding

because until they move, they're in the way

but when the time comes to move, the thing in the way will have also moved so it won't be in the way any more

[kind estuary]

but lets say you move 100 guys, if they dont hit a blocked tile on the way that became blocked meanwhile, then they will never A* again

[dense bone]

I was creating function that hid other players' nicks if they had passed certwin distance.

[gentle urchin]

Treat it as chatGPT

It can straight up lie 😅

[faint pasture]

that doesn't have to be on tick, just have a timer or a slow ticking thing that'll update it every so often

[gentle urchin]

With or without intent

[faint pasture]

but tick is fine for now

[faint pasture]

Struct Unit
bool WillMoveNextUpdate

[kind estuary]

its because you dont pathfind again unless the next tile you are about to move is blocked by a friendly unit that is idle there. If it is an enemy you simply -> Combat.
But if is a friendly moving you wait. Still no recaculation of path. If a friendly unit moved in, you are just checking the tile if it is occupied -> yes -> is the unit occupying idle? yes-> then go around it (recalculate)

[strong rover]

The "All actors" part is what prompted me to say never on tick 💜

For things like that, you can do the following.

Assuming the distance to hide/show is 50 meters and players can only run on foot or somesuch.

1 . Every two seconds, check for all players in a 150 meter radius and add them to an array.
2 .Every .2 seconds, check that array for players within 50 meters and toggle accordingly.
3. To hide the inaccuracy, consider making the nicknames fade in/out of existence. It'll obscure the loose fit when there's no hard pop-in.

[faint pasture]

ok what about 2 units both moving to teh tile 1 unit is moving off of

they both think they can move there

[kind estuary]

one will move first and have the tile struct marked as occupied by this unit even if you are not there yet

then the other willwait

[faint pasture]

that can probably work

it'll be super frustrating to see a giant army all go single file around a corner

but it'll work

[kind estuary]

yup thanks for putting all the questions

[strong rover]

Get it to work now.
Optimise for aesthetic later.

[faint pasture]

you want to do this in a Subsystem IMO

subsystem with arrays and an update function, you can call into it from BP for adding/removing/querying, telling it to update

thats what I do with my 1D physics engine

[kind estuary]

subsystem so the stuff is globalized

i didnt use subsystem yet

[faint pasture]

SpawnUnit:
Get UnitSubsystem -> call SpawnUnit

[dense bone]

How to get players in radius?

[strong rover]

Get All of Class

[faint pasture]

how many players are around and what is the base class of them?

I would just use an overlap sphere tbh

[kind estuary]

at the moment im getting the UnitManager->SpawnUnit (gets grid actor to check if tile is empty) -> spawn

[faint pasture]

On overlap -> show name
On End Overlap -> hide name

[strong rover]

My bad, yes. Adriel is on the money here.

[faint pasture]

Yes, UnitManager should be a subsystem in the Real Thing™️

[kind estuary]

okay, its so its accessible everywhere correct?

[faint pasture]

yup

[dense bone]

Pretty smart ❤️

Thank you

[kind estuary]

will do them as you said, array of structs + ism index reference

[faint pasture]

You could do it all with 1 big subsystem or have 1 for units, 1 for tilemap, 1 for this, 1 for that, etc

[frosty blade]

Hey guys i have a question, is it possible to apply a tag to a target from a animation notify blueprint?

[faint pasture]

Does the notify know the target?

Do you want the notify to do it or just tell its owner "hey tag something now"

[frosty blade]

(hope im not wrong) i'm using a sphere trace by channel and then i want to apply the tag to the target it hits

[kind estuary]

okay will dive into subsystems tonight before i shoot footy -> 🦶 🔫

[faint pasture]

If that's a general mechanic in your game then that can be fine

[faint pasture]

Subsystems are just objects that are globally getable and automagically created/destroyed. You'll want a UWorldSubsystem probably. They don't tick, but you can make them tick, or subclass the tickable version.

I love them, use them all the time

[frosty blade]

what im trying is something like a melee attack, it traces the sword and then i want to apply the tag to whatever i hit. after that im trying to do a wait gameplay event and apply a gameplay effect. but for now nothing is working

[faint pasture]

start printing and breakpointing to make sure things are happening.

I would test that the hit is happening, the tag is getting applied, the event is happening, in that order

[frosty blade]

Like im getting the print for hit something for example, the part im not sure is that get instigator actor if its working since its not inside the Blueprint of the character but inside an animation.

and also when i try to do a Has tag on the enemy im hitting i dont seem to get anything from it

[kind estuary]

are the main unreal classes like gamestate and gamemode subsystems?

why dont i use them?

[faint pasture]

no

Because you can have multiple subsystems

you COULD just make components that live on GameState to accomplish sort of the same thing

but I like subsystems becase you can just get them wherever, no need to get gamestate, cast to yourgamestate, get component

You can think of a subsystem like a component on the engine level

[kind estuary]

ah thats new to me

this is great no need to cast, no increase in size map

[faint pasture]

It'll be literally this simple to interact with

Whatever -> get subsystem -> call function

[kind estuary]

awesome

[timid rune]

Does anyone know how to prevent my character from spinning while attached to a an object that uses physics constraints

[whole jay]

I'm wanting to make a game in the style of old like, dark fantasy nintendo games like Twilight Princess etc, I really liked how they made it so that when you walked up to an interactable object such as a door etc, you had to walk right up close to it, and it would spawn an UI element such as "Open" etc, what would be the most efficient way to go about doing something like this? Obviously line traces probably aren't the best way because you'd have to do ontick but I'm not sure
Just a collision box and cast to character? Or is there something more efficient?

Obviously I'd prefer something I could implement into the CharacterBP like an interface as it would be more efficient in terms of code

[strong rover]

Collision box.
Check if it is a player character (Assuming single player)
Trigger UI if true.

[whole jay]

Is there a way to do that without casting?

Also would doing a collision box on the character and having it return an object value be more efficient?

[flat coral]

Not really. The advantage of having it on the interactable object is you can tell where they overlap, since that's a spot on the level where the interact button would be ambiguous

[strong rover]

If you can store the player-character somewhere and access it by a macro maybe?
But you can set the triggerbox to only work on a channel that includes the player for collision, at which point you can also do away with checking if it is the player.

The amount of times you'll then cast will be reduced by so much that the cost is negligible.

[whole jay]

Because I'd like you to be facing the object to interact with it

[strong rover]

Then you can do the inverse.
Have an interactive object channel.

Put the colission on the player and have it only detect on that channel.
On a hit, check if the player is facing that object.
If yes, check for which object, send that to UI to process.

