blueprint

[lofty rapids]

it's just a guess but it should work you may need to multiply the value by a float or something to get the amount you want and wrap the rotations i have not done much with rotation but in theory it would work

[lethal pollen]

Maybe it could be easier to attach the 3D Widget to the camera.

[lofty rapids]

you want it to rotate with the camera ?

[odd kiln]

Why not if the camera rotates with the mouse it could be a good idea

[lofty rapids]

if you want it to lookat camera, lookat is a good choice like mentioned

[lethal pollen]

Yes, Find Look At Rotation could be helpful.

[boreal jackal]

took me a while just to make this still wip.. and ill need to remake it cos it just uses actors, been a pain tbh.

[hoary junco]

so, I have a system of inventory where I have an inventory of items I've picked up, the inventory is built out of a background with a number of slots on it, the number of slots is decided by a variable attached to whatever actors have an inventory, then the slots themselves which are widgets that have a drag and drop mechanic built into them where you can move items around. When you click and drag an icon is generated that sticks to the mouse and then when you let go the icon goes away

The drag detected and the drop is built into the inventory slot widget, which is giving me a bit of a problem...
if I close the inventory while I'm still clicking and dragging, both the mouse cursor (which is supposed to go away when you close the inventory) and the icon are still on screen, is there a way I can clear them from the screen when the inventory closes?

[boreal jackal]

@hoary junco I tried to do something similar following the // Drag & Drop with UMG | 01 | Live Training | Unreal Engine // might help but he misses a few thing in pt2 thats in pt3.. you should have your hud widget class with a canvas then, add you inventory widget to the canvas panel same with a hotbar if you have one. BUT a Alternative it just to have it when you right click on a slot show a widget that has (drop, use or cancel). but i would follow that drag drop tut by unreal first.. or skip to the drop part 🙂

[hoary junco]

I do have my widget with a canvas and an inventory widget that gets added to the canvas panel

it still does the thing of the drag and drop getting stuck if the hud closes while I'm still click an dragging

[boreal jackal]

you mean if the inventory widget closes?

[hoary junco]

yeah

[hoary junco]

that's not how my inventory closes

[boreal jackal]

you have a x button in corner?

[hoary junco]

no

it closes with keybinds

like this

what I want is to be able to essentially force the drop action to trigger whenever I hit the close inventory key before the UI destructs

and hiding/unhiding doesn't really work because the inventory and everything in it updates whenever the widget for it is created, so if I just hide/unhide it wouldn't update

[boreal jackal]

on drag detected i would check if the inventory is open if false call on drop function

[hoary junco]

how do you call the on drop function though?

[boreal jackal]

let me open my other project 1sec

you would have to ovverride it..

[hoary junco]

how?

like I already have this code in the ondrop function

this is basically just telling it whenever I drop the item, is it in an available slot, and if so move item to that slot

if not then do nothing

[tardy totem]

Hello. Can somebody explain me how to use modular control rig? When I'm working with default mannequin there is no problem (of course), but when I'm using custom character with modified rigify skeleton - all sockets is placed at the bottom of character. And of course it doesn't work - shoulders just placed at the bottom and don't do anything. Why is this happening?

[dusk yew]

Hello guys I have a question, making a melee combat system and I want some swords to have "special attacks" I don't know where to save the animations because if I save the animations in the character instance I will have more than 30 40 animations loaded and if the I save the same thing in the component, I was thinking of making a datatable and calling that data table every time I want to equip or use a special ability. what dou you recommend?

[bitter raven]

Having an issue with UE 5.4. After retargeted animation from mixamo to my own character I see blur:

bones and mesh working fine, but i see this issue... idk wtf. Any idea?

[boreal jackal]

@hoary junco sorry mike.. i have been trying to look up to now, cant find on how to touch on your problem, just like when you drag widget too far offscreen. I don't think its possible unless you can somehow call the event if inventory was closed.

[hoary junco]

all I need to know is how to call the event in general, because if I can cause it to trigger whenever the button is pressed to close the inventory before the inventory actually closes I'm golden

like how can I force a drop event

[boreal jackal]

i have the JSI open now to see if the goat has done it

[hoary junco]

apart from closing the active window what does ESC do by default in UE5?

[trim matrix]

that's so good, did you make it?

[hoary junco]

because I found something, whenever I hit ESC it cancels the current drag and drop event

I found it

there's literally a cancel dragdrop node

[boreal jackal]

@trim matrix no its Technova45 on YouTube but its on the marketplace

@hoary junco thank god xD

[hoary junco]

so I ammended my close UI code to do this

[boreal jackal]

on the JSI it just clears on inventory close like how you described originally

[placid cove]

guys how can i make it compare with ±0,5

[hoary junco]

how do you mean compare with +/- 0.5, like detect if the float is within 0.5 of a value either side?

