blueprint

[swift sphinx]

anyone know?

[dire frost]

no because it's pretty much impossible. you could fake it, maybe add a little effect to hide the hard cut-off between perspective and orthographic views

[sharp fox]

how can i keep a simmilar size for every child actor, so if a child actor is big then scale it down and if it's really small then scale it up

[remote meteor]

its written there
use vs2022 not 2019 for msvc version

[fading hawk]

I'm switching over some menus to CommonUI but I found that the "expose on spawn" variables aren't showing up in the Push Widget like they did in Create Widget.
Is there a way to fix this?

[gentle urchin]

add them manually

otherwise no

[swift sphinx]

hide it like how?

[dire frost]

as i mentioned add a little effect. like small flash to black or some screen-space confetti or something

you can go crazy with it if you want

[twin shale]

Anyone know why IsA wouldn't be working in a Blutility?

Printing the Class of these assets just returns Blueprint and not the child class

[gentle urchin]

It's messy, to say the least

also i think you can get more help in #editor-scripting

[twin shale]

I'll check there. Blutilities are weird sometimes

[balmy rock]

im working on a top down retro space shooter for a college project and i've hit a bit of a roadblock

Im probably missing something simple but coding isnt exactly my strong suit. Anyways, the issue is whatever state the enemy blueprint with this pawn sensing node starts with in terms of seeing the player, it will stay that way forever. So if it starts out seeing the player, it will constantly print the string (even if I leave its sight). But if starts out NOT seeing the player, nothing will happen (even if I enter its sight). Of course, i want the sight to be dynamic to where its always checking if it sees the player and does actions accordingly.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[agile moss]

When I open my project, how can I make it so that it loads automaticaly a specific level?

[lofty rapids]

edit, project settings

[agile moss]

thanks mate

[lofty rapids]

search for map

theres default maps

[lofty rapids]

this is all the code ?

[balmy rock]

Just for stuff related to the pawn sensing component, yes

[lofty rapids]

whats with the condition it's kind of pointless

your printing on pawn sensing ?

and thats what keeps showing up all the time ?

[balmy rock]

At this stage, yes
I've tried using other nodes like while loops and sequences, but I seem to get the same result, most likely with how i've been implimenting them
I know im missing something but im unsure what

[robust mural]

hey guys I have a skill bar on my game, where the player can drag the skills on it, and I wanted to bind the text inside the skill widget to the key mapped into the InputAction, how can I get the value of the key mapped

I've tried with this node but without success yet

[lofty rapids]

i found this online, i would make it into a function tho

[robust mural]

ooh @lofty rapids nice dude

that was what I was looking for, thanks a lot

[lofty rapids]

maybe #multiplayer

[rain bolt]

alright

[fading hawk]

OMG I need a utility to show the difference between two BP's ... copied a file, made some changes, now I need to see what's changed so that I can undo things that aren't working.

[supple dome]

which vcs are you using

[fading hawk]

vcs?

Oh, version control - I use git

But git sees the files as binary and doesn't show changes to BP

[supple dome]

If you commited theres a diff tool on right click -> revision control -> diff

[fading hawk]

Inside the UE editor?

[supple dome]

yea

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.2/en-US/ue-diff-tool-in-unreal-engine/

[fading hawk]

oh neat - I didn't know that

[supple dome]

knowing is half the cattle

[ancient heath]

Does anyone know why this doesn't work? Does it have to have something prior? Shift doesn't recognize me when I press it (it doesn't really recognize any key)

[lofty rapids]

is it running ? if you just print string hello does it show up ?

[lunar isle]

Why you dont use enhanced input system?

[ancient heath]

What do you mean if it is active? The widget is created when pressing shift, but do I have to call that keydown function from somewhere?

[ancient heath]

Can I use it to recognize if you are touching the key with an active widget?

[lunar isle]

i think yes you just make a branch with check if your widget is in viewport

but i am not sure i never use it for this

[ancient heath]

hmmmmm but I need to add the split items function with the shift, I need the logic to be purely within the widget D:

[lofty rapids]

i mean is this function even running ?

[ancient heath]

hmmm i think yes(?

[lofty rapids]

if you just put hello in the print string does it show up ?

just put some text in there

for now to see if it's running

[ancient heath]

hmm doesnt show up

[lofty rapids]

then it's probably not running

[lofty rapids]

usually like mentioned you would something like enhanced input

if you wanted to run some code on the widget you could make a custom event or function

and use the reference to the widget and call it

[balmy rock]

ok so, I believe something may be wrong with my pawn sensing component itself.

I reduced it to just On See Pawn -> Print String, and i've run into the same issue. Player starts in sight of enemy, infinitely print that string forever, no matter whatever and vise versa

[ancient heath]

But I can't use the On Key Down in the widget to know when the shift is pressed?

[fleet cedar]

Does anyone know if it's better to use my character blueprint in sequencer or to use a generic skeletal mesh and hide my blueprint? Any preference?

[umbral maple]

I have a value that needs to update on my ui but its not working. When I have it print string, it shows the correct value, but it is not changing it on my ui.

[spice viper]

Dumb question, is the text component that shows the 33 set to a value in the UMG or an event binding?

[umbral maple]

UMG, I just added the event tick node and it works now???

[spice viper]

Not ideal, but gets you going in the right direction 🙂 Good luck!

[umbral maple]

I dont know what else to do. Its weird that I had it working just fine the other day and then it stopped. I didnt mess with that code at all.

[spice viper]

So tick executes every frame. If you go to the text component and go to it's value you can assign a specific variable, or an event binding. That's a better way to do it

The UMG itself has to have Tick enabled, that's the default setting so it should unless you changed it

[umbral maple]

I have it set up like Ive always done it where it works, but for some reason its not, its driving me insane, ive been stuck on it for 2 days. I have the text set as a variable and have a function to update it when the value changes

[spice viper]

That's not the way to set the text

You want to store it into a Text Variable. Then bind the component to that variable

Don't directly set the text

What do you have in the binding?

[umbral maple]

Binding doesnt allow inputs in the function

[spice viper]

Right, you have to design for that. That's why it's better to create a variable, likely a "Text" variable. Then bind to that

[umbral maple]

Im bad at UI, my set up is all wrong

This binding works, but Ill have to make an individual binding for each text variable and I know there is a more efficient way of doing it but it escapes me.

[limber parcel]

you can make ur current logistics expose on spawn, then u dont have to keep a reference to ur gamemode

also, instead of doing a foreach loop, you can use the "contains" node from your array

[umbral maple]

Without the ref to gm, i cant pull up my current logistics

[limber parcel]

you can, if you expose it on spawn and pass that variable on spawning the widget

[umbral maple]

This is what i have

[cedar drum]

Folks, anyone knows how to make top down camera controllable by the player, and then make a "true first person camera" with them?

[spice viper]

Create a binding by clicking here. In that function, do GM -> Current Logistics -> MapFind -> Sustence -> toText -> Return

[spice viper]

That looks good to me! Hopefully that works

[umbral maple]

it does, thank you, but now ill have to set up 6 more bindings for each variable

[spice viper]

Yep, could make it a different way with a custom widget, or event driven from the game mode with an event binding, or creating a function that takes in the logistic enum (like sustenance or whatever) then THAT is called by the TextBlock's content binding. You can even select those 4 nodes in your image and "create function" as a shortcut

#umg will have way more help there

[umbral maple]

Thanks

[idle crescent]

Any suggestions how I detect if a click is within a closed spline, if the spline is to act as a shape?

[supple dome]

That seems like a hard one, I wouldn't attempt that unless its really important

[idle crescent]

It kind of is. I'm making a 4x strat game and I was going to do that to tell if players are clicking within a territory's bounds.

I'm open to counter suggestions

[supple dome]

is the territory a spline, or is it made up of cells or grid or smth

[idle crescent]

It's a spline shaped over a sphere's surface.

So it's just part of said surface

[supple dome]

if it was planar i would suggest doing a line-plane intersection then even-odd intersection algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line–plane_intersection / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even–odd_rule

but in a sphere it makes it even harder

and how is the spline shape decided?

like what is the 'enemy territory'

[idle crescent]

The spline shape is determined pre-runtime, I manually change the borders I had planned.

[supple dome]

Could you pre setup that too, by placing some spheres or something?

[idle crescent]

Map territories tend to be rather non-uniform

Jagged with a lot of turns and all that.

I'm making a 3d object of the earth and kind of doing a 2d project and that.

It is a use case for others possibly as well though

[idle crescent]

It truly is a mystery what the best route will be.

For one since the spline actors themselves don't have direct collision, I guess I'd need to route through a list of all of them to find which is closest, which is even applicable, etc.

[lilac cipher]

Hey guys, I am doing Gorka Mannequin look at me video but I got my character and animation from Mixamo, Now there is an issue where the mannequin is looking away at me, How do i resolve this? Someone mention its cause Mixamo and UE axis arent the same
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8skq8t_Fffk

[surreal peak]

@idle crescent Not sure how much you can improve that in Blueprints, but in CPP you could put the spline shapes into a grid map and reduce the amount of tests upfront.