[flat coral]

...Does Unreal seriously not have a cone trace? I was about to recommend that to 'em but turns out it doesn't exist? I swear I remember that being a thing

[whole jay]

Wouldn't that be great if they did

[strong rover]

If all interactive objects come from the same parent BP, you can have an enum which allows each interactive object to then be identified to the UI and get the appropriate Text and whatnot.

[flat coral]

Anyways you don't even need to check facing, just have the collision box offset on the character model

So that any object in the box is interactable

[whole jay]

I think that'd actually be a great way to do it, that way all you have to do is set each object's channel

[sacred cradle]

I am stuck on trying to get jumping working in my animation. I am trying to blend the jump anim with the movement, which works like a charm the first time. I am not sure how to reset the blendspace jump and replay it any time my character jumps.

I want to be able to jump, a delay between the jumps, the jump being based on speed (reason I am using a blendspace), and the jump resetting every time it finishes, so no looping.
I am not sure how to tell when the jump has finished, or how to reset it using blendspaces in the AnimGraph.

[strong rover]

Nois

[flat coral]

You MIGHT still wanna do a line trace from the character to the interactable, otherwise there's a risk the player will be able to like press a button through a wall or something. Dunno if that's a risk for your type of game or not

[strong rover]

Good safety to build in for sure.

[flat coral]

But yeah my game's first person and I've basically got a rectangle welded to the character's face which is for anything interactable

[whole jay]

Honestly I wonder if that's why older zelda games made the interact range like 2 inches away lol

[flat coral]

Wait no! I considered that but used line traces instead for better accuracy. I have a lot of interactables close together sometimes, like buttons on a keypad

But that's just because I really like that immersive sim shit, if you don't have that requirement don't do it that way, it's definitely a little worse from a gameplay perspective.

[strong rover]

I just learned a few things for later, thanks.

[outer torrent]

Hello guys
I would like some help with simple logic, but I'm a newbie and I'm a bit lost.

My goal is to create a skill casting bar for my character. In this case, when he clicks to use the skill, start charging the bar, and then release the skill. I managed to do everything, EXCEPT the bar loading, for example, it took 10 seconds to load completely. Is there something in the blueprint that helps with this exact case?

[flat coral]

The bar's just a widget right? The actual charge-up time is tracked separately?

[barren dove]

you're probably using a timer to count 10 seconds out
instead of that, increment a variable, then have a progress bar read that variable , once it fires the spell, reset the variable to zero

[outer torrent]

yes

[flat coral]

I think I'm unsure of the issue you're facing. Is it that 10 seconds is too long? Or do you not know how to make the widget?

[outer torrent]

I don't know how to do the logic to make the bar slowly charge until it is full (in the player's view)

I created the logic behind calling the skill, it releases the skill, this whole part works. But I can't make the bar, on the HUD, slowly increase its value, for example, from 0 to 1

[wind path]

Hey guys so I have a question, so Im working on a mario cart type racing game and I have these portals where you get boosted/Launched when you go through it, and it works just fine, but when I stack multiple boost back to back it lauches the character too far and fast. When I stack 2 together its fine but adding a 3rd one just overkills it. I know it has to do with the multiply node but how would I cancel or reset it when triggering the next boost? If you can help much appreciated thank you.

[whole jay]

What would be the best way to, on overlap, get Other Actor, and reference whether the other actor is listed in an array of blueprints within a structure?

[barren dove]

as a chunky example
instead of a 10 second timer, use a .1 second timer
each time the timer fires, increment a variable +1
when the variable = 1000, you fire the spell and reset variable to zero/stop the timer

then you setup the tricket you have there to read the variable, and it'll do what you're looking for

[flat coral]

Well, if you can set it from 0 to 1, you dont NEED to slowly increase it. You just need to figure out what percentage charged you are, and set it to THAT

[whole jay]

For example

Like to check if that actor is within the Doors array for example

[barren dove]

he can use interp to, (iirc) to set his input to a scale of 0 to 1 and he's all set

[flat coral]

Like if "total cast time = 10s" and "Current charge time = 2s" then "current charge percentage = 2/10 = 0.2"

[outer torrent]

I will try this

[barren dove]

its an inelegant way but it'll work

[outer torrent]

Sure I'll try 🤘

[whole jay]

That's what I figured after thinking for a minute LOL

[sacred cradle]

I have gotten it to reset every time I jump, and blend properly. The problem now is how do I get the time remaining of a blendspace in blueprints? I need to know when the jump animation ends and reverse the JumpTime Timeline.

[whole jay]

Can someone tell me why my boolean isn't returning as true?

Wait should it be class reference

[faint pasture]

Either grow a ChargePercent on tick/timeline or use time (ChargeStartTime)

Either way, the UI just fetches the value it needs (binding) or is told (Character/Ability tells it) or binds to a dispatcher

binding is fine if you got a few things. If you had a bigass WoW style UI you wouldn't want to bind

[surreal peak]

Because you can't test it like that. The OtherActor pin is a pointer with a specific memory address. The array points to the BP Asset itself, which is not the same memory address. This can't return true. You can't fill in a pointer/reference to a spawned actor upfront in some default value array on some asset. That's logically impossible.

[sacred cradle]

I got this figured out I sent out dispatchers from a new state starting, in the long run jumping with blended blendstates is working now.

[surreal peak]

The only thing you could do is have the struct array be of type class and then grab the class of the other actor and compare those I guess. But if you use contains it might only check against the exact class and not including child classes.

[keen ice]

I need help with widget replication, i have a system that calculates damage a certain way, the widget then displays your damage in a widget as a score, and the score is sorted into D-SS. however, it doesn't work as intended when in multiplayer. It's broken in confusing ways, but basically, it plays the widget on both players, and sometimes none. I can go into a deeper explanation if needed but for now, here is my blueprint system

[fiery swallow]

Youre not showing enough code to see the actual problem

Quite a few possibilities

[keen ice]

ok i will show the whole system

[fiery swallow]

Hang on hang on

[keen ice]

as im sure you can tell from my programming im a beginner lol. so feel free to roast my work if needed

[fiery swallow]

Just tell me really quick

Whats this D - SS business, does this happen everytime you attack someone, or only when the game ends?

[keen ice]

this happens every time you kill a creature or player

or technically any time you hit one

[fiery swallow]

Alright is this client predicted or does the server directly tell the player they killed something?

Wait hang on see

Does it happen when you hit them or when you kill them

[keen ice]

when you hit them

the player does enough damage to one hit kill, but technically its every time you hit somthing

[fiery swallow]

Is it client predicted? As in does the client wait for the servers response, or does the client have its own hit trace or whatever?