[placid cove]

yes

[boreal jackal]

@hoary junco good to know, because i might need it for in future.

[hoary junco]

so, idk if I'm just bad at code but, I'd do that this way:

[supple dome]

the float == has an epsilon param

[placid cove]

what's that

[placid cove]

uhm so what do i use the bool for?

[supple dome]

the error margin

[placid cove]

to i make a branch and switch compares?

[placid cove]

is it a node?

[supple dome]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Math/Float/NearlyEqual_float/

this one

[placid cove]

yeah but i don't need a boolean

this is what i am trying to do

but when i move my mouse slowly it goes 0 to 0.07 multiple times and it somewhat lags

[hoary junco]

so, what you could do here is, nearly equal between A and B, set your tolerance to 0.5, then set a branch from weapon sway and from false go into compare float, which means that while the ialook value is within tolerance it won't do anything but the moment it exits tolerance then it will go into the compare float and do the greater than or less than actions

[hoary junco]

something like this?

[placid cove]

yes, works perfectly

thanks

[hoary junco]

np

[quartz lotus]

I messaged about this same issue couple days and got a lot of great responses. I do not really want to change from using Widgets to using PlayerSttates or anything though because I do not understand them and I already re-did the entire CardUI system once. I just do not know why this does not work. Image 1 is Widget A and Image 2 is Widget B. From what I have read about through forums I think this should be correct, but I get nothing, so if someone knows something please let me know. Thank you.

[lofty rapids]

i mean what is send to widget b, just this event you got here ?

it's just printing string

[quartz lotus]

I have logic I want to implement, but the event in Widget B is never triggered, to figure it out I made it simple by just to learn what I am doing wrong

At least it seems like it is never triggered

[lofty rapids]

so your target is self, so the event is in the same bp as A ?

[quartz lotus]

The Event "Event Send to Widget B" is in Widget B, but the Function in Widget A "Send To Widget B" says Target is BPI DealCards. I guess I am just a little confused and I do not know how to reference Widget B inside of Widget A

[lofty rapids]

i put all my widgets in the hud

to call the event on b, you get a reference to the widget, and then use that

i feel like your calling an event in itself because target is self

so do you have that event setup in a ?

idk how you got the node if you don't

[quartz lotus]

Do I have the "SendToWidgetB" Event in Widget A is what you are asking? If so, I do not

[lofty rapids]

how did you get that node on there ?

but you need a reference to widget b, then you can drag off that and call the event

[quartz lotus]

I implemented the BPI in Widget A to call the function and I also implemented it into Widget B to create the Event

[quartz lotus]

how do I do this? I have create a variable of type Widget B and then when I run the game it does not work. I close it and get the Accessed None error or something

[lofty rapids]

accessed none because you just got an empty variable

when you create the widget, set the return of that to your variable

or just promote to variable

and use that as the target

i c so you can put an interface on a widget ? thats what you did ? but thats an event not a function ?

i'm still learning so idk if it matters but i thought interfaces were just functions

[quartz lotus]

My understanding is you can use them to talk between blueprints and you can only set the iinput and outputs. There is no way to implement logic into the BPI as far as I know. This is when I guess Function Libraries would come into play

[lofty rapids]

ya they are functions, that you override on the bp that implements it

[quartz lotus]

So you are saying something like this?

[lofty rapids]

but you can call a regular event also, but interface is good if you are having multiple with same functionality

[quartz lotus]

omg that f*****g worked

Well I can continue plkaying with it now because I got the text to print! Thank you so much!

[craggy flicker]

Why is it that on random occasions, I can't seem to create a comment, delete, or make new nodes?

has anyone experienced this for 5.3?

I have to exit and reopen the blueprint :/

[still breach]

Hello, working on a simple POC here, any reasons why my Get Game mode cast to currentGameMode is returning invalid when called from widget?

[copper mica]

I've had this same issue multiple times in 5.2, I just assume it's a bug.

[craggy flicker]

widgets can't get the game mode

game mode is server-based

hold on, there's a neat infographicc for this

[still breach]

Since when? I did a full project in widgets in UE4 through Widgets only and its never been a problem before?

[spice sequoia]

Hi, I have a construction script in a parent BP that creates some static meshes from a data asset. If I create a child class from the parent and set the data asset it does not create the static meshes in the editor window - I have a 'parent:construction script' node in the child class but it does not seem to be working - Is this usual behaviour? Is there a way to have the parent construction script run in editor?

[craggy flicker]

wow that needs more pixels my bad

[still breach]

yeah lol

[craggy flicker]

as u can see widgets exist on the client side

if you're looking for something that can be accessed by player controllers and the server, game instances or game states are your best bet

[still breach]

thats a UE5 change right? cause I did it 100times in the past and never had an issue before

[craggy flicker]

i believe so

ive only used ue5 so im not sure

[copper mica]

Anyone have a better method for doing bullet spread?