Checking if the click is inside is probably gonna be a 2D Is point in Polygon check

[gentle urchin]

Cant you do a trace and pick up the face index of the material or smth?

Id think each country had a separate index for easy lookups ...

[surreal peak]

If it's only a spline then there is no face to trace I guess

[devout coral]

I have problem that my BP doesn't set character variable. Anim BP set to correct character

[dim night]

Does anyone know why the first blueprint doesnt work but the second one does?
Ingame the first one takes one second of input and then just doesnt continue further while the second is the usual unreal engine default but modified for clarity

Update I fixed it by toggling looping but the multigate switching between the two causes really jittery movement
Is there any other way for organization or do I just have to use a lot of node locking?

[lunar sleet]

The usual default? I’ve never seen a template with multi-gate in it, what’s this for

[dim night]

Im trying to make a Turnbased/Free roam system

This will involve two sets of controls depending on state

The usual system is this

I just moved it and rearranged it to make things slightly clearer

The multigate is because of the sequential nature of this

Instead of making things longer
I want to make them taller

Im still cleaning things up here but its an example
Both things need the player controller but if I kept it horizontal it would be a continuous chain of stuff getting added into each other
When Instead I can better view things by having things seperated
The Initial Variable Chain
The Controller chain
The Event chain

Here the multigate works fine since it only runs once and the order doesnt matter

[lunar sleet]

Well the main difference between your first 2 screenshots is that the gate’s first out can access the Y value in the 2nd screenshot but not in the first one. A good way to debug these things is to right click watch value on the pin, select a debugging object and observe it live

[dim night]

Wdym it cant access the Y value?

[lunar sleet]

I mean your 2nd screenshot connects both movement input nodes on the first out of the gate, one for X and one for Y. The 1st one does not. You were asking what the difference is between the 2, that’s it

[dim night]

Ohhh

So it has to be the first out only
Because Yes thats the difference but I wanted to understand why that mattered

[blissful zenith]

Having radialForceComponent, I want it to use its Constant Force the whole time (not fire impulse) when something is in the radius, how to do that?

[ocean crow]

These nodes get called but my crosshair UI doesn't fade in/out? Just does nothing? (I was able to get it to work on begin play, just not on these events for some reason, UE5.3)

To clarify, the print strings are called correctly, the animation is just not doing anything, am I using the correct nodes?

[rain bolt]

Hey, can you please help me?

Client Widgets are NOT showing in the packaged build. How can I fix it?

[thin panther]

you'll probably get an answer if you give more information.
You've given people basically nothing to work off

[rain bolt]

I think I need a server. But I don't have one yet.

But I want to package my game and have the UI visible. Which it currently is not since its events are not running without a server.

[tired whale]

Hey guys !

So I'm using Find Path to Location Synchronously into an AI move to to make a simple betting race game. The pawns are using a Floating Pawn Movement Component to leverage the Use Acceleration for Paths feature.

I works fine excepts for the turning of my pawns. They move straight towards the first point of the path, then snap turn instantly toward the next path point and so on until the reach the endpoint.
Is there a way to either make path smoother (curve instead of linear?), of affect the turning of the pawn perhaps?

Thanks

[dim sapphire]

Hi guys,

i have a problem, i don't know is this normal or not. I have a object in a world and i trigger this with a mouse "On Clicked" and after 10 or 15 clicks isn't that more cosntant and he doesn't accept the click anymore.

i couldn't find anything about this on the internet, can anyone tell me if this is normal and i need to look for another solution?

[tired whale]

Is your object "falling to sleep"? Physics turns itself off after a while by default to save on computing

[dim sapphire]

this is a good questen, i dont know. But that's a good approach that I can follow up on, I didn't know that objects can fall asleep. but it makes sense

[tired whale]

That would explain the inconsistency in the amount of times you can click it before you can't. The time for it to fall asleep is the same, but during this window you might not have clicked as many times as you did in the previous one.

[gentle urchin]

Eh?

[gentle urchin]

Have a target direction on the spline somewhat up ahead

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bézier_2_big.gif

Somewhat like this

[tired whale]

Thing is they're not following a spline but just the basic path returned from the find path node. Though I have a spline, that I've used to figure out which pawn's first, don't know I you remember helping me earlier this week.
So it should go something along the lines of:
make em follow the spline instead of the path
use their distance along the spline to get a point slightly further than they are
use this point to rotate my actor
?

[gentle urchin]

This works on regular target vector points aswell

Just aim up ahead

[tired whale]

I can't figure out a way to query where they're at along the path, though

[gentle urchin]

Using ai moveTo was it ?

[tired whale]

yup

[gentle urchin]

Not sure if you need to make your own for this tbh

It should be not to complicated

[tired whale]

this is what I have so far

[gentle urchin]

But

To help you out

Each ai can spawn a target actor which does follow the spline

And follow that

Have that as their target in the moveto

Dynamic target

[tired whale]

hmmm interesting approach

like the fake rabbit of a greyhound race

[gentle urchin]

Yepp

[tired whale]

Otherwise, what was your previous suggestion, using maths to get a smoother tangent?

[gentle urchin]

Well it doesnt work that well if you dont control the location/rotation along the wayb

Which kinda counters the ai moveto

[tired whale]

Oh okay, yeah I need the AI move to so that the actuals stat of my racers are used, ie the accel, max speed, etc.

[dim sapphire]

thank you very much for your solution's approach, unfortunately this was not the problem. I could solve the problem now by reducing trace distance. I don't know why this helps but now onClick is more constant

[tired whale]

Glad you found something either way

[gentle urchin]

Youd have far more control doing that yourself ofc^^

[radiant ivy]

I don't know how to fix the error I have in the picture, the error code we told me is PIE: Error: Blueprint Runtime Error: "Accessed None trying to read property MainWidgetRef". Node: Set Inventory Vis Graph: EventGraph Function: Execute Ubergraph Survival Game PC Blueprint: SurvivalGame_PC and what can be seen in the picture, the error code shows me and I don't know how to fix it

[tired whale]

How do you mean?

[lofty rapids]

accessed none is pretty common error, MainWidgetRef is empty

[gentle urchin]

Mainwidgetrwf is nullptr

Its just an empty variable

[lofty rapids]

where do you set mainwidgetref ?

[gentle urchin]

Custom component doing the driving logic

Guess its sort of redundant but a car without advanced nothing is pretty straight forward to setup

[tired whale]

Seems like a lot of work for something that is just a mini-game inside the "real" game

[gentle urchin]

I suppose 🙂

[lofty rapids]

and the widget gets created, and added to viewport ?

what bp is this ?

and on what event ?

[lofty rapids]

no i mean where you create and promote to variable, is it the same bp ?

and on what event are you creating the widget ?

because your variables null, so your execution order might be off

[lofty rapids]

again, when does the creation run ?

i can see it's in the same bp, but when is it running and setting the variable ?

because it's most likely out of order, meaning it's not set before you try to use it

[lofty rapids]

?

[radiant ivy]

and where does Validate have to go for me?

[lofty rapids]

i mean i guess you can use validated get

but i would try to figure out why it's not set yet

[lofty rapids]

so it's basically checking if its valid and taking whichever execution path it is, valid or invalid

so if your going to use this as a fix, just put where you want to use the variable or somewhere before you want to use it

but it's just going to not work when you run it and it's not valid

but might be an easy fix, still i would see why your reference is empty by checking when you set the reference

[gentle urchin]

Probably not set

[lofty rapids]

i'm thinking its not on beginplay and the event hasn't run yet, but idk if it even added to viewport

but in this case i feel like that validated get is just a patch that isn't going to work properly

unless you looping the event or something and it's just null of the first go

[magic parcel]

Does anybody know if there is a node to create a variable that can be piped into the Geometry Collection?

I want to make the Rest Collection Parameter, so I can make this a parent BP

Nevermind, I think I found it

thanks anyway!

[neon acorn]

Hey all
Is it possible to know if an actor has been completely overlapped by another actor. I can think of some complicated ways of detecting this using traces and such but maybe there is an easier way?

[gentle urchin]

Erh

Isnt that a setting

Partial vs full overlap

[surreal peak]

I never heard of such a setting, but also never needed to know that

[versed sun]

=== Overlap 🙂

[gentle urchin]

Perhaps not

[surreal peak]

If they share the same collision primitive, it could be some simple math

[gentle urchin]

^

[surreal peak]

Such as checking distance between center points of a sphere and then checking if the radius of the smaller ones still fully fits into the bigger one

But that requries either every shape to be handled or only using a given shape that you have the math for

[lofty rapids]

a hacky solution could be just doing distance from centers

[surreal peak]

If they are both capsuls, that could mean a lot

[neon acorn]

so...the situation is that in my top down RTS, I am defining a playable area using a irregularly shaped mesh. I want to check if the buildings that I want to plop are within the mesh fully

or...and I just realised this...I could create a inversion of the playable area

[surreal peak]

If both are defined by a 2D polygon so to speak, you could google for "How to check if pol A is to pol B"

Which is probably gonna be "if all points of Polygon A are withing Polygon B"

Means you'd need to figure out how to check if a given point is in a polygon

[neon acorn]

yeah...but I think I just realised a better method. Since I just want to prevent the assets from being plopped in non playable areas, I can check of any overlapping in the non playable areas which will be a far more easier implementation

[lofty rapids]

tough maths polygons

[magic parcel]

Interesting, so when I add set Geometry Collection, it crashes, no matter what

looks like an engine bug

[neon acorn]

Well, thanks for helping me clear off some mental blocks

[magic parcel]

I tried to set rest collection in the construction script, on a variable, but it just crashes, as long as the setRestCollection node is used, it results in a crash

even when I create an component, in the BP base, and then try to modify it. I wonder if anybody else get the same situation?