[keen ice]

im not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure it works as you described because I'm running this logic off a multicast event which is called by a server-run event

[fiery swallow]

Multicast is most likely your problem

There are tons of ways to do this

A reliable method would instead be as follows...

Client attack enemy -> server acknowledges the hit -> server does an RPC to the client that attacked with their attack score -> client receives RPC and creates the widget

[keen ice]

hmm ok

[fiery swallow]

No multicast necessaey

[fiery swallow]

This image for example is looking all wrong

[keen ice]

yeah its janky :p

[fiery swallow]

Attacks should never be a multicast, because it only matters if the server does the line trace, and applies the damage

[keen ice]

yeah the whole multicast system as you said, may be the cause for several problems in this system, like the executing of the damage itself simply just wont do it randomly

[fiery swallow]

It's a good attempt, I don't mean to downplay your code. But it's definitely the multicast

[keen ice]

no ofc, like i said im new so il accept whatever

thanks

[hollow frost]

Is there an alternative to using "Get Actor of Class" to give an Interface call a target? For example, I'm trying to get information about whether or not my player is moving forward in a sword blueprint to determine the type of swing, but I don't know how to get the interface function to run and then pass through to the sword without using "Get Actor of Class"

[fiery swallow]

@keen ice
To quickly fix this problem, you could save a reference to the player that threw the attack, and then check if the local player is equal to the player that threw the attack, if so then spawn the widget

But that would be a bandaid fix to a bigger problem

[faint pasture]

That's pretty borked.
First off, widgets don't replicate, and they aren't network aware. Start with the source.
You want information about damage events to be displayed on everyone's machine as widgets, correct? Like damage numbers in WoW?

[keen ice]

yeah

[faint pasture]

how many of these, like hundreds flying all over the place? Are they meant to be in 3d (widget components) or on the HUD (2d widgets)?

[fiery swallow]

Yes, about 100 million, can you provide more context. Are you trying to get your own player?

[faint pasture]

ahem, player PAWN? lol

what's a player?

[fiery swallow]

Correct your own player pawn lol

[hollow frost]

Totally depends. In this context, yes, but I have about a gazillion "Get Actor of Class" nodes all over the place, as I wasn't aware they created hard references.

Here is another example where I'm passing to my "shield" blueprint

[fiery swallow]

If it's in an animation blueprint then there's a node which automatically gives you a reference to the owner. "Try get pawn character" and then just cast to your character

[faint pasture]

just think about that

[keen ice]

no there is ment to only be one and it spawns every time you kill an enemy, i made an appearing and dissapearing animation in the widget, so now that i think of it, its prolly stupid to just keep spawning the same widgets over and over

[hollow frost]

I thought it's good practice to avoid casts as they create hard references, which bloats the size of blueprints?

[fiery swallow]

Nothing wrong with hard references provided they are necessary

[faint pasture]

that is saying, literally:
"Get the first shield you find in the world. Tell it that it is swinging"

not "get my shield" or "Get the shield I care about", just "Hey, gimme a shield"

[keen ice]

the widgets never actually leave technically tho they dissapear because of the animation ☠️

[hollow frost]

Well there is only one of each as only the player has them

[faint pasture]

still gross

get MyShield

[hollow frost]

I'm not well versed in blueprints either, I'm learning lol

[hollow frost]

Wouldn't that require a cast?

[faint pasture]

That can be fine. I'd start out by making an event that makes the thing appear.

[fiery swallow]

In this case, directly after creating the shield, or picking it up, you would save a reference to it. As Adrien said, the reference would be something like "MyShield"

[faint pasture]

Event DamagePopup or whatever

[keen ice]

ahh thats a good idea

[fleet sigil]

Is there any way to remove the object reference here?

[hollow frost]

Yeah but that would be in the player BP, correct? I should've specified to begin with, but both of those images are from my Sword Blueprint

[keen ice]

what would be the advantage of that?

[fiery swallow]

Why would your sword care about the shield your player is holding?

But anyway, yes, get the owner of the sword, and retrieve the MyShield variable from there

[hollow frost]

Which would require a cast, correct?

[fiery swallow]

Assuming the owner of the sword is the player holding the sword

[faint pasture]

once you have that, you can call it however you want (multicast, etc)

[fiery swallow]

If the character already exists in the game a cast won't matter...

[keen ice]

ohh ok. so if i want it to only pop up for a single player, what replication method would that be?

[faint pasture]

You haven't said why the sword cares about the shield at all

[hollow frost]

I was under the impression the cast would add the size of the player onto the blueprint that is casting? Is that not the case

[faint pasture]

for which player?

the one dealing or recieving the damage

[keen ice]

dealing

[faint pasture]

Are they doing any damage calcs at all, predicting or anything of that sort?

or are they just telling the server to shoot and letting it handle it from there?

show your code from a button press to the damage actually happening

[keen ice]

ok

[keen ice]

first

[keen ice]

second

[fiery swallow]

Your making me get ready to make a full tutorial on casting lol. If you know with 100% certainty, your base character will always exist in the game, then a cast is going to cost you nothing

[keen ice]

thats all the logic for the attack in those 2 sc

[fiery swallow]

The only time you shouldn't use a cast or hard reference is when there's a chance something may never need to exist in memory

[fiery swallow]

Like an elite Easter egg sword that's hidden far away in never land

[hollow frost]

So as long as X thing exists in the world, casting to X won't add the entirety of X back into memory, on top of the version of X that already exists?

[fiery swallow]

If it exists in the world then it's already in memory

So no, casting will make no difference

[hollow frost]

so if X is 100mb and already exists, and Z is 50mb, and Z casts to X, an additional 100mb won't be put into memory

I wish I knew that like, dozens of hours ago

[fiery swallow]

What you described isn't the fault of casting

Even if you didn't use a cast those 100mb swords would still stack in memory lol

Interfaces aren't gonna save you there

[hollow frost]

If it's not spawned in it wouldn't add 100MB though?

[fiery swallow]

Exactly, but that's nothing to do with casts

Casting is only bad because it loads an object type into memory even if you don't need it

[hollow frost]

I thought casts made a reference to the thing you're casting to that's the full size of whatever the thing is

[fiery swallow]

But keyword being if you don't need it

No bro, not using casts isn't gonna give you Thanos power levels of RAM utility

Casting is only bad if you are Casting to things that may never exist in the world

[hollow frost]

So you only want to use casting in the event it will always exist?