[still breach]

Well that's disappointing news, thank you

[craggy flicker]

maybe get random points within a box?

[craggy flicker]

np

[craggy flicker]

here's a better infographic

[copper mica]

This wont be spherical though.

[craggy flicker]

idk sorry

firearm spread is a game design decision

no necessarily better method

[copper mica]

I was just asking if anyone knew a better method I might have overlooked.

[still breach]

Wait, that framework doesn't work lol, cause Game mode is accessible through default BP_ThirdPersonCharacter which is a pawn

but that just gave me a good idea to solve my problem

[craggy flicker]

yea maybe that infographic isn't good, but pawns exist in the server and on client

(from the vynn diagram)

[hoary junco]

minor issue but something I've noticed is whenever volumetric clouds is on, if the game pauses in the middle of the camera moving, the clouds start glitching out and flickering, is there a way of fixing this?

like they start doing this

[simple apex]

Creating an Ai for testing, it is meant to follow the player, but it isn't and I cannot figure out why?

Any help would be appreciated!

[hoary junco]

does the pawn have an AI controller tied to it?

[tribal gazelle]

I have a problem with spawning pickups in world partition. If they are far away from player start they don't seam to load, or are they falling through the unloaded map? PS: I am using spartially loaded on them all - pickup actors and spawn point actors.

[tribal gazelle]

Drag out of GetPlayerPawn and GetActorLocation and put in in destination. And do not do that delay loop.

[dry sleet]

You might want to run that on OnPossessed instead.

Not sure if the AIC has time to be created on BeginPlay

[simple apex]

No it does not, can you not make a pawn move to player without one?

if so we have our issue XD

[dry sleet]

You need an AI controller for that node, too

[turbid bison]

Use timer to achieve what you are trying to do

[copper mica]

Did you set up a NavMesh?

[hoary junco]

you need an AI controller before all the rest of this XD

without the AI controller it won't move

[simple apex]

makes alot more sense that way.....

Fixed it, I don't know wtf I was thinking.

Thanks guys!

[hoary junco]

np 🙂

[hoary junco]

think of pawns like dummies and the controller like a motor, if you want the dummy to move you have to put a motor of some kind in there, otherwise it will just sit there. This applies to AI and to character pawns too (their motors being their movement components)

[simple apex]

gotcha

[languid hemlock]

I keep the information of my items in data assets. I change this information at runtime.
How should I use SaveGame? I can't save the data assets because they are objects.

Rifle, Battery, Food, etc... each of these has different variables in DataAssets. I can make the variables in them struct and save them into SaveGame object. But what if I have hundreds of different data asset classes? I will have to use "For Each Loop" for every struct type i saved, and this means hundred of "For Each Loop" nodes. I am not sure what way i should follow here. Any comment appreciated. I can describe the problem more detailed if you ask.

[still breach]

Aight so, HUD cant call Game mode so I called game mode from the HUD owner controller and that solves the problem. Thanks for the help!

[lilac wind]

I have a repeating event track in sequencer and I want to lerp a float on a UI element via the event track and I can't seem to figure it out.

[craggy flicker]

Just curious, but what information do you need from your gamemode?

[still breach]

GameMode stores my API class that handles the calls to the database

So I'm using the widget server connection to try and connect the player with the registered informations and return his account Id which grants him access to his characters

[maiden wadi]

This is not correct.

@still breach Your issue is that you cannot RPC within a widget.

Widgets are not networked.

[craggy flicker]

Wym? The infographics say otherwise

[still breach]

I actually tried without RPC and it didn't work either strangely enough

[craggy flicker]

so I am correct

[maiden wadi]

I don't care what infowtfever says. You can get the game mode within a widget.

[craggy flicker]

I don't see how

widgets are client side?

[still breach]

can you provide a simple example, everything I tried returns null

[languid hemlock]

You cant if its a multiplayer project ^^

[maiden wadi]

Listenserver.

[still breach]

You could in UE4 cause I did a multiplayer project back then fully UI and I used Get Game mode about 100times from a widget

[maiden wadi]

I didn't say it was a good idea. I said it was possible.

[languid hemlock]

🆗

[still breach]

oh it was listen server, so thats probably why it worked lmao

[craggy flicker]

you mean a custom event on the widget that runs on the server? or when the client is both the client and server

[still breach]

when client is both client and server it works 100%

[queen sphinx]

Good day everyone.
Is there a better way to set data inside a blue print that is read from a data table?

[craggy flicker]

I mean that makes sense, I assumed you were just client side

[still breach]

yeah new project is dedicated server, which is why i was surprised it no longer worked

@queen sphinx make a Gun Stats variable struct?