[idle crescent]

Interesting idea

[faint pasture]

What are the colliders?

[neon acorn]

The plopable actors will have cuboid colliders, maybe with the pawn preset. The idea was to have an invisible wall collider in the static mesh which defines the play surface

[faint pasture]

If they're cuboid you can check if all corners of A are within B like a bounding box test. That'll be easy.

It'll just be a transform location -> bounding box test problem.

[neon acorn]

I think I have simplified the problem I had from needing to check if my actor is always fully inside the playable area to checking if my actor overlaps, even partially, to the area outside my playable area.

Defining the playable area is a challene I am working on though...

As I want the playable area to be based on a heightmask I have

[glad otter]

Hi, I'm actually doing a level based on directed graphs, where, on load, the level activate and desactivate some bridges or doors, here is a simple version of this idea, where I set the paths manually in code (On the screen capture). I would like to use an algorithm, to find all the possible paths, in a larger graphs, to go from spawn to end of the level, then, activating only the bridges/doors of this path, I'm searching how to do that, can someone maybe help me ? I dont know if I'm clear, sorry for my average english

[gentle urchin]

Unrelated to your question, but switch on int exist ^^

[glad otter]

I'm still new to unreal, I will edit that, ty xD

[lofty rapids]

probably one of the hardest algorithms to do, theres brute force way

[glad ether]

Yooo, why there's no convert to pure cast here

[lofty rapids]

it looks pure already ?

it has no execution

[glad ether]

it does tho that white thing is execution pin on my theme

[lofty rapids]

oh ok, i c

[glad otter]

there is no simple way to do it ?

[lofty rapids]

a brute force way is fairly simple just check all paths and get the shortest

but you want a specific path ? or the shortest ?

the traveling salesman problem is essentially unsolved

i feel like this is similar

[glad otter]

I dont want the shortest or a specific one, i want all the paths, then, randomly using one

[lofty rapids]

ok so that's not as bad, you'll need some way to store the paths

maybe some sort of array ?

you may need multiple arrays idk or there could be better structure for it

[glad ether]

Yeah probably an array would do the thing with a random int selecting one inside of the array

[lofty rapids]

well you would need a few arrays for different paths, and just select one

or you could store the connections in a string and make use of parsing to have like a 2d array

still a bummer no 2d array in bp

[glad ether]

Imma restart my unreal engine to see if my Good old unreal is freaking out 😄

[glad ether]

yep good old unreal engine 😄

[glad otter]

For now, I have something like this, but, if my level had like 20 rooms instead of 2, I would be dead before having listed all the possible paths with my hands, so, I dont know how to make an algorithm doing it for me

[lofty rapids]

just generate a random path if you can

why generate a few and pick one ?

just generate one

[gentle urchin]

wouldnt it be easier to proc gen the entire thing instead of premade

this looks premade + LevelBP

[lofty rapids]

procedural generation ftw

drop a block, then drop a bridge, drop another block, drop a bridge and have them set to specific offsets

depending on the bridge

[glad otter]

All the path will already be existing, the doors will only open randomly making a path, but I need the path to go from A to B without looping or those kind of things

[glad ether]

I think You should use the GameState Blueprint and create an empty nested array (There will be an array of rooms, the rooms themselves are also an array which are contains the doors) and in the begin Play of each room cast to level blueprint and add themselves to that array (Assuming that you can create a representative blueprint for them in the level)

[gentle urchin]

Proc genned rooms, navmesh doing the path making

[lofty rapids]

you can cast to level bp ?

i didn't think so

[gentle urchin]

Nah you cant access levelbp in bo

[glad ether]

Oh then GameState can be used for the same purpose

[lofty rapids]

the doors being the blue things ?

i don't see doors

[glad otter]

yes, or, wait a second I'm searching an old drawing I did for this thing

here, blue things are doors

[gentle urchin]

this looks like a maze

[glad ether]

I checked my own project and I use Game instance for controlling Global Variables I want to pass and manage around on my inventory system.

[gentle urchin]

there's random maze generators

I'd start there and divide rooms that way

[lofty rapids]

i like to use game instance

[glad otter]

I dont want to generate the level, I will literally generate nothing

[gentle urchin]

It's the way to avoid hand selecting variables 😄

[lofty rapids]

so you just want to open the doors in a path ? or they will open randomly ?

[glad ether]

my bad mine also called Game Instance

[lofty rapids]

you can hard code the paths in an array of bools, so the index would be the door and the bool would be open/closed

[glad otter]

With code, using a random path, in all the possible paths, that is not looping and have the right start and the right end, open all the doors of this paths, and let the other one's closed, so the player, on each restart of the level, will have a different path

[lofty rapids]

^

then have multiple arrays, one for each path

and pick an array and loop through and set the doors based on the bools

[glad otter]

But, that means defining myself all the paths ?

[lofty rapids]

yes, defining a path may be as easy as just testing some random paths

or you could just open them in a random sequence

but defining a path, that would involve have some constraints or variables that tell it a particular type of way

other than random

[glad ether]

No question on this one but just wanted to share, looks kinda scary 😄

[gentle urchin]

beautifull

[lofty rapids]

you can definately generate random ones, but you'll need a bit of code to do it

you'll need to know what room your currently on, and then pick a door that wasn't what you came from

since theres only a few options of door you could generate a bunch of paths pretty quickly

but choosing the "best" one, that's all in how you want it to be structured

it's pretty difficult to pick the best one, i would just generate it based on some variables

like favor down, stuff like that

the "doors" are the blue things ?

or what is a door that your saying about

[glad otter]

yup

[lofty rapids]

i mean your floors can have an array that has the state of the doors around it, might be a bit tricky blending them together like matching doors but should be doable

then just loop through your floors and switch some state around

to change the doors

use the index for north,south,east,west

0,1,2,3

[glad otter]

I will take a bit of time to present the problem more clearly, I need to see it in a mathematical way to explain it I guess

[lofty rapids]

so the floors are premade ?

but your generating the doors ?

or the doors are premade too ?

[glad otter]

everything is premade

[lofty rapids]

ok so you just want to make visible the right path

[glad otter]

yes

[lofty rapids]

i would find a way to attach the surrounding doors to each floor

so you can make a path

if it was me each floor would have four doors around it

that can be on/off

so you can loop through the floors and set the doors properly

to create a path

[glad otter]

I've for now, thought that, assigning a number/letter to each door and segments of the paths, would let me say : choose a path starting from the Spawn to the End, like [S> AEHGF >E] opening doors between A-E E-H H-G G-F (for example) and, for each door, an associated numbers to simplify that in the code, I can define all the paths manually like that, but, to have a wide list of path, I need to calculate all the possible path, so I will have a list of path, (so for each path, a list of doors), then activate each

like in maths graphs

euler algorithm etc...

but I dont know how the engine can make the list of possible paths by itself

without me precalculating and defining everything in the code before

because, I dont want to make a list of 150 paths and doors myself

[lofty rapids]

i mean you have all the doors premade ?

why not just generate random paths ?

if you want 150 paths it's probably close to randomizing

and you could put some variables in that say favor down like i mentioned

then you would just need the path you can take from each one, pick a random one, move to next

[lofty rapids]

i doubt thats possible

that it would be able to do that

because you made this up yourself, so how would the engine know about it ?

[glad otter]

The base idea is this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrEloQBv7WQ&t=447s

but I dont understand the guy in the video clearly, and dont know how to properly use C++ and affect that to the level after

[lofty rapids]

c++ would be more performant

but finding all the paths could be like i said

loop through the floors and pick a door

goto the next room

pick a door

go to that room, pick a door

if you hit a wall it's not a valid path or you want to try another way

[glad otter]

Okay, ty, will work on that and see If I can do that

[lofty rapids]

usually pathfinding algorithms can be quite a task

[gentle urchin]

Id just use the navmesh😅

But wont return all paths

[lofty rapids]

i feel like you would need to open random doors check path, open random doors check path

how would you use the navmesh to find a path when doors are just there to begin with ?

[lofty rapids]

just make sure to check the door you pick is not the one you went in, or it's f'd

[versed sun]

you can make a NavMesh ignore doors

or , turn off door collision when calculating path , and collision back on after

[lofty rapids]

won't it just give you the best path like a straight line ?

you wouldn't even be going through doors

[gentle urchin]

You would if it had to for turns?