[fiery swallow]

Pretty much. Like a BaseCharacter, or BaseWeapon

[hollow frost]

🤔

[fiery swallow]

The idea for example is Basecharacter is really an empty container containing information of other base references

[hollow frost]

But I'm still confused on the point of Interfaces then? In this one example, how would I indicate to this interface call to use the FPPawn as a target without creating a hard reference?

[fiery swallow]

Thats because whatever video you watched lied to you most likely

Interfaces are not a replacement to casting

[hollow frost]

Well not video, more like video(s) and dozens of reddit posts 😂 It's really hard to find good information about good practices

[fiery swallow]

They are an alternative solution to fix an entirely different issue

Such as interaction events

[hollow frost]

Yeah, I'm using an interface for interactions and it works great, no hard references

[fiery swallow]

Door, and light switch would not be suitable to a shared base class, so you'd have to create 2 separate "interact" events which is also not feasible

[hollow frost]

The problem is I also applied interfaces to basically every single thing i made

[fiery swallow]

Interfaces exist only to solve that problem

Not to save you ram

It just happens to save you ram when you don't know how to cast properly I guess

Not only that but interfaces are a huge nuisance because looking at the code you won't even know what object is receiving the interface call when it's time to debug

It's a huge pain

[hollow frost]

So in the pic I sent, it would be better to use a cast assuming it's in an actor blueprint that will basically always exist?

[fiery swallow]

It's absolutely not meant to be used as a "better cast"

[fiery swallow]

Yes

[hollow frost]

😭 I wish I knew this when I was first making all this that would've saved so much time

[fiery swallow]

If you know that the shield object type will always exist in the game then definitely casting to BP_Shield won't be a problem at all

[hollow frost]

So I wont experience any issues casting between my player, the sword, and the shield blueprints as long as they are all core parts of the game

[fiery swallow]

That's why I said it's almost always okay to cast to Base classes assuming you set those up correctly aswell

Base classes should only contain empty references

[hollow frost]

Is this discord associated with the unreal reddit? This really should be pinned information

[fiery swallow]

Child classes will fill those references

[fiery swallow]

I believe people continue to tell beginners not to use casts as a safety precaution because they often do use casting incorrectly

Same with the whole "never use tick" nonsense

Beginners often misuse tick

[hollow frost]

I've repeatedly read the idea that using casting should be avoided, which is why I'm in the situation I am now

[undone bluff]

blueprint is damn limited though if you need to do something every frame but not always

[hollow frost]

everything I read about how they worked lead me to the conclusion that using casting would make the game's performance bad

[fiery swallow]

They did everything except mention the part where interfaces use casts

[hollow frost]

Yeah, I just figured that out today unfortunately

[fiery swallow]

I figure if I can save atleast one person a month from casting phobia I'm making a difference in the world

[hollow frost]

It definitely just saved me hours more of trying to figure out something lol

What about event dispatchers, what is the problem use cases for those? They seem somewhat similar to Interfaces but I assume their purpose is different

[undone bluff]

Calling an event on tick and bind/unbind as needed doesn't sound bad

Using it to drive a curve would probably still be better than a timeline

[thin panther]

https://intaxwashere.github.io/blueprint-performance/#myth-3-do-not-use-cast-its-expensive

useful resource

[undone bluff]

"calling around 300 empty tick nodes in a single frame costs around 1ms per frame" holy shit nice reminder to always turn off ticking on actors and components when it's not needed

that is a lot more expensive than I expected

[fiery swallow]

Funnily enough, converting tick to a function also decreased its costs

You can see a list of everything set to tick by running the command "dumpticks" in the console

[undone bluff]

ooh nice one

[meager spade]

Basically, let's say you have class A that has an event dispatcher, by calling the event you are doing the same thing as calling each individual function that is listenting to it. It saves you having to know which functions to call and also helps with decoupling. All the other classes just decide to listen to you calling the event instead of manually calling each single function individually

[fiery swallow]

Event dispatchers are great for performance. I use them wherever it would make sense

[undone bluff]

event dispatchers are great for components

I mean you kinda get the use case just by looking at how native classes use them

[meager spade]

I remember that they were a little bit intimidating when I started out

[main lake]

Did the video you watched showed the BP_Character goes from more than 100Mb to less than 10 MB by showing you the memory usage through the profiler ? 👀

[fiery swallow]

Link pls

[main lake]

Why ?

[hollow frost]

idk what that means

[fiery swallow]

Because if it had anything to do with casting vs interfaces I'd love to see it

[hollow frost]

Is he suggesting that interfaces is better

Oh I know the video you're talking about lol

I just watched it today

[undone bluff]

Interfaces: I don't know who I'm talking to but I wanna tell them something and maybe request a message back
Event dispatchers: here's a message with no return address to anyone who cares

[hollow frost]

I assume he means this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWDnTDi_aLY

[main lake]

There we go

yeah

[hollow frost]

I saw this about an hour ago

Had nothing to do with me using interfaces originally, all my stuff is from months ago

the cubes go from like 110mb to 1mb

[main lake]

I talked about it with more experienced devs than me and they explained to me that there's no big optimization there compared to what he's trying to say in the video

[hollow frost]

this is what he's talking about

I find this feature a bit confusing having just learned about it. My sword child actor says it's 1mb larger than my base sword BP, but in my file explorer it's not

[main lake]

Like it doesn't change that much as in his example the character will be loaded in the memory anyways, so you're casting or not won't change that much compared to his sayings showing the 111 MB going to 1Mb.

[hollow frost]

I assume it's referring to it in a vacuum?

[undone bluff]

because it's presumably including any dependencies it has

[hollow frost]

Yeah that's what i figured but wasn't sure

[main lake]

Because the way it works is like it's showing you other dependencies its using so that's why the memory is big (the 111Mb)

because in the beginning I thought that each actor I drop in my scene would cost 111Mb (when not optimized) and they told me it doesn't work like that

[undone bluff]

honestly the worst offender are often inventories

my god

common fuckup

[main lake]

? 👀

[undone bluff]

inventories that hard reference every item in the game, their model and textures

[main lake]

it costs alot in terms of resources ?