[wise ravine]

how do I curve the interpolation so that the animation slows down toward the end?

[craggy flicker]

dedicated servers are a pain to ship lol

[still breach]

@craggy flicker So I heard, but im up to new challenges 🙂

[craggy flicker]

i hope you're developing on UE from source lol

[maiden wadi]

This said. Yes you can get the GameMode on a widget. But in most cases, no you should not get the gamemode from a widget.

Even in the case where it might be a server related widget. Generally speaking even if you were to make a cheat or lobby style widget you should make systems that allow you to network that to the server regardless of who is using it.

Making dynamic components on your playercontroller, or playerstate can help a lot to manage these without linking the widget to too much and keep your code clean from muddying other systems.

[safe rain]

so I'm currently working on my gun, and I'm trying to add a delay for when you shoot you can't spam shoot. the "fastershootsupgrade" is currently at -0.1 per second but I have no idea on how to loop the code from set waitshootime back to delay and to stop once the variable waitshoottime gets to zero, could anyone help. Please @ me because i have this sever muted for too many pings

feel free to help the other person first

[still breach]

@maiden wadi care to elaborate on that last part? Would love to learn a bit more on that approach

[rocky ore]

consider using enhanced input

[safe rain]

i have no clue what that is could you please explain?

[still breach]

@safe rain SetTimerByHandle is what you're looking for I believe

[thin panther]

ByEvent*

[rocky ore]

i assume this pressed does not hold,. right?

[safe rain]

yes

[rocky ore]

with enhanced input you can have a hold

its a newer input system, much better to use

[safe rain]

lets say this is a shotgun right

i cant exactly hold down on a shotgun

but thanks for trying

[rocky ore]

i recommend youtubing or googling, they will be better than me

yeaa

[safe rain]

got it

[rocky ore]

with enhanced input you will be able to hold

theres so much in it

[safe rain]

i could try using a branch, then if waittoshoot is not = to 0 then it would repeat?

[rocky ore]

yep

[safe rain]

ill let you know if it works

[rocky ore]

there are a lot of approaches to go around it so i dont know whats the best one, but starting with enhanced input setup is my best recommendation

[maiden wadi]

A good case might be for an admin widget. You need to server rpc to do most admin related stuff. To server rpc you need an actor or a component on an actor that is owned by the player controller or that the actor is the player controller itself.

Putting components on PlayerController or PlayerState allows you to do a basic GetOwningPlayer call in a widget to get the controller and a GetComponentByClass. This lets your widget only care about the component on your playercontroller largely.

So you put something akin to an AdminTools ActorComponent on your playercontroller, use the above to get it. Then you can call serverrpcs through that component. That component can internally get your game mode or whatever else is necessary to do whatever it needs. It also has access to it's owning controller via GetOwner->CastToPlayerController to gather anything it needs to know about the user of the command or to determine if that user even has admin privilege.

Another case is a lobby widget. You need to serverrpc data to the server for your selections. Same idea. Drop a component on the playerstate, let the widget gather it and use it to RPC and replicate data to others.

[rocky ore]

you could try this too @safe rain , im sure it works, it might be more lightweight than spamming boolean check (?) and might give you more control if you end up making things complicated later on

and it also wont require enhanced input, since you can stop the timer on mouse release

[still breach]

@maiden wadi Yeah sorry, I should've been more clear. I get the actor component principle part. It's the "dynamic" actor component that you stated that was bothering me. To me dynamic means instantiated runtime, so I was failing to understand how a "dynamic" AC might work with a widget.

That being said, does fetching an actor component from an object instead of the object directly improves performances?

[maiden wadi]

Ah, yeah lobby was a case for that. If you wanted a lobby within the same map as the game and not a specialized lobby map. You can throw the component on when necessary, remove it when done. Doesn't necessarily always need to be dynamic.

[still breach]

Gotcha! Thanks a lot!

[wise ravine]

So I'm using timeline's to move this train, and whenever I'm in windowed mode (or not in Fullscreen) the train stops further down. However, when I'm in Fullscreen the train stops in the middle. I am beyond confused why Unreal does this, can anyone explain? My guess, is that whenever I enter Fullscreen it slightly lags the game and messes with the timelines timing

[maiden wadi]

Timeline logic?

[wise ravine]

Is that why?

[dry sleet]

You need to post the logic driving the train

Can't determine much otherwise

[wise ravine]

oh

Executes on Begin Play. It's not much an issue for me, I'm just curious why this happens.

[dry sleet]

You're using Add Relative Location I see.

[wise ravine]

yes

[dry sleet]

You could probably make that use Set Relative Location and your issue would be solved.

[wise ravine]

What's the difference?

[open zenith]

**Guidance request on spawning logic. **

I want to spawn (using player controller input keyboard 1,2,3) a corrresponding item (banana, monkey, car) at their predefined location likely via spawner bp.