[glad root]

any pros here? why actor spawned during runtime in world partitioned map not getting unloaded? Just empty actor with mesh. Same thing with this actor placed during runtime manualy. If placed in editor before simulation it behave normaly and gets unloaded at distance

[lofty rapids]

https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/13dkeol/world_partition_not_working_properly/
this says something about references and how they are still loaded

not sure if that means "loaded" in the level or "loaded" memory

[mild pine]

Hey guys. I wanna make a system where a dynamic Float variable is input into a timer that finterps a float value from 0-1. I would love to use a Timeline as I've done before with similar setups, but the length of a Timeline cant be adjusted realtime, or am I wrong?

Can this be done with a Timer, if so how? 😅

[versed sun]

you can adjust the Rate the timeline plays

[gentle urchin]

Set PlayRate

So if the timeline is 1 sec, and you want it over 10 sec... 1/10 = 0.1 playrate

[sharp fox]

yo how do i keep a constant size for all objects, like if something is big how do i scale it down and if something's too big how do i scale it up

im trying to make a pickup system and i want to keep a constant size for every object

[lofty rapids]

maybe get the bounds

and try to match it somehow

to your target

[sharp fox]

good idea thanks

[lofty rapids]

maybe something like a loop the scale up or down depending on the actual size

once you get some numbers in there you should have a close approx

[keen kernel]

Hi guys!
In my project I retrieve some data from the database (from a server), but can anyone explain me how to save this data inside the server to keep it available for clients connecting to the UE server?

Let me explain: the logic is that of an MMORPG, where the database contains in the table the objects and their standard values, as I think it works in every game. So, taking via an API call the data from the object table, I should save it in the Unreal Engine server, right?

If the reasoning is correct:

1. How and where to save this data within the UE server to keep it available to people who log in without making a per-client call each time?
2. How do I connect a possible icon and 3D model to the data received from the database?

[lofty rapids]

i feel like your data storage should be done with your api

and kept on your server

it's an api that gets data ? but you can't save with it ?

[frosty heron]

What is even unreal engine server

They have server?

[glad root]

doesnt help much, idk, why is there so little info about wp

its like nobody ever spawn actors during runtime

with world partition enabled atleast

[lofty rapids]

ya i have not used it much, only in one project it just turned on and i'm forced to select a region every time now

[mild pine]

Do I adjust the Time outputted, or are you refering to the New Time float?

[keen kernel]

The builded server from source with ue

[gentle urchin]

Get a reference to the timeline

[keen kernel]

I take the all data from table with API from UE Authority, and with matched data table, i take all info correctly, but idk where i can save that for replicate to all client

[gentle urchin]

Thats how you access the playrate

[frosty heron]

That's just an instance for ppl to run as server isn't it? Dedicated or listen

Not soo much about where one would store their save file

[keen kernel]

Dedicated server

[frosty heron]

You can save the .sav anywhere but an mmorpg would probably not use any of the save file by unreal

They would handle storing and loading from their own server (actual physical one) somewhere

[keen kernel]

Not soo much about where one would store their save file
Yes it's not the file issue, in my head I thought about saving the data in an array with structure and make it replicated, but I don't think that's the correct way to do something like this

[lofty rapids]

if you just use an array, then when the server shuts off your f'd

unless you can serialize an array ?

maybe just save it every so often or on change

[frosty heron]

You gotta decide whos saving what. An mmo obviously doesn't save anything on the client.

And an mmo won't even use unreal replication system

[keen kernel]

Yes of course the server doesn't even allow users to log in, but if it is restarted it takes the new info from the database and shares it back with the connected clients, and to do it via a variable seems really unfair to me

[frosty heron]

Software engineers would develop their own system

[lofty rapids]

if you can read from the db, why can't you write to it ?

[frosty heron]

No mmo in unreal I know use unreal replication system, it is not cut out for mass players

[limber parcel]

there is thing called savegame object in unreal

[mild pine]

This could work aswell I guess? Thanks for pointing that out! 🙂

[keen kernel]

Why not? I think its a cool system

[limber parcel]

its not even cut out for small scale stuff 🤡

[keen kernel]

I can, but store them in the server and not in the database so as not to have clients repeat calls to the database

[lofty rapids]

i'm not sure what that means

you can store them in the server, but not the db ?

or that's just what you prefer ?

because saving to the db every so often will make it persist

[limber parcel]

he caches the database in the server

[lofty rapids]

that makes sense

[gentle urchin]

Oh, yes. That gotta be new ? I bet it does the same under the hood (adjusting rate)

[lofty rapids]

but you still need to save for it to persist or the thing crashes all your data is gone

[thin panther]

Because it's network system isn't built for it.
You're gonna end up writing a lot of custom code in C++ for an mmo

Oh, and the millions of dollars and the network engineers, make that easier of course

[keen kernel]

Why did u say that?

[gentle urchin]

Id imagine you could optimize it quite a bit for each player, but the server would still have quite the workload if theres some people playin

[keen kernel]

I have object data in the database that I call via an API, the call should be made from the dedicated server and not from the individual clients, so the object data should be made persistent in the server so that not X calls are made but only 1 from the server and then replicate the data on the connected clients

[limber parcel]

because its true, you can only do the most basic of things in blueprint with the replication provided by unreal

[gentle urchin]

Open doors etc

[lofty rapids]

and the problem is ?

it doesn't work ?

[keen kernel]

My problem was that it doesn't seem like a right choice to save the data in a variable by the server and then replicate it to the clients

[keen kernel]

That make me sad

[keen kernel]

This more D:

[limber parcel]

well yeah, its kinda limiting

the unreal replication already fails at something simple as changing ur movement speed

[thin panther]

any multiplayer game is not suitable for bp only really.
C++ is mandatory the larger in scope you get.

A bp only MMO is impossible

[limber parcel]

though i saw this plugin...

[keen kernel]

If it was just a matter of C++ it's not a problem, the problem is that UE's C++ code is very custom and it's not enough to know the programming language, but the whole structure and how UE thinks, that's the real problem

[thin panther]

You can absolutely get by, just from knowing C++

Source: I am getting by, just by knowing C++

Once you know C++ you know how to find information that you want

[limber parcel]

https://youtu.be/tW-dclaNAmA?si=bs1ka6AYgXlzSiLm

however, i think we will get new multiplayer system in unreal soon

i think beta is already available? what was it called?

[gentle urchin]

Iris you mean?

[limber parcel]

yes

[surreal peak]

Nothing that would allow an MMO

[thin panther]

The only person I know of in this server that's done an unreal MMO would be Sukebi, and they rolled completely custom replication.

[limber parcel]

well i dont know c++ lol

[limber parcel]

but i think i can make coop game in blueprint for 8-16 players

[gentle urchin]

I wonder how that'd perform with 16

Depends om the complexity of the game ofc

16 ppl open doors with keys shouldnt be much trouble

[thin panther]

I shall quote nothing more than #blueprint message

[random python]

Anyone has idea of how to create this spear throw attacks?

[limber parcel]

it can work out if you are aware of what needs to be replaced by c++ eventually xD

[keen kernel]

So ultimately it is virtually impossible to create an MMO with UE, unless you have a team or so much money, that you can pay someone to recreate the system behind UE users' connections?

[limber parcel]

that or ure some sort of savant

[thin panther]

Any larger scale multiplayer game needs an experienced network engineer on your payroll

For an MMO, you need many of them

[gentle urchin]

Whats the biggest bottleneck with ue tho? Is it how the replication system works?

For an MMO, that is

[thin panther]

For blueprints, it's the fact that they're just too slow

For large scale, it's just that unreal isn't really designed for that

@valid oyster apologies for the ping, but what did you find were the largest issues with Unreal's built in system

[surreal peak]

Depends on how you do the MMO part

[thin panther]

The one thing that annoys me with unreal is it has no amazing way for large data streaming built in 😆

[limber parcel]

i wonder if bohemia studios realized that already or if they are still trying to recruit here for arma 4 🤡

[surreal peak]

But most of the time UE replication system is built for shorter sessions

Without RepGraph or potentially Iris, you can't even run more than 64 or so players on the servers

And that is already a lot

[thin panther]

do you really class arma as an mmo though? 🤔

[limber parcel]

well with what they want to do it kinda becomes an MMO

but yeah, if you want a good reference of what large scale multiplayer in unreal engine looks like, check ATLAS or ARK

[surreal peak]

Tbh it doesn't matter what you call it. As soon as you do something else than what UEs replication system is for you gonna have that issue

[limber parcel]

it lets u put 300 players into a map, but its a lag hell

[surreal peak]

And the limitations are pretty straightforward.

• Roughly 100 players per server if properly optimized
• No seamless switch of servers

And with that most MMO stuff somewhat dies and you gonna want to run your own system outside of UE where UE is only the client

[keen kernel]

So really no commercial engine is good for games with more than 100 players. The only solution is to create a proprietary engine with its own system behind

[gentle urchin]

One would think someone made the MMO Engine

[keen kernel]

Guys, but still I read around that TERA was produced with UE 🤔

[limber parcel]

yeah, but probably not in blueprint

[valid oyster]

for an MMO? the biggest issue is how slow the communication / replication actually is (when using BP), one of the second issues is that unreal's system doesn't scale, for example 1 server can barely hold 100 players, and that's with basic* logic, anything more complex and you're going to have to come down to 40-50 players max, and basically have some kind of hub world connector, and instance those 40-50 players so they are never on the same server.