[thin panther]

Don't get me started on the data table for every item that has hard refs to bp classes, models and textures

[main lake]

https://tenor.com/view/jim-carrey-dumb-and-dumber-whatever-fine-whatever-gif-gif-7892631202993336744

[undone bluff]

yea that's like up there one with one of the worst things you can do

[faint pasture]

Unless they're small

then you can just load the game and be done with it

[undone bluff]

I mean if you can load your entire game into memory at once then you don't gotta manage haha

[faint pasture]

when you load the game you're really gonna LOAD THE GAME

[thin panther]

Yeah frontloading the entire game on super small games is a perfectly valid tactic

[faint pasture]

So when do assets get loaded? I've noticed sounds being delayed the first time they are played, is that when they are loaded? I thought it'd be when the thing referencing them was loaded.

or is that delay between being loaded and being cached by the audio system or soemthing

[undone bluff]

oh yea with audio files you gotta make sure to preload them even if they are hard referenced if you want to avoid any latency

you can set them to prime on load to avoid this

if you don't have much audio

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/an-overview-of-audio-stream-caching-in-unreal-engine/

they are a special case though

[hollow karma]

I have a Blueprint class that derives from a custom C++ class. It is DA_Item1 derived from DcsItemDataAsset

I have a Blueprint Actor class with with a variable of type DcsItemDataAsset

I cannot, however, assign the variable a default value. My DA_Item1 does not show up when I try to assign the default value.

Why?

[fiery swallow]

This right here

🤌🤌

[fiery swallow]

is DcsItemDataAsset set to BlueprintReadWrite, or EditAnywhere?

[hollow karma]

It's class is declared as

UCLASS(Blueprintable)
class DCSINVENTORY_API UDcsItemDataAsset : public UPrimaryDataAsset

Is that what you mean?

[fiery swallow]

I meant DcsItemDataAsset

something like

UPROPERTY(BlueprintReadWrite)
UObject* DcsItemDataAsset

or whatever

[hollow karma]

DcsItemDataAsset is a class, not a property.
DcsItemData (no asset) is a variable added in blueprints to an Actor and it's type is set to DcsItemDataAsset

[fiery swallow]

🤦

my mans

does your variable have the UPROPERTY BlueprintReadWrite

[hollow karma]

My variable is not defined in C++. It was added through the Blueprint interface

[fiery swallow]

You can't inherit a variable from an interface

you can only inherit functions from interfaces

[hollow karma]

It did not say I was. In that sentence "interface" = UI

In the UE Editor, I created a Blueprint class that inherits from Actor, and then in the Blueprint editor for that new class I added a variable

[barren dove]

Hey can someone gimme a hand here
common button doesn't appear in my gui, just the text?

[fiery swallow]

Are you just asking how to set a reference to an object you created?

if so you need to create the object first, and then set the reference

[hollow karma]

I'm asking why nothing appears in the dropdown when I try to set the variable's default value

DcsItemData is a variable of type DcsItemDataAsset
DA_Item1 is a blueprint that inherits from (and therefore is a) DcsItemDataAsset
When I click the drop down in screenshot above to set the default value of the variable, nothing shows up. I expected it to show my DA_Item1 blueprint

[fiery swallow]

I think there's 2 different types of data assets, perhaps they are not the same

the only other thing I can think of is the cpp asset you created was nor properly exposed

this is a question I would have asked in #cpp

[hollow karma]

Yes. There is PrimaryDataAsset and regular DataAsset. Mine are a type of PrimaryDataAsset

[fiery swallow]

I'd bite the bullet and ask in cpp, I think there's something involving proper exposure to blueprints

[hollow karma]

It could be

[fiery swallow]

most people who use blueprints only likely won't know the solution to this

[desert juniper]

how did you make DA_Item1?

Ddi you make it via the standard create blueprint menu? or the misc menu?

[hollow karma]

The standard menu

[desert juniper]

This is the way to make an instance of the DA class

otherwise you are just defining the architecture for another parent DA class

[hollow karma]

Hmm. You mean it can't be a Primary Data Asset? I am new to assets, so I may very have picked the wrong base class

[desert juniper]

the C++ class should be either PDA or DA. either one is fine

when you want to make a blueprint instance of that class, make it via the Misc > Data Asset menu

[hollow karma]

It is a PDA. It does not show up in the Miscellaneous list, though

[desert juniper]

Not this oen

[desert juniper]

code?

[hollow karma]

UCLASS(Blueprintable)
class DCSINVENTORY_API UDcsItemDataAsset : public UPrimaryDataAsset
{
    GENERATED_BODY()

It's declared like that

[desert juniper]

UCLASS()
this should be enough

no need to specify it's Blueprintable

other then that, you don't' need anything else.
go ahead and rebuild. make sure you close the engine, build project, and see if it shows up in the misc list.
to be clear

in the Misc list, choose Data Asset

then choose your C++ base class from that list

[hollow karma]

I did that. That did not change anything.
Could this have something to do with this class being part of a plugin I am developing?

[hollow karma]

Doh!

I forgot that when you click "Data Asset" it then gives up a way to refine the class you want

[desert juniper]

🙂

[hollow karma]

It works now. Thank you very much!

[desert juniper]

one more thing @hollow karma if you want to use the asset manager, make sure you override
virtual FPrimaryAssetId GetPrimaryAssetId() const override;

[hollow karma]

Like I said, I'm new to Data Assets of all kinds.

[hollow karma]

Yeah, I still need to add that, actually.

[desert juniper]

Here's some good documentation that shows off the tradeoffs with DAs, Tables, and plain UObjects
https://benui.ca/unreal/data-driven-design/

I was struggling with DA's and the asset manager for some time before. feel free to reach out if you need some help.

[hollow karma]

I've read that and some other things, but it's not really stuck in my head yet. This project should help with that as I try to actually put things into practice

[desert juniper]

DA's are just a data store.

with the added advantage that you can run logic on them

basically an object that can store data. it's meant to store data, and not generally recommended to be manipulated at runtime, unless you're clever about it

[hollow karma]

That's what I need it for

[tribal gazelle]

What node do I use for a begin play inside a game instance? Event init does not seam to work and cannot find any other nodes.

[frosty heron]

What nodes? That shouldn't have anything to do with init or not

Gi gets creates before your world even exist and gi can exist outside of worlds

[tribal gazelle]

I can see a begin player or construct nothing

[frosty heron]

Meaning if you want nodes that require a world you will need to pass GI the world context obj

[tribal gazelle]

So I would have to call functions inside it from elsewhere?

[frosty heron]

Depends on what function

In cpp pretty sure u can just pass world to do stuff in the level

[tribal gazelle]

Trying to handle things like missions in the GI and trying to initiate a prologue

Well just trying to call something lol

[frosty heron]

Doesn't sound like the right place

You should have a manager for it

[misty badger]

I don't get it, does Game Instance is single when testing in viewport for multiplayer? Or Game Instance created per viewport window?