What is a clean outline/workflow** to prevent having my player character** need to hold a hard reference to banana/monkey/car spawner blueprints or viceversa (forcing the banana spawner to need a reference to player controller) or viceversa so I can** reuse either the banana or the player character in different projects** without having the export carry with itself the opposite assets (banana carrying player character / pc carrying banana) on export?

I am familiar with ACP, Blueprint Interfaces and Dispatchers, but not sure how I should properly apply them to this spawning scenario to achieve this decoupling.

[dry sleet]

If you add to the location of the train, you make it dependant on the number of times that timeline runs.

However, if you Set the location, you'll arrive at the same result even if it only runs the very last timeline tick.

Because it's absolute.

[wise ravine]

Makes sense, appreciate the help 😅

[dry sleet]

Anytime!

[hoary junco]

anyone know what the issue is here?

I found 1 post on it from last year on the UE forums but there were no replies :/

[iron furnace]

Hey everyone, i have a projectile ive made and it works when it hits the player and applies the damage and all that, but im trying to destroy the actor when it hits a wall or other thing, and it either despawns immediately, or goes through all objects. any advice?

top portion is the sphere collision, bottom portion uses the mesh itself as a trigger

[hoary junco]

the despawning immediately sounds like it's despawning because it's inside the collision box of the gun.. you need to have it ignore the gun and the shooter

[iron furnace]

So i got it to stop despawning on being fired, but now im noticing if i have projectile movement in my blueprint for the projectile, its always phasing through walls. I have my collision settings to block all collision, but its still going through walls

[hoary junco]

is the projectile set to collide too?

[iron furnace]

So i figured it out a little bit, but if there is a solution using just the mesh, id prefer that. I was just using the mesh, but it didnt let me, so i added a sphere collision and now it works

[hoary junco]

thing is, even stuff that's set to collide, if you have it moving by code and it's not physics moving the thing, then it's going to move through stuff.

[iron furnace]

rip, oh well, guess ill be using the sphere collision instead of the mesh

[hoary junco]

what's the shape of the projectile?

is it a regular bullet?

[iron furnace]

just a round ball, i had the root object as just a mesh, and a seperate sphere collision for the player

[hoary junco]

yeah that's the thing, you need a collision component on any kind of actor or component in order for collision to be registered

I mean the sphere collision is pretty tight to the model so I don't see the issue with it

[iron furnace]

true, I just didnt realise i needed one, now that i do though itll be fine lol

[maiden wadi]

Should make the sphere collision the root. And remove collision from anything else. Scene component transforms are costly enough to update, and collision stuff on top of that is even worse.

Sphere collision costs less than even a sphere mesh.

[open zenith]

**Guidance request on spawning logic. **

I want to spawn (using player controller input keyboard 1,2,3) a corrresponding item (banana, monkey, car) at their predefined location likely via spawner bp.

What is a clean outline/workflow** to prevent having my player character** need to hold a hard reference to banana/monkey/car spawner blueprints or viceversa (forcing the banana spawner to need a reference to player controller) or viceversa so I can** reuse either the banana or the player character in different projects** without having the export carry with itself the opposite assets (banana carrying player character / pc carrying banana) on export?

I am familiar with ACP, Blueprint Interfaces and Dispatchers, but not sure how I should properly apply them to this spawning scenario to achieve this decoupling.

[maiden wadi]

Out of curiosity, this seems like a really strange thing to be abstracting into modular code?

Just that controls are normally project specific. And a system that spawns something is usually either very generically abstracted to allow data to be passed in, or project specific too. Base classes with the core logic would help.

[tepid raft]

The door keeps changing sides when i walk through

[lusty shard]

Any ideas for how to return True if 2 actors are rotated to face each other?

Trying to make it so snap points can only snap to each other if they are facing eachother, aka absolute opposite z rotation of each other.

[tepid raft]

um how would thou do such thing

[hoary junco]

well there's 2 ways of doing it

doing a line or sphere trace out from the actor to make sure the 2 are looking at one another directly

or if you want to specifically go for Z direction, get the world rotation of each, split the struct pins, draw from the Z value of the rotations and minus one from the other, if the result is either 180 or -180 then they are facing in opposite directions

[still breach]

if(abs(a.rotation - b.rotation)) == 180)

[lusty shard]

Alright noted! Saw online somehting about using a dot product but dont understand it lol. Will try this instead

abs is global correct?

[still breach]

absolute function

[hoary junco]

I actually did dot product on one of my recent projects, it's not as hard as you think XD

[still breach]

will always return a positive value

[lusty shard]

ah ok

[still breach]

so if you get -154, you actually get 154

[lusty shard]

like so?