[valid oyster]

So tat's not true

[valid oyster]

there is an mmo engine, but you wouldn't understand the code

10 years old though, no successful mmo's from it

each of our servers can hold a max of 5,000 players

we can't show that many on screen of course as the client will lag, but that's our current capacity per physical server

we made a custom "server" and implemented a custom socket derived from unreals FSocket class

that's how you start with an MMO, then you have to figure out how to keep the socket persistent

after that you can control all of UEs functions however you please, if you know how to communicate between server/client and implement functions that occur on certain messages from the server etc

Unreal is already one of the most MMO friendly game engines out there due to the actor system, you just have to understand how unreal does it and think in the unreal way

[lunar sleet]

But still, not in blueprint 😀

[valid oyster]

Right, not in blueprint

there used to be an unreal MMO discord

was really cool, someone created a whole MMO framework in UE

i think minimal C++ was required

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/mmo-kit

there, again, haven't seen any success with this either, but the developer showcased some decent performance, no getting around the 40-50 player limit though

i believe there was a way to use one of the external cloud services that offer unreal dedi hosting to allow you to overcome some of the limits

[stuck sentinel]

someone help me

i have a zombie

when i play this animation the game freezes

[blissful willow]

Aim for the head!

Sorry

[stuck sentinel]

is it because he already has an animation and im playing another one?

[undone bluff]

no it's freezing because you're causing an infinite loop

[blissful willow]

That looks like an infinite loop to me. Should you be setting CanAttack to false again at some point? Because you set it to True, then loop when it's True, which is always

[stuck sentinel]

so should it be when false instead?

[blissful willow]

The Output Exec pin of Play Anim Montage isn't fired when the Anim is finished (which based on your code is what I'm assuming you thought would happen). I think the setup could work but you want to fire the Attack anim again after the previous one is finished, your current code would just infinitely play the same animation over and over again every frame

[undone bluff]

don't do janky loops like that, use a proper for loop when you need it

[stuck sentinel]

it just needed a delay

[undone bluff]

an infinite loop with a delay won't crash your game so that's a good start lmao

[stuck sentinel]

why is it not smoothe

[trim matrix]

it is smooth?

[stuck sentinel]

when going from idle to walking

[blissful willow]

You need a blendspace for the Idle anim and the Attack anim

[stuck sentinel]

i did

of course

29:54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYM2H9zQl3o

how to fix?

[undone bluff]

he's using skeletalmeshcomponent's play montage instead of the character one

it has an event for on completed

it's still horrible jank (and you have a wire going backwards)

but at least it's not an uncontrolled loop

[stuck sentinel]

im talking about the switching from idle to walking

forget the loop

[lofty rapids]

how are you setting the speed ?

in the anim bp, in a blend space ?

[stuck sentinel]

what do you mean

[lofty rapids]

what is max acceleration ?

and what does your blend space look like ?

[stuck sentinel]

2048

[lofty rapids]

if you hold ctrl and move along it, does it look right ?

[stuck sentinel]

yeah from idle to walking to running

smoothly

so whats the issue?

[lofty rapids]

what does the anim look like that runs the blendspace @stuck sentinel

[stuck sentinel]

the animation blueprint?

[lofty rapids]

and it's probably getting to the walk speed too fast

move the walk farther toward 400

[stuck sentinel]

but i need the character to be slow

[idle crescent]

I think I found what I wanted is a blocking volume.

[lofty rapids]

maybe turn the max acceleration way down

[stuck sentinel]

no

i set it to 1 same thing

[lofty rapids]

did you ask in #animation ?

[trim matrix]

bro

the problem is that he is calling the animation on an event and not as he should be doing it

[idle crescent]

Can I make a complex, non primitive shape of a blocking volume somehow besides copying it off a mesh directly?

[blissful willow]

You can use UE5's Modeling Mode to shape a volume

[idle crescent]

Yes, I saw. Can I copy that volume's shape to another actor's?

Another blocking volume

[blissful willow]

Hmm, I'm not sure. I'm used to working with something bespoke in the studio, so I've not needed to do that with out-the-box Unreal

What's your use case, exactly?

[idle crescent]

I think I can just attach the blocking volume to the actor and go from there.

I'm making clickable map territories, and this should do it.

[gaunt wadi]

I'm trying to save an array of actors, however whenever I try to load (2nd image) the array as a data line but no data on it, however when I am saving (1st image) all the data is there, everything else saves fine, just the array seems to empty? Can anyone help?

[gentle urchin]

Afaik you cant really save actor refs

Without some trickery anyways

Runtime spawned i would assume?

[gaunt wadi]

Ahh okay, that makes me feel better because I couldn't work it out, I just need to spawn actors back in their locations so can figure a work around just annoying me I couldn'y figure out why it wasn't working

[fading hawk]

With my current GameUI, I have dialogues like Quest and Inventory which are created in the beginning and just have their visibility toggled as needed. This means I can bind events to buttons and I use event dispatchers to pass things along.

I now want to switch over to using CommonUI with Enhanced Input so that I have "better?" control and design for console controllers. This is proving interesting though. The CommonUI widgets methodology is that you treat widgets as non-persistent (loose term here). So you update the contents every time you pop the widget onto the view stack. So I'm thinking of switching over from the current bind-event method to a pub-sub method. Click a button, and it sends a message via a channel to anyone who is listening. Have another subscriber react to any messages etc.

So 2 questions: 1 - is this a bad idea? and 2 - what to use for the pub-sub messaging mechanism?

[spark steppe]

lyra has a build in messaging system like that afaik

[main lake]

How to have the white squares organized properly like this and having 10 of them in each row automatically ? because in this case I used the Grid Panel but after the 10th one I had to manually place them otherwise it would continue to the right side of the panel forever. Like I want later to fill it dynamically and have this 10 items per row.

[fading hawk]

Yes - the Gameplay Messaging system in Lyra is what I was looking for - thanks.

[fading hawk]

Can you set a fixed width on your vertical box, so that the horizontal box remains with it's limits?

Otherwise use a "Wrap Box" instead of Horizontal Box

Wrap Box lets you set an explicit wrap size.

[main lake]

Thanks 🙏

Another question, is it possible to make that white square modifiable manually because I made a widget called "WB_AbilityIcon" containing an image + a text for the name of the ability, and I want to expose it in the details panel so I can modify it to put each image I want, is that possible ?

[fading hawk]

Set your wrap box to a variable, then you can programmatically (in BP) create and add the WB_AbilityIcon as needed. - yes

[main lake]

But my question was about how to do it in a non programmatically way

[fading hawk]

Then I'm not sure 🙂

I mean the answer is definitely yes - I'm just not sure what steps you would need to take.

On second thoughts, I got it. Open your WB_AbilityIcon and make the image and the text into a variable. Set the Variable to "public" and check "instance editable". Then it will show up in the details panel on WB_GameSettings

In the sub wbp

Gives me this in the parent wbp

[main lake]

Where do I set it to "public" ?

beccause I don't have that option, and it doesn't let me press the eye

[fading hawk]

Click on "Graph" in the top right corner, then on the left list click the "closed eye" icon and change it to an open eye icon.

[main lake]

it doesn't let me click on the closed eye, like clicking it doesn't open it

like it flickers for a sec but that's it

[fading hawk]

hmmm

Is it another sub wbp? or a native?

[main lake]

I'm not sure to understand what it means but I simply created a simple Widget Blueprint for it

and it's not a child to a base class

[fading hawk]

Maybe it doesn't need the public - let me check

Well shoot - I guess you can't on a widget object as a variable, only on normal variables.

[main lake]

snif

[gentle urchin]

You expose the variables of the widget

Not the widget itself

So an icon and a text variable

Which are instance editable.

@main lake

[main lake]

I can't expose the variables themselves either

when I press the eye it doesn't let me do that

[gentle urchin]

Ofcourse you can^^

Restart editor

[main lake]

I restarted and still can't do it

[gentle urchin]

Clicking the right eye?

[main lake]

yeah it flickers but it doesn't open the eye

[gentle urchin]

Show me

[main lake]

show you what exactly ?

[gentle urchin]

The variable in the bp

[gentle urchin]

This is the txt block.....

Not what you expose.

[main lake]

Tjis ?

[gentle urchin]

You need a new text variable

[main lake]

why ?

[gentle urchin]

Because

[main lake]

I'm not sure to understand

[gentle urchin]

You cant expose the components a widget is composed of.

[main lake]

Like I'm trying to make my Txt_AbilityName instance editable so I can modify it manually in my WB_GameSettings here

So I can give each icon an image and where it's written "Ability" give it a name

[gentle urchin]

And im saying , to do that you need another variable

[main lake]

So I create a simple text variable ?

[gentle urchin]

You camt expose the elements directly. You need to go through regular variables

Yes.

Then on Pre Construct you update the txt_AbilityName

Pre construct allows you to see it at editor time.