[lunar sleet]

There’s only one game instance afaik. #multiplayer can confirm

[frosty heron]

There is only one. You define which to use in game project setting

Each game instance (each computer/machine) have one

Having said that you can make a game instance subsystem. That one has no limit

Oh I'm not sure about multiplayer pie. It should create one for each

Can always test is later

Just do a set and print of variable

[misty badger]

Oh yes, each pie window has it's own game instance. Thank you god!

[summer sail]

Is this a good way to implement double tap? I test if "move" executed for less than 0.1 secs and set a bool to true if been tapped. Then set up a timer to reset it if it takes too long.

[frosty heron]

I would think something like that would have been covered with enhanced input system

Not sure how tho

[summer sail]

I read the documentation but couldnt a way to check for quick taps maybe I missed something.

what is your thoughts on this solution anything i can do better?

[finite hearth]

How would I get the player controller of the possessing player, from the the possessed actor?

[frosty heron]

Get controller node. It will return generic controller. You can just cast from there if you need to access your player controller stuff

[frosty heron]

#enhanced-input-system might be a good place to ask

[finite hearth]

One more: I am using attach actor to actor to snap a camera actor to a unit actor. Everything is fine, but there's some funky collision of the camera - which results in my camera being offset from it's intended vantage.

I believe it triggers whenever the camera is bumped, but I don't see any collision settings on the cam.

Anybody have advice on how to lock the camera to the relative location of the parent actor? Or should I not be using attach actor to actor?

[lunar sleet]

Why not just disable the collision between them?

Nvm I just saw the collision part

There should be something tho

[finite hearth]

I'm sure it's a check-box that I didn't tick. But there are so many!

The collision of the falling tree is set to only block world static, so I don't understand why it would mess with the camera location.

[lunar sleet]

Collision is double-sided

Both parties need to have the same setting for it to work

I.e. the camera can block the tree even if the tree ignores it, and thus get bumped

[finite hearth]

But I don't see any collision settings on the camera or spring arm.

[finite hearth]

I think the problem was my spring arm. I was settings its location using a transform. I changed my logic to use "Target offset" and the camera is no longer being bumped.

[frosty heron]

The camera have collision setting if that's what u r looking for

Channel and the radius

[frigid summit]

hi guys how do i fix this it always return not valid after charcter death Blueprint Runtime Error: "Accessed None trying to read property CallFunc_GetBlackboard_ReturnValue". Node: Set Value as bool Graph: EventGraph Function: Execute Ubergraph Corpsebpfull 1 Blueprint: corpsebpfull1

when i print it to string it always return hello

[unborn raven]

Plug the ‘IsValid’ in before using the blackboard for anything else.

[frigid summit]

yea before it destroyed on event begin play it return valid but after death it instantly become unvalid

[unborn raven]

Call the blackboard before calling the death event

[frigid summit]

seems like death make blackboard disactivated

[frigid summit]

yea on the begin play i call it

[lunar sleet]

Destroy actor should not come before anything else that accesses the object

it invalidates it because it destroys it

[frigid summit]

the proplem is the on death event disable the blackboard maybe and it become unvalid

[unborn raven]

Would only happen if you try to use the blackboard after calling set lifespan or destroy actor

[lunar sleet]

You can always hide something instead of destroying it, if you still need to do things to it after

[frigid summit]

i dont call destroy actor or set life span the casanim slave on ended (death animation ) on ended it become unvalid) so no destroy actor here

[frigid summit]

so the proplem is the animation make the blackboard disactivated maybe

[lunar sleet]

Ok, if get blackboard returns None it means you don’t have a blackboard set when that event fires

[frigid summit]

yea and i tried on animation finished and it return same unvalid

[lunar sleet]

You need to set the blackboard inside the AI controller bp, are you doing that?

[frigid summit]

yea i use run behavior tree and use blackboard on controller begin play

[lunar sleet]

And also, organize your code better it’s very hard to see what is happening in that screenshot. Your isValid check is not connected properly

Right now your event fires and if the AICon is valid, it keeps looping through set value and isValid

Write your code from left to right like you would write in English.

[frigid summit]

ok

[frigid summit]

what event do you want me to send to fix this

[lunar sleet]

Fix the current event. Connect the nodes properly

[frigid summit]

this is on death event that still make it unvalid and the charcter is not destroyed : (

[frigid summit]

yea i did

same like on animation finished event it also return unvalid i dont know whyyyy

[lunar sleet]

Try printing the return value of get AI Controller

[frigid summit]

ok

wtf even the ai controller is unvalid

[lunar sleet]

There you go, so whatever corpsebpfull1 is, it’s not possessed by an AICon, least not when this event fires

[frigid summit]

ok than i will call the possess in the event begin play

[gentle urchin]

Or set it in the bp's default values

[dull dawn]

hi im having this issue where i cant enter text in an editable text box what could be the issue

[frigid summit]

i set it

[gentle urchin]

Proof or it didnt happen

[lunar sleet]

Why are you creating the widget on tick, among other things

[dull dawn]

should i do it on a custom event?

[gentle urchin]

Done on tick is the issue

Beginplay would work nicely

Or custom event

[lunar sleet]

Yes, you’re currently recreating the widget 60-120 times per second

[gentle urchin]

But it must be exevuted by something

[dull dawn]

ah i see ill try thanks

[lunar sleet]

There might be other issues like input mode but def start there

[frigid summit]

Blueprint Runtime Error: "Accessed None trying to read property CallFunc_GetAIController_ReturnValue". Node: Possess Graph: EventGraph Function: Execute Ubergraph Corpsebpfull 1 Blueprint: corpsebpfull1

i set poseess in begin play and after on death and still unvalid

seems like the death disable everything

[lunar sleet]

#blueprint message

You should only be possessing it once, and do so before the game even starts

[frigid summit]

how do i posess it before the game start do you mean in gamemode

[lunar sleet]

Go to that message

[frigid summit]

i already set it in default values

[lunar sleet]

Is it set to Autopossess AI on Spawn and Placed in World ?

[frigid summit]

yes

maybe i need to set custom controller than

[dull dawn]

i added a custom event in the level bp how do i call that custom function from my actor bp

[lunar sleet]

By not using the level bp

[dull dawn]

but i need to show the ui from my level BP no?

[lunar sleet]

No

Level bp is something people that have no idea what they’re doing teach on YouTube or wherever

[dull dawn]

ah

[lunar sleet]

You can show UI from your player controller if you need something centralized

[dull dawn]

so then i can cast to thirdperson bP from my actor BP correct?

[lunar sleet]

You can communicate with any bps from anywhere except level bp.