[hoary junco]

that should work

[obtuse dawn]

Hey so I'm trying to make a mission table system where when the player interacts with the actor it gets the position of the player camera relative to the table, sets the table's camera to that position, then switches the cameras so the player sees through the tables camera. I got the last part working but I cant make the second camera move at all. Would anyone be able to help me out?

[hoary junco]

do you want it to be absolutely it has to be EXACTLY opposite in rotation or do you want some give?

[lusty shard]

frickin awesome! wasnt expecting to solve this today.

[hoary junco]

because there is a way of adding a few degrees either way too

[lusty shard]

I probably should have some cuchion incase decimals are thrown in.. seeing as how unreal handled rotating, seems to add decimal values sometimes.

I am rotating buildings by 45 degrees.

[still breach]

truncate it to int

[lusty shard]

after absolute?

[still breach]

yeah, will get rid of decimals

[hoary junco]

or if you want give in a whole numbers like 1 or 2 full degrees too you can use a "nearly equal" node

[lusty shard]

That would force it to be exactly 180?

[still breach]

yep

[lusty shard]

ahh nearly equal too sounds like some wiggle room

[hoary junco]

yeah that's the point of nearly equal

to give you error tolerance so you can be a bit more forgiving

nothing more frustrating in a game than having to be EXACTLY on point XD

[lusty shard]

yep

very nice

PM me your venmo Mike and Ana. Will send like 10 for helping. thanks

saved me time. g2g

[hoary junco]

I don't have venmo 😦

[lusty shard]

I always pay people for helping me here so.. if you set one up, will be able to do it

[hoary junco]

I'm in the UK venmo doesn't work here

[still breach]

I dont need your money, just glad I could give back to the community a lil

[lusty shard]

if you move countries, then i can pay for helping here

jk

ok no worries

thanks for the help anyway

[still breach]

you're welcome

[lusty shard]

I like to give back too lol

[hoary junco]

I mean the ultimate way to give back is to learn the engine and then help other people

I'm pretty much a newbie myself trudging through the engine but the little bits I pick up on the way I feed down to the next person who was in my position a week ago or whatever

just so happens right now I'm at war with the UI XD

[faint pasture]

Offset = A.Location - B.Location
return DotProduct(A.Forward, Offset.Normalize) > 0.9 && DotProduct(B.Forward, -Offset.Normalize) > .09

You want to use dot product for "how much is this vector aligned with this other vector?

and you just gotta check both cases and if both are close enough to looking at the other then it's true.
Don't use rotations for this, roll would affect it but roll doesn't affect your facing direction

[silent stag]

Hey , is there any problem with downsizing on a landscape scale?

[lusty shard]

Nope!

[lusty shard]

Thanks for explaining!

Does anyone else have a gimbal lock issue with a directional light if you give it a RotatingMovement component? How to get around it?

[silent stag]

Thanks

[lusty shard]

I have tried using add rotation, then tried getting and adding then setting rotation.. all 3 of these cause the light to lock at 90 degrees.

Suddenly converting the other axis y and z form 0s to 180

Seems like it's a known issue and people can't solve it
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/directional-light-stops-at-midday-in-day-night-cycle/427138

[still breach]

whats the value of sunspeed?

[ionic quiver]

I learned of the radial force component today, that allows you to push / pull physics objects. I would love to do this with characters but of course they can't simulate physics without breaking movement. Does anyone know if there's a component / simple setup for this, or it's a custom thing that needs to be made?

[tepid raft]

how can i make my ai open and go through doors

[trim matrix]

ez

[tepid raft]

ok?

[pure salmon]

I am trying to enable interaction through a function call, I have tried using boolean and enum and even setter and getter, but for some reason. the changed varaible is not saved as when I call get or use the property later after setting it, it is showing as not updated.

It seems to be lossing the value some how.
Anyone know what I can do?

[lunar sleet]

Show code

[inland crystal]

Hey all, I made a small (free opensource MIT license) plugin that adds a few extra BP switch statement nodes, such as 'switch on float' and 'switch on float range', a brief search shows that occasionally people in this channel seek this functionality so I thought I might post the link here: https://github.com/Amir-BK/ExtraBlueprintSwitchStatements

[dusty hazel]

I'm surprised I haven't seen more complaints about this (maybe I haven't searched well enough):

What is the logic behind having nodes dragged off into "duration" as opposed to "print to screen" (when typing "print string" in context menu while dragging off) ?

I can't fathom how "duration" would be chosen even 5 percent of the time ...

[inland crystal]

it probably just matches pins based on type.