Same with icon

[main lake]

What's the equivalent of "SetText" but for the icon (so Texture2D) ?

[gentle urchin]

Set brush from texture

Iirc

[main lake]

So like this ?

[gentle urchin]

Test it

[main lake]

In the editor it doesn't work

But ingame it works

[gentle urchin]

Pre construct

Is what i said

[main lake]

my bad

[gentle urchin]

Accuracy matters

[main lake]

indeed, thank you so much 🙏

Another question, is it possible to make that number 4 be centered, because I didn't find the option to do that as pressing "Horizontal Center" it shrinks the size of the comboBox and I want it to keep that size

[gentle urchin]

Size rule fill?

Horizontal center makes it be as small as it can , centered

[main lake]

already set to Fill

[gentle urchin]

Im sure theres a text setting for itn

In the combo box details

Under the font settings

[main lake]

oops

[main lake]

Nothing

[gentle urchin]

Seems you are corect

no setting for it

you can make your own, but thats.. troublesome 🙂

[main lake]

How ? 🤔

Also how to apply a filter on top of my image so it shows the image in a grayscale (I want that to make the player understand that it's disabled) 🙂 ?

[fading hawk]

So for this, I would have 3 variables, each to store a different image. 1 image is pre-grayed for disabled. 1 for "enabled" and 1 for "mouse over". Then you use the various mechanices in the graph to swap which image is being displayed at any time.
So by default you have the grayed one, then onActivate you have the enabled one, and onMouseHover you have the third.

[frosty heron]

It is made for small scale competitive shooter game

[main lake]

I wanted to avoid having multiple images for this, so there's no way to just apply a filter on top of the image ?

[frosty heron]

Not for mmo

And like exi said, unreal doesn't even support multiple world out of the box

[limber parcel]

by desaturating it

[main lake]

how ?

What's the node or the setting please ?

[fading hawk]

You could also place a 2nd image(just a grey box) on top of the first image with a low alpha and just enable/disable that image.

[limber parcel]

this will make it greyscale

[frosty heron]

@keen kernel tera and blade and soul are made with unreal engine. They certainly roll out their own multiplayer implementation. Not with unreal replication system.

Each player is a client and they just communicate directly to their backend if I must guess

[main lake]

But that's in a material 🤔 How does materials work with Widgets ?

[limber parcel]

🤷‍♂️

[frosty heron]

UI material?

Check UI lab for samples

[limber parcel]

bruh

[main lake]

How did you do that mister the Wizard ? 🤔

[gentle urchin]

I went into Slate

https://tenor.com/view/if-you-only-knew-the-power-dark-side-gif-10061896

[main lake]

Could you show me what Slate looks like please ? 👀

[gentle urchin]

The important part is the ComboBoxContent

during RebuildWidget

[main lake]

Is it C++ stuff ?

[gentle urchin]

yes

[main lake]

https://tenor.com/view/simon-cowell-bgt-britains-got-talent-stay-away-possessed-gif-16410173

[gentle urchin]

[
  SAssignNew(ComboBoxContent, SBox)
  .HAlign(HorizontalAlignment)
];

the original ComboBoxString doesnt have allignment parameters exposed

for the ComboBoxContent

both HAlign and VAlign exist..

the actual dropdown is still left alligned

[main lake]

They should make that part of the default unreal for people to use

[gentle urchin]

there we go

you dont do any c++ ?

[main lake]

no, because it terrifies me

[gentle urchin]

If you really want this, I'd say this is the least you can do 😄

subclass the comboBox

.h

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere)
TEnumAsByte<ETextJustify::Type> TextAllignment;

virtual TSharedRef<SWidget> HandleGenerateWidget(TSharedPtr<FString> Item) const override;

.cpp
return SNew(STextBlock)
    .Text(FText::FromString(StringItem))
    .Justification(TextAllignment)
    .Font(Font);

Weird that this isnt in the default ComboBox tho

could easily expose the text justification

[main lake]

I agree, is it possible to bring that info to Epîc Games so they can add that in the next versions ?

[gentle urchin]

they likely wont touch this at all 😛

[main lake]

I just learned that I can put materials where the "Image" property of the Image widget is, and I'm wondering how to do the gray thing from the example he showed above

[main lake]

Why ? 🤦‍♂️

[ashen compass]

sometimes forum suggestions work, though if you want something done it's usually better to make a pull request to UE's github page

[gentle urchin]

with a suggested fix

the fix would be in ComboBoxString.h and .cpp
.h to expose the setting

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere)
TEnumAsByte<ETextJustify::Type> TextAllignment;

and the .cpp to push the setting to the Textblock used under neath

Line 450..
    return SNew(STextBlock)
        .Justification(TextAllignment) // This is new
        .Text(FText::FromString(StringItem))
        .Font(Font);
...

No clue how one would do that in a PR

[coarse condor]

I'm trying to calling an integer value from another blueprint to spawn something at a value. Pretty new to blueprinting, this made sense with what I know but it's not working.

[celest trench]

When I clear and invalidate a timer, if I call the event that is setting the timer and the timer handle later, it never runs the event. Is there something else I have to do before I can use the same Set Timer by Event node?

If I never clear and invalidate the timer handle it works fine

But I should be clearing it every time I am done with that specific instance of the timer before I start a new one right?

[surreal peak]

Clearing and Invalidating is only really needed if you want to stop the timer before it calls or if you want to stop a looping timer.

[surreal peak]

Probably Accessed None errors?

[celest trench]

Okay thank you

[surreal peak]

Which would mean you made a Variable but never actually filled it with a ref to something

[coarse condor]

Hmm

[celest trench]

When using FInterp To, is there any way to get delta time without using on tick? I want to interp between current and a new value inside of an event without binding to tick event

[frosty heron]

Another multicast users >_>

[celest trench]

Just using it for quick testing, going to change it to an event binding later

In an onRep

Is that better?

[surreal peak]

Your CountRef variable is basically a container @coarse condor
In CPP you would call it a pointer that points to data in the memory. By default a fresh pointer points to nothing. The container is basically empty.

You can have lots of Counter Instances in your level. UE doesn't magically know which one you mean.

There is a video pinned to this channel, it's a bit older, which explains BlueprintCommunication

[frosty heron]

dela time = time between last frame and current frame

it's different on each machine depending on their hardware

[celest trench]

Is there a better way to smooth transition between something then? I've only seen FInterp To

[surreal peak]

You could use a Timeline that goes from 0 to 1 and a Lerp node

[coarse condor]

@surreal peak Here's more of the blueprint. It is calling to another blueprint. Well I think it is anyways. I'll look at the video as well.

[surreal peak]

Gives you also more control via the curve you can freely customize

[surreal peak]

You better do so. The get all actors of class node shouldn't be used for every little thing hehe

[celest trench]

Is it possible to do something like that in a widget graph? I am using FInterp To there as well. I don't see an option to create a timeline in those

[surreal peak]

Timeline is a component, so that's Actor only I guess

[frosty heron]

Widget Timeline can be used as subtitute

[celest trench]

I don't see that. Does it work differently than just adding a timeline like you can in an actor?

[frosty heron]

well depend on what you want to interp, not a widget I suppose?

[celest trench]

Oh okay so it's an animation thing. Thank you 😄

[frosty heron]

Well it's the same thing imo

cuz timeline comp not available in widget

[celest trench]

And in regards to the multicast? Is this what you suggest instead or is this still bad?

[frosty heron]

not a multiplayer expert, exi is

but imo 98% of the time u don't use multicast

seen youtube tutorials spamming it a lot, you can unlearn that if you watch them

Some rare case I would use multicast is like special effects

like gun fire

it won't matter if they get dropped so just use multicast

[celest trench]

Wouldn't that go in a rep notify?

[frosty heron]

But if u are using multicast on STATEFUL properties

u are 100% doing it wrong

[main lake]

I agree, I rather think you need a RepNotify

[celest trench]

That makes sense. I don't plan on using multicast, just using it for fast testing replication before I do a full implementation. I am not fully sure what is best for what I am currently doing though, so I'll probably ask in multiplayer when I get to that point

[limber parcel]

basically you dont need to network this at all

just run it on client and server

[celest trench]

It’s on game state and I am calling it from game mode. How would I go about that?

[limber parcel]

well yeah, in that case u cant run it on client

[celest trench]

Yeah that’s why I’m not sure what the best solution is. I’ll ask in multiplayer tomorrow

[limber parcel]

probably the correct solution is to implement that function somewhere else

[celest trench]

I would still be calling it from game mode so I would need to notify the clients regardless of where it is

[limber parcel]

there isnt much of a point in putting stuff into gamemode except making it server only

but yeah, using a multicast should be fine for this

[celest trench]

Hmmm okay. Im using gamemode for checking and initiating stuff relating to the modes and then calling delegates to notify when something needs to be done. Checking score and ending round if it’s a winner, Determining when a full team is eliminated, etc. is this bad practice?