[dull dawn]

it worked thanks

[dull dawn]

yeah i was searching why that doesnt work

[lunar sleet]

Laura explained it at some point. Iirc it’s a relic of the old system, before Kismet 2.0, the lone survivor of the system overhaul

[frosty heron]

Simple , the bp class exist outside the world. It has no reference to the world(level) your level bp reside

Tldr don't use level bp

[frigid summit]

still not valid after charcter death i dont know what to do

[silk sail]

I am working on a multiplayer game. My character has a variable to represent the current hotbar slot that is selected. The variable is changed locally. How can I pass it into a function will be called on the server?

[knotty cloud]

Hi, Im trying to make a very simple flashlight for a vr project, Initially Ive been using a duplicated version of the pistol from the base project with the firing disabled and im trying to have it with a simple button press to turn the torch on and off, I can pick it up however I cant use any controls on it.

I changed the Input controls from the weaponL/R to my own custom TorchL/R which contains a single mapping to either B or Y on the oculus touch controller ive added some print strings to try and get some information into the output log for me to check after ive taken the vr headset off after testing but nothing shows up.

[north lynx]

Hi!
I have a problem
When I use my own textures from Substance Sampler, UE5 don't scale them down according to my settings
Any ideas why is that?
Here's code for changing the Texture Quality

[frosty heron]

If client set variable it will only set the variable locally for it self. The only way for client to communicate to server is via server rpc.

Can't stress this enough #multiplayer pins have the basics and beyond covered. If you want to make mp game, I would suggest to read thru it

[silk sail]

I just read through it. So you are saying i need to set the variable with a server rpc?

[frosty heron]

As client if you want to tell the server to change the variable then yes.

Changing the variable on client before sending server rpc is needed too in many cases. This is called client prediction

[random pulsar]

hey guys i want to create a widget when all actors of class parent food are collected,but i think is is a bad practice to get all actors of class each time i overlap with a food.Is this a bad logic or no?

also it is better to write it in game mode?

[frosty heron]

Ye pretty bad and make it not scaleable

Just get what u need to get

[random pulsar]

i mean i get only the parent?

or how

[frosty heron]

What's the goal

To collect food?

Get a ref to those that you need to collect

And just check those element. Don't check anything else u don't need

Like if u only want to collect food from the kitchen, only get the food and check food from the kitchen. Don't get the entire world food

[random pulsar]

now i speak with an npc,when i finish the dialogue there spawns food,i collect it(they just add a counter on widget ,increment, and destroy .)after i collect all the food i want to create a widget ,but i need somehow and somewhere to check if there are no more food in the level

[frosty heron]

Dialogue with Npc -> Spawn food -> Store the spawned food in an array

that will be the food that you need to collect

everytime a food is collected, take it out from the array

once they are empty, you can execute your finished logic

[random pulsar]

i am sorry i made a mistake,they dont spawn,they just show themselves and enable collision

on begin play they hide

[frigid summit]

hi do you know how to fix this error accessed none trying to read property callfunc_getblackboard_returnvalue

[frosty heron]

your blackboard value is not set

[frigid summit]

yea but i set it in the blueprint

[frosty heron]

you can just spawn them when the dialogue is called

[frigid summit]

set value as bool of enemy

[frosty heron]

what if the food is spawned before the quest is taken?

[frosty heron]

well comp don't lie

[random pulsar]

its not,thats why i made this,you finish dialog and then they show and enable overlap

[frosty heron]

I only see u hiding the food which I don't c the point

just spawn them after quest is taken or dialogue is initiated

[random pulsar]

its also a bad practice but it works😂

[frigid summit]

is this right or not it always prints not valid

[random pulsar]

now no need ,the problem is not here

[frosty heron]

don't know, but it's not even connecteded to begin with

[frosty heron]

problem is you are using get all actor of class

instead spawning them and storing them as a variable (array)

[frigid summit]

yea i just disconnected its actually was connected on death animation finish

[frosty heron]

knowing to do this, will get you long way

[frosty heron]

can't debug your project

[frigid summit]

ok

[frosty heron]

always start simple if u are not sure

start a fresh black board and BT and just set the value

[frigid summit]

ok ill try

[random pulsar]

brother believe me ,the way its now seted up it will not work

[frosty heron]

we are kind of all over the place, I don't even know what to say

everytime you collect food

take one out from the array

when it's empty, it means there is no more food

and when there is no more food do X

[dense mica]

Hi @novel silo , apologies for pinging directly. I'm having the same issue, are you certain issue was related with BP structs? This seems to be happening on UE5.0+ only, but I couldnt pinpoint if its always related with BP structs or not

To give you more context; BP structs are very fragile becase they dont break in Fortnite since Epic probably dont use them

Its a corruption/serialization error

And there isnt a better debugging tool, this is directly related with reflection system and probably BP compiler

Ubergraph is a BP virtual machine data structure, where BP compiler combine every event node into a single hidden event node, this is related with how Blueprints designed in backend

Your BP struct set member thing seem to be used in a function, which might be a false-positive to get suspicious from it

[random pulsar]

yeah i get it ,thanks🙂

[random pulsar]

is this a good practice to load the next level?i want by clicking on the button to load next level

level names are Level1,Level2.......,Level6

[dense bone]

Hi,
I've problems with my chat system. For unknown reason it is only showing message on client who send it. What might be the issue?
https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/97fjccfg/
This is my component BP which is replicated. I was planning to bind event dispatcher to every actor that own that component and then execute event on all locally. What I am doing wrong?

[pallid swallow]

I am quite new to unreal, do you guys know if it is possible to set the size of the default floor actor on event begin play ?

[random pulsar]

you can do this in a few ways

first one is in level blueprint right click get the ref of the object drag from that object and type set actor 3d scale

and in new scale let the scale

you can modifi it in details panel just unlock the scale,and type the values

and one more way

creating an actor ,there getting the ref of the object ,place the actor in the scene make it instance editable,get the ref of the actor in blueprint and make the same as in level bp

[ruby apex]

Spent one more day, still don't get how to make it work. Help please (question about blueprint transitions in anim instance) #animation message

[turbid pecan]

Is there any authoritative information around why I would NOT want to store all persistent globals in my game instance? Stuff relevant to cross-level gameplay and so on.

[pallid swallow]

Do you know why when I press play it doesnt render properly ?

[undone bluff]

static lighting?

also uh, allocate some more vram with r.Streaming.PoolSize [memory in MBs]

[random pulsar]

?

i dont have enough information to tell you why

place the camera higher idk

[pallid swallow]

When I don't resize it goes like this

[pallid swallow]

what is static lighting ? Should I look more into that ?