[dusty hazel]

True, as it always has to convert

[teal tendon]

in the first Image I am trying to play a montage using the jump event and in second Image is the anim blueprint and in the third is the montage, the thing is I am trying to play a montage with the default Unreal First person character But is not playing the animation at all

Any ideas here

if anyone can help me this

please

The montage, The event and the anim blueprint comes all default with First person character content

[lunar sleet]

Try #animation

[teal tendon]

ok

[versed crypt]

Hey, im trying to setup a dynamic uniform grid panel, where it spawns as many buttons as there is "items" or what not... Currently im on stage where i make multiple buttons based on my dataset data, but i have made WBP Button (which spawns in grid) and now question: I want button to display the text and other stuff regarding the dataset, how do i set it up all of it?

basically, how do i put my dataset data into a button itself...

[inland crystal]

as your button is a custom class you just need to add members to it that represent the data you want to pass, set the variable to 'instance editable' and set the value on the button, you can also set it to 'expose on spawn' and then just assign it as you create the widget blueprint in the graph, an easy way to keep things organized is to store all the relevant data in a struct and pass that to the button when you create it.

[surreal peak]

You make a variable of the struct type your data table uses in the button and set it to instance editable and exposed on spawn

Welp a second too late

Might need to refresh the create widget node to see the pin showing up

[edgy axle]

The Delta between the two rotators seems to suffering from gimbal lock when the angles get near +- 90, and it just flips the actor back around the opposite way. I assume the only real solution would be to convert the rotators to quats and then calculate the diff between them.

[versed crypt]

@inland crystal what you mean, is, go to my WBP_Button, add Text to the button, then mark textbox as variable, and then make a setter for it? After this I go back into my where grid is, and then set data for that button? (pseudo thinking rn)

[edgy axle]

kinda wish UE5 would just use Quats for everything

hmm even with converting to quats I'm still getting weird side effects

[inland crystal]

without confusing things too much, to avoid making too many events and functions on the widget bp you want to have the relevant data available when the 'construct' event for the widget is called, so you create the variables for the data (like 'Text', or 'St_MyDataTableEntryStruct') and mark them as 'Instance Editable' and 'Expose on Spawn', now when you refresh your 'Create WBP_Button' node that you already have in the graph it will show the pins for the new variables you created, you can provide the data as you create the button, then 'use' this data (such as, assign the text to your button's text box) in the construction event for the widget, and that's it.

[edgy axle]

would this be the right way finding the difference between two quaternions?

I'm just subtracting one from the other but I'm pretty sure that's wrong

[versed crypt]

oh ok... will try hehe, im kinda new to blueprints and stuff, and now im trying to find that instance editable and expose on spawn (where exactly those are and what you need to highlight to get it?)

[surreal peak]

They are in the settings/details of the newly created variable

[versed crypt]

hm...

[surreal peak]

You gotta get the basics right

Adding a fully on TextBlock widget to your Designer is not a variable

It will create a variable, but that's a side effect

We are solely talkin about the EventGraph and the variables you can create there in the Variables menu

[rotund iris]

Hello, was there a UE4.27 update? Now all the parent variables are visible in the blueprint actor variables and it's kinda messy. Is there a way to hide them again?

[versed crypt]

ah ok, I think this too programically, i will try to see and refer to some docs and tuts then. Also now understand that you need variable seperate to set ok...

[rotund iris]

It also now shows all the variables that were accessible through "Class defaults" only before which is quite redundant.

[surreal peak]

4.27 o.o

There is most likely no update anymore to a ~3 year old engine version

You enabled the parent variables

[rotund iris]

Yes I think there was a hotfix update recently

[surreal peak]

Either way, you just need to disable showing parent variables

it's somewhare at the top of the variables menu

Show Inherited Variables or so

[rotund iris]

You're right, find it, thank you

[versed crypt]

oh yeah, i did all, works well, but maybe you know how can i set like a picture inside the button (which would be a mesh with added texture), my dataset data has texture path's and its names, and my mesh is static same thing anyways, is that possible?

like character skin selection, one mesh, different textures

[surreal peak]

You can display Textures, not Meshes. For Meshes you need a whole different setup.

You may also want to consider making a special Button for this kind of stuff, cause otherwise all your base buttons will have the image stuff and the exposed struct pin

But either way, if you have a UserWidget, you'd add an Image Widget to it, where you want the image.

And then given you have the Struct with the Text and Texture as a variable, on EventConstruct you can take the Image Widget (Variable) and the Struct Variable and call SetBrushFromTexture on the Image, passing in the Struct's Texture variable.

[versed crypt]

ah, thats pretty straight forward

i kinda wish i could have my mesh and applied texture, as a skin selection for character

[surreal peak]

That's a lot more involved if you actually want the mesh. Also heavily depends on how the actual UX should look like

[versed crypt]

i seen some guy on youtube make, but he made each seperate BP of each different outfit/skins, well that works, but if its material and mesh, im thinking that way

[surreal peak]

There is no straight forward way to render Meshes in UI

[versed crypt]

hm, thinking pseudo-code, what if you take mesh, apply texture, and then make it into photo* ? (i dont even know if thats possible?)