[limber parcel]

but u will have to network everything to the client

instead of the client just running the same code as the server

[celest trench]

Would you be willing to elaborate on this a bit more? Where should these things be running then? I don’t want a client to determine if a player was killed or if a teams score should increase. The server should handle all that I thought

[limber parcel]

well yeah, but the server will run its own copy

and ideally everything will be in sync

[celest trench]

Where is the best place to put stuff like this relating to the mode and game loop then?

[limber parcel]

i would just make a new actor

they can run where you want, and are replicated

you can ignore gamemode and gamestate completely

[celest trench]

Okay thank you for the advice. I’ll do some more research 🙂

I appreciate the explanations!

[heavy plinth]

Hey guys, I'm having trouble implementing my interaction blueprint interface so that I can display notes in-game. I currently have the Blueprint interface setup and my character blueprint implements the interface with a line-trace when things are interacted with. In my notepickup BP I have the interaction event from the bp interface toggling the pickup which leads to pickup and put down events nodes in a branch

None of it is working currently though and I can't even get a debeug print string to appear when I interact with the note

[limber parcel]

maybe u want to make sure ure actually hitting the actor you want before calling the interface

[heavy plinth]

In the note blueprint or the player blueprint?

[limber parcel]

player

[heavy plinth]

I thought I was doing that with the line trace to branch and break hit result checking for actors that implement the interact blueprint interface

[limber parcel]

i mean check if it ever even produces a result

[heavy plinth]

It works on these doors I have

I'm using the same line trace and break hit result to check if these doors are unlocked

[limber parcel]

but maybe u dont have proper collision on that item

[heavy plinth]

I think that's what it is maybe

I didn't change anything with the default collision from the object I imported

Should I regenerate the collision in the mesh or would it be something in the note blueprint?

[limber parcel]

you can add a collider with a custom collision group for interactions

[heavy plinth]

Like a box collision in the note bp?

[limber parcel]

yes

[heavy plinth]

So I made the box collision and added the on component begin and end overlap events

Should I connect it to the blue interact node that comes from the interact blueprint interface and then to the toggle pickup event?

[limber parcel]

you dont need any overlap events, you just have to set the collision channel to the same as your line trace

[heavy plinth]

I'm a little confused by that. What do you mean set the collision channel?

I went back to the details of the box collision on the note bp and I dont see collision channels but I did change the collision preset to custom instead of overlap all dynamic which was what it was set at

[limber parcel]

this

[heavy plinth]

Okay Im there and I checked simulation generates hit

[limber parcel]

you give it same object type you used in ur line trace

[heavy plinth]

I was able to get it to display the print string but it's not activating the toggle pickup custom event

[heavy plinth]

You give what exactly? In the details of the box collision I'm guessing I should make sure it hits all actors?

[limber parcel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mdINWuG7o

[heavy plinth]

I'm noticing now that it's displaying the print string twice for some reason

It's interacting twice

[light garnet]

Hi guys. I have a question

[heavy plinth]

I figured it out

I got the text to popup

I was checking for interaction and interacting twice in my player bp

[light garnet]

Cast to impact on performance so if I use get all actors of class and promote to variable then it's soft reference?? Or impact on performance??

@limber parcel

[limber parcel]

if you get all actors of class, it will be hard reference

please dont ping me with random questions

[light garnet]

So i can only use the interface for soft reference

[heavy plinth]

Can you help me figure out why I'm getting this weird behavior where it looks like the text is popping in from the left side of the screen?

Nevermind, since my game is in the square aspect ratio anyway you can't even notice it in the actual simulation

[hazy dock]

I am having this issue where when I pull up my menu, which pauses the game, sometimes when I am using a button that is also mapped to something with a montage or sequence on it to unpause it will lock up the game where everything looks like it's working, but there isn't any input anymore...

[silent drift]

Morning! Is there a way to make a box that grabs everything inside of it on Begin Play? I want to make a enemy respawn system that is tied to a certain area of the map, so once the player has reached Checkpoint X, it turns off the previous area and on the new area. So it would be:

1. Add enemies to the level
2. Add enemy respawn box to the level
3. On begin play the "active" box or the one being turned on grabs all enemies and places them into an array
4. If the player dies, all enemies in the active array gets destroyed and respawned at their inital position again

I want to do this, so that I don't need to reset per enemy when the player dies and change all the variables back, but rather just destroy them and respawn them with their inital values.

And the reason I want a box or something more size controlable is that the Switch isn't at all powerful to store all enemies from one level and respawn them... So i need to dividie it somehow into areas.

I tried the "OnBeginOverlap", but is the enemies are already inside the box, it's not working properly, so trying to figure out a better way for doing this.

[lunar sleet]

Get overlapping actors

[silent drift]

Oh, didn't know there was something like that. Thank you will give it a go and see!

It even has the "Class filter" so I can avoid a cast! Thank you for this tip!'

[silent drift]

Hmm, I'm a bit confused, it seems to grab everything that is an actor except for my enemies. It grabs everything in blueish, and ignores anything that is red (which is the enemies)

They are Characters and it seems to ignore those, and as far as I can see there is no "Grab Overlapping Characters", and I thought Characters was just a type of actor?

[lunar sleet]

Actor is parent of Pawn is parent of Character

[silent drift]

yeah, that's what I thought. So it "should" grab them, but for some reason it just ignores those.

[lunar sleet]

So it will grab every character unless you didn’t set its collision to overlap properly

Or the more obvious, not actually overlapping

Select a class filter

[silent drift]

Yeah, I double checked that one. and they are inside the box.

Sorry, I had a class filter set, but it gave me a result of 0, so wanted to see if it grabbed anything. 🙂

[lunar sleet]

Is the box set to overlap those Characters ?

And vice versa

[silent drift]

Yeah, they are inside of the box:

[lunar sleet]

Change your collision presets on the mesh too not necessarily the capsule

And make sure the box is set to overlap all as well

Or at least overlap those chars

[silent drift]

Set all to collision presets (mesh, capsule and overlapping box), to OverlapAll and no change. I'm confused. I will look more into this and see what I might be doing wrong... Because it must be sometjhing since it grabs anything that isn't a character.

[lunar sleet]

Also, where is this event being run, on begin play?

[silent drift]

Yeah, on jbegin play

[lunar sleet]

Right so that could occur before your chars are loaded in

[silent drift]

Oh, that miught be it.

[lunar sleet]

Add a 1s delay to test

[silent drift]

That was it. :d

😄

Is there a "level fully loaded" event I can use?

Or is a delay the best solution

[lunar sleet]

Delay is rarely the best solution but it works here. Idk about level fully loaded, there are some cpp functions that fire when something is loaded but I think you’d need to do that from the char side

[silent drift]

Okay, thank you! And yeah, I try to avoid delay as much as I can since I'm a bit scared of it breaking. I always feel like the "Event Timer" is more secure, but also not ideal.

But for now I will go with this, and look into a more elegant solution if I find issues with this.

Thanks for the help with this and figuring out the issue!

[lunar sleet]

Timer by event is good in most cases, there’s also Laura’s coroutines but that’s a bit more advanced

[light garnet]

anyone knows why is this happpening..

its working fine most of the time but sometime this happens

[young meteor]

Hey guys

Anyone has an approach to break down a complex task into simpler steps?
I'm somewhat comfortable with BP, but have not been programming previously.

Right now I'm trying to think through how I make a flexible setup for various buffs/debuffs in my game.
It will most certainly include timers.
But I would like to make it modular/flexible to be able to do the following:
The variable to buff varies from a quite long list (20 stats maybe)
The way it is buffed can be both additive or multiplicative (the math I think I can do no problem)
The actual value to buff with (additive or multiplicative) can depend on different criteria's (how many monsters nearby, distance to monster, how many times monster has been hit, time since it was hit, etc.)

Some maybe do a flow diagram first?
I have done comment layout for simpler things in the past like in screenshot

[frosty heron]

#gameplay-ability-system imo

[young meteor]

Just scratched that idea yesterday. Looked into setting it up. Will have to learn C++ for sure to get anything out of it.

[frosty heron]

only the boiler plate

rest can be done in bp

[young meteor]

I don't think so. Already set up a boiler plate GAS that worked. Had to get into custom Execution methods right away.

Which meant a bunch of C++

[frosty heron]

other than that, my only idea is probably looking into some marketplace stuff.
I'm using Dynamic Combat System for my old project, it have buffs that can be stacked, removed, applied, with timer etc

all in blueprint

but it goes without saying that is many times less useful than GAS

[young meteor]

I honestly did not feel there was much to gain from GAS in my case. I have very limited knowledge with it though.
It can do some timers/tag checks for me. Rest was not that useful for me as far as I could tell. And those 2 should be fine in BP?

I mean it could also do complicated calculations and such, but just not without going deep into C++

[frosty heron]

From what I see buff isn't really that simple and it's really tied to each project if you are not using Gas.
I can only recommend Dynamic Combat System from marketplace to look at as alternative

[young meteor]

Okay. Thank you.

Just to ask BP specific things. Is there a way to have an input for a custom function be a variable?
(not a value, but actually input the name of a value or something + a value and it will add/subtract etc. from the correct variable?)