[undone bluff]

literally first property in the details panel on any light propagating or receiving actor

static is baked, stationary is cached and movable is real time lighting

[pallid swallow]

When I change it I don't see much difference

[undone bluff]

You set it to movable, right?

[pallid swallow]

Yes, by default

[undone bluff]

The light source?

[pallid swallow]

yes

[undone bluff]

I figured it's the default but that looked exactly like what would happen if you tried to scale an object with baked lighting

I cannot think of anything else it could be

[pallid swallow]

I will try in a complete blank project to see if it's linked to metahuman or something I did

Same issue in a new blank project without adding anything

[marble tusk]

Try setting the Z scale to something higher than 0. That 0 height scale might be messing with things

[pallid swallow]

Omg this is it

Make so much sense

Thanks

[brittle mural]

When I create an empty actor class in my project and double click on it, I get the following error. I deleted the Saved and Intermedite folders and tried again but the situation is the same. Can you help me?

UnrealEditor_RigVM
UnrealEditor_RigVM
UnrealEditor_RigVM
UnrealEditor_RigVMEditor
UnrealEditor_RigVMDeveloper
UnrealEditor_BlueprintGraph
UnrealEditor_BlueprintGraph
UnrealEditor_BlueprintGraph
UnrealEditor_BlueprintGraph
UnrealEditor_Kismet
UnrealEditor_Kismet
UnrealEditor_Kismet
UnrealEditor_Kismet
UnrealEditor_EngineAssetDefinitions
UnrealEditor_AssetTools
UnrealEditor_UnrealEd
UnrealEditor_UnrealEd
UnrealEditor_UnrealEd
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowserAssetDataSource
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowserAssetDataSource
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowserAssetDataSource
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowser
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowser
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowser
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowser
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowser
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowser
UnrealEditor_ContentBrowser
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor_ApplicationCore
UnrealEditor_ApplicationCore
UnrealEditor_ApplicationCore
UnrealEditor_ApplicationCore
user32
user32
UnrealEditor_ApplicationCore
UnrealEditor
UnrealEditor
UnrealEditor
UnrealEditor
UnrealEditor
UnrealEditor
kernel32
ntdll```

[barren dove]

stupid general question: all the UE editor windows seem to be set to "always on front" in an order that infuriates me, where is the setting so that they behave like regular windows?

[lofty rapids]

just keep an integer currentLevel, and format text to creat the current or next level name

Level{LoadLevelNumber}

this way to goto next level you can increment currentLevel, and load the next level

or load whatever level you want

[novel silo]

Hey, I can try to recover the talks I had, let me see

can I make threads in here?

[dense mica]

threads are disabled in this server

[novel silo]

alright, so my problem was finally here

well, my bro problem, I didn't knew much about the project, but for whatever reason this got corrupted at this point. Since I know more about git I helped here just by trying different commits

[dense mica]

i find this very interesting because callstack doesnt make sense when I compare it with the screenshot, Ubergraph is something strictly related with things in event graph

[novel silo]

My bro did the best at commiting mostly every step of the tutorial e was doing to "take notes" along

[dense mica]

I think my client also has same BP structs so we'll start with removing them

thanks for the confirmation

BP structs are also known for being completely broken anyway so its best to avoid them

[novel silo]

I think this was the before, at some point he turned this blueprint into the one I posted before

might be the the other way around, the chat we had was very uninformative 😅

Bascially at some point he changed it and building broke, very flimsy in my opinion

In any case, pretty please, use version control and don't forget to commit often! 😘

[blissful summit]

Is it normal for set actor location to increase the frame time on the game thread a lot?

Theres a pattern in my project where whenever I use set actor location/relative location the FPS will drop until it finishes moving

or is that purely an editor only thing

(i am calling set actor location every tick until it reaches destination)

[snow oasis]

How Expensive are Branches?

This is just a simple system to make it so when you are out of ammo a Click sound Plays.
Is this fine or is there a better way to do it?

[lofty rapids]

i don't see branches being expensive, something like an if is pretty common stuff

[snow oasis]

Alright so just dont worry about it?

unless its like an extreme example

[lofty rapids]

i mean i wouldn't worry about branches unless you had a whole lot, like a real lot

i don't know what that number is but it's just such a simple task under the hood

i mean i wouldn't worry about 100 branches imo it's probably not an issue you need to worry about

[snow oasis]

Yeah

Alright Thanks.

[kind estuary]

@faint pasture I created a World subsystem.
Each unit is one struct instance and one instance of ism.
Where do i store the struct? In an array?

Or a TMap?

Seems a TMap is more efficient

else im going to have to iterate through it a lot

or would you do an array

[neon lion]

i have a tarray of ustructs, how can i get one of them from it by reference
so that i can modify the struct i get, and in doing so also change the one in the array

aha nevermind i figured it out, how to get an array item by ref

[kind estuary]

@faint pasture And the first barriers im coming accross with the Struct system is that its not adecuate for interfaces and functions.
So if my tiles are occupied by buildings or some other type of object other than units then things will get complicated, and at that point it might be better to use UObject or AActor

ill let this simmer a bit 🫕

[gentle urchin]

Array

Tmap doesnt replicate

Array also comes in fastArray

Tile struct differ from unit struct

Tilestruct contains some bools to identify if its occupied, which team occupies it, and if it's still passable etc

No need for actors or uobjects so far

Everything is just data

[stoic root]

A little assistence please 🙂 I'm trying to make an object (saw blade) rotate as it goes down a path. The path works as expected however i cant seem to get the blade to perpetually rotate. Any suggestion please? Thank you.

[gentle urchin]

You can play this out with 0 visualization

[kind estuary]

ah. well you need a reference to the object (unit, building, etc...), that is on top of a tile

so in the tile struct i have AActor* Entity

[gentle urchin]

The building doesnt nedd to exist

As an actor

It can too be just data

[kind estuary]

yup it can

[gentle urchin]

Youre not applying amy rotation to it

[kind estuary]

but how do you then interact with that. You need 2 references, 1- FUnit, and another FBuilding

And check all the time

and may need more structs

then different functions for all

can become a nightmare

[gentle urchin]

You click on tile -> you look up tilestruct
It has an ID for building and an id for units

[kind estuary]

so what if you have more types

then it becomes a mess

Id for building, Id for units, Id for pants, Id for socks

with AActor

You have one reference

and then you can cast, or use interface. And win <-

or no? @gentle urchin

[gentle urchin]

You gotta maintain and update all these references too

Back and forth

[kind estuary]

though its more maintainabLe

idk