[dark harness]

in Anim Graph, is there an equivalent to Soft Pointers? I don't want all animations to be loaded immediately as soon as I use the AnimBP on my character, instead I want it to only load animations only when it's about to use them.

[gentle urchin]

this would require some c++ ... 😛

this buff system sounds like it'll contain quite a few loops aswell, so it would probably benefit from being native code aswell..

[young meteor]

FML 😛

What is native code? C++?

[gentle urchin]

yepp

this would be troublesome regardless of GAS

[dark drum]

I looked into using uobjects for the buffs/debuffs. I never finished the system but it showed potential. The buff/debuff object would then specify the stat/s it affects and the logic required to apply it.

In your stats manager you would then add and remove the objects when needed.

[young meteor]

I only have 2 main classes to change variables on (towers and monsters)
If I check class first (or do 1 for each class) then:
If I do a struct of all that classes variables (20 ish) and just only set the one I need to a value and leave the rest at 0 with some checks to ignore it if so, would that sound like a performance issue down the line in your eyes?

[young meteor]

Is using UObjects the same as Data Assets? Is that what you mean?

[gentle urchin]

Adding and removing objects sounds reasonable

just let your manager tick them

I'd say

20-30 buffs is nothing to write home about in iterms of performance

[young meteor]

Just remembered I actually already do kind of what I'm talking about for my item system. Just using Enums. It's a bit messy, but seems to work.

[dark drum]

Data assets are children of uObjects (as is everything in UE lol) but I'm not familiar with their pros and cons so I don't know if you would be able to use them instead.

uObjects are just the simpliest of class you can make which can be great for mostly data related objects. (Nothing stopping you implementing your own complex logic within them though)

[dark drum]

My eyes!!! 🤮 That needs a warning label lol. 😛

[gentle urchin]

i wonder how that could be compacted to 1 line of code

😄

[dark drum]

Using pass by ref and a select node probally.

[young meteor]

That's the simplified version. Quite happy with it considering what it is reduced from 😄

[gentle urchin]

that would go atleast 80% of the way it seems

bunch of + and some custom function

i would guess it's like 3 variations

seems liek some functions have 3 vs others have 2 inputs

[young meteor]

this "ref" thing is when you turn an input into that diamond shape instead of round right?
That allows it to do what? (can probably watch some videos on it)

[dark drum]

When you start making games, no one ever says how important data management is. Stats systems can get messy very quickly if you're not careful.

[gentle urchin]

expanding on this system would be .. interesting

i bet

from end to end

[dark drum]

Yea, it allows you to change a variable dynamically. It's how the ++ node works. So regardless of the var you plug in, it'll increment it.

[young meteor]

Sounds like exactly what I need? If I can just do my own calculation instead of increment

[gentle urchin]

ofcourse

😄

[dark drum]

Yea, you can do the same sort of thing in your own macros/functions. You just have to use the set by ref node.

[young meteor]

you can't quite use by ref in a struct where you store it though right?

Asking because I'm looking for some way to remove/revert the buff again at X seconds later.
Was thinking to do a Map with time stamps and a struct to check every so often to see if it has expired.

Otherwise I need to be able to create an "instance" of a Timer or something? (to not override it later if another buff is added)

[gentle urchin]

Uobjects

With a duration variablen

Manager ticks them and they subtract from this (or add to another comparison variable)

Can you even SetLifespan on Uobjects ?

[queen heron]

I seem to be missing something over here
right now my issue is that if I move the mouse on X too quickly, the spring arm won't be able to keep up and doesn't rotate nicely

[dark drum]

Yea i would use uObject base for this type of stuff. Trying to heavily manipulate structures just becomes a pain when you a lot of data in them.

[young meteor]

Don't ask me. I don't even know what "Manager" is 😄

[gentle urchin]

And adding new types with custom calculations

[gentle urchin]

Its just a actor or component that "owns" and controls these Uobjects

[dark drum]

Its a class you make to manage the uobjects. (Stats Manager)

[young meteor]

Sounds like I need to understand UObjects better at the very least to make the right decision.

[queen heron]

do I like add a Clamp float node after the input mouse delta node?

[dark drum]

Does anyone know how to move gameplay tags to a custom ini?

Edit: I just copied the tags to the new ini and then removed them from the default one using notepad haha. (Editor was closed) When relauching, they still show up in the list and doesn't seem to have broken anything. 😄

[dark drum]

As a guess you have lag enabled on the spring arm. As it always takes the shortest path, if you move to quickly it'll start moving one way before quickly switching directions. I over came this by clamping the actual axis value thats used.

[queen heron]

I've printed out the float result of the mouse delta x

and as expected

if I slide my mouse fast enough horizontally, the value quickly interpolates to 0

or the oposite value

which creates this smooth screen shake

[gentle urchin]

Sounds like a very limited bug to me

Call it a feature

Add achievement for triggering it

[queen heron]

clamp angle may have fixed it?

its what I added after it

not seeing any misbehaviour with the camera movement anymore

but I'll see if it does still happen

[quiet kettle]

I have weapon pickups as a blueprint actor that I place manually in my level. How do I create a blueprint actors that spawns one of these at random each time the level starts?

[frosty heron]

Create a blueprint that spawn a random weapon on begin play

[quiet kettle]

How the setup look like+

[light garnet]

Anyone ??

[gentle urchin]

Buggy code ?

Without seeing any code

The guesses and answers you will get holds close to 0 value

[queen heron]

how would I smooth out the movement input so that the character doesn't drift after letting go of the forward button and quickly turning to a different direction?

I think I would need the Event Tick for a stable behaviour?

[gusty dragon]

hey I have a building system where I attach parts like planks to a ship but I wanted to be able to fly the ship once the player adds like a steering wheel would I just have to simulate physics and add force and torque etc? if so would I need to add that to each individual part that the player attaches to the ship?

[gentle urchin]

This sounds incredibly expensive ^

If done with a bunch of components

[gusty dragon]

ya I am scratching my head its basically like how atlas does their ships

they have a ship yard with a frame u put in the planks and design ur ship then u release the ship and it can sail

[thin panther]

I mean it's an mmo.

It will have a big budget, and a custom system dedicated entirely to this

[gentle urchin]

2 days in a row lol

[young meteor]

Is it not possible to have a timer "instance"?

I want to run multiple timers in parallel that don't override/reset each other.

Delay node ignores input until done. Timer resets if you call it again before it is done.
There must be a standard way to keep track of time for multiple things at the same time?

[frosty heron]

Wrap the timer in a component or object

doing it otherwise will override your existing timer

[young meteor]

hmm, component might work. I need access to variables from the actor I use it in, so I don't think Object can do it.

[dark drum]

why are you needing to have multiple timers calling the same function?

[frosty heron]

It will be the same with Component or object

just different method

[young meteor]

Can I just have a standard component with logic + timer in, and create as many instances of it I want?

[frosty heron]

Have delegates in the component or object

you can bind that to the function where you spawn them

[frosty heron]

yes

[young meteor]

Because I want to change a unique variable. Same issue as you tried to help me with above. Just haven't found a good solution yet.

[dark drum]

Are you going down the route of using uObjects for your buffs/debuffs?

[young meteor]

I tried. Unless I'm wrong I understand what I can do with UObjects/Data assets now. But I still can't pass in the variable (not value) I want to change.

I could have all of them in there and either switch on Enum, or branch away variables with value 0 but that seems a bit much.

Don't see a simpler solution yet.

Not sure how you were going about it though. You might very well have a much bigger brain than mine. 😛

[dark drum]

You would create a uObject for each buff/debuff you have. The base uobject you create would have a base function to initialize it.

If it's a poison debuff, the logic inside the object would handle reducing the health when needed.

A protection buff would handle the logic needed to increase the players armor stats (or however you want to do it)

Because each buff/debuff would be it's own object, they can create their own timer instance. (All though an external clock might be better in the stats manager that keeps track of time as it easier if you need to pause them all)

[magic raft]

hi anyone knows how can i convert a texture 2D to bytes ?

[young meteor]

I see. That makes sense for what you are describing. Don't think it would work in my case because:

1. I could call the same time of buff (with different values) multiple times before it expires, and I would want them to stack.
2. I would need to create a base uObject for each stat I would possibly want to change.

The approach you describe might be very valuable for more unique and specific effects though.

Right now it's more like a flexible way to do math with any variable I want kind of thing. (on a timer)

[dark drum]

There's nothing stopping you from creating multiple buff/debuffs objects at runtime that get applied to the player. The affects would stack and function independantly from each other.

[young meteor]

I don't see how I can implement it. 😄
To do what you suggest I would need to create a base uObject for every stat right?

[dark drum]

I was just referring to having the buffs/debuffs as objects. You could do your stats as objects as well if you wanted.

[young meteor]

But the buffs/debuffs are basically the same as changing stats in my case.

[frosty heron]

Export Texture 2D? The output are bytes

[young meteor]

call a buff + 30% damage for example

[silent drift]

Anyone know how I can make a projectile collide with most things it comes into contact with, but not with for example the player?

[frosty heron]

Collision channel and settings

[magic raft]

There is no output 😄

I'm trying to export it as string to encode it in base64

[frosty heron]

don't know about string