[surreal peak]

Do you want to preview the Outfits on a Character? Or should each button have the mesh ?

And should this be live or just static images

[tepid raft]

hey im trying to make a stress bar that goes up everytime u see or stay around the monster and the more the bar is full the more agressive the monster would be does anyone know how i could possibly start making this like a yt tutorial or smth

[versed crypt]

you know how in Fortnite, one char has different outfits*, so think same way here, my char outfit is more of a diffewrent materials, so i want button to display a whole mesh with applied texture of it, so player can choose with texture he wants to use on player, but instead of texture on button, he sees a whole mesh with texture (a whole player with that skin), if i make sense

[surreal peak]

Cut the feature into multiple parts. The Bar is just the UI showing the Value (Current divided by Max).

The Value itself can live in the Character.

[tepid raft]

i got a float for it so just make a ui bar for it

[surreal peak]

Yeah

[surreal peak]

But as a Static Images

[versed crypt]

oh yeah... hes not moving

i could just create images and just put them in 😄 tbh, but im tryna see capabilities of tool (if the player with skin can move in the selection part, that would be cool)

[surreal peak]

Idk if there are available plugins, but you can theoretically make Thumbnail Images (which are then just UTexture assets) from a scene

We have something like this internally to make images for a Building UI of an RTS

[versed crypt]

oh... that sounds like a way for what I want

[surreal peak]

Designer opens the "ThumbnailCreator", selects a Blueprint and then presses CreateThumbnail, which creates Texture

But that's a lot of custom C++ code

But maybe you find something online that can do the same

[tepid raft]

ok got the ui now what should i do after that?>

[surreal peak]

Where is your float located?

[tepid raft]

in my player

[surreal peak]

Then in the Widget, do "GetOwningPlayer", which is a Controller.
Then "GetControlledPawn" (Or GetPawn, can't recall if they renamed it).

Then cast to your Player BP and get the Float

Keep in mind the Bar probably uses Percent (0 to 1), so if your float is > 1, you gotta divide it by some max value

[versed crypt]

yeah i can do that and code, but I think i will leave it as a on side, i think its more convienent just to make each picture and put them in, just trying to see how far this tool goes 🙂

[surreal peak]

Our Thumbnail stuff creates those Textures in the Editor. It just takes pictures of the Asset in a Scene (with light etc.) and an alpha channel.

So nothing runtime. The Textures are then assigned to the Assets and simply displayed in the UI.

Showing the custom outfit on the character after clicking on it is a different story of course.
Either you design your UI in a way that the actual character is visible and you change it on that

Or you gotta get some fake mannequin BP that you change the outfit on that you get into the UI with a SceneCapture

But again, that's more involved

[versed crypt]

yeah, I guess setup level and UI where buttons are, and in level have character blueprint, and selecting button it calls function to change the characters texture etc

[surreal peak]

The sanest ways is to have space in your UI where the in-world Character is visible

Rendering the Character in the UI is just not that fun

Lyra has a "PocketWorld" plugin that does some heavy lifting for this

Which you could use for your own project by just copying it over (matching Engine Version of course)

But not sure how much it offers

[tepid raft]

@surreal peak is this correct i did this in the Ui

[surreal peak]

We use that in a custom form in our project to render a preview of the Building in the corner of the screen when hovering it

[versed crypt]

im trying to understand, what you mean is that, i can only use UI and inside of UI have a BOX, that renders character, and other way is to have like UI and level setup with ball?

[surreal peak]

The preview is somewhere in the scene where the player can't see it

[surreal peak]

If you want to actively show a moving Character (idle anim or so) with Texture/Material/Mesh changes you have two options:

1. Use the Character the Player is controlling directly by for example zooming in on it and leaving the center part of your UI blank so you can see the actual character.

2. Use a fake Character BP that sits somewhere in the world where the player can't see it and use a SceneCapture + RenderTarget + Material + ImageWidget to show the Character in "2D" in your UI.

[surreal peak]

Yes that is correct for getting your Character. With the little requirement that your Widget has a valid owning Player which you usually specify on the CreateWidget node

You way want to check if the ControlledPawn is valid before accessing it, cause the Widget could exist without a Character being possessed

[tepid raft]

got in now

ok after that what should i do to indicate what the stress is

[versed crypt]

Im doing first approach yeah, having a whole in UI 😄 but 2nd one seems more efficient. 2nd option renders in real time, so character moves and everything?

[surreal peak]

And then you have two options:

1. Naive way of creating a Binding for the Percent of your ProgressBar, getting the Value and Dividing it by Max and return it.

2. Create a proper Event Based system, where your Character has a Delegate (EventDispatcher) that it calls whenever the Value changes and the Widget can listen to that. This is a lot more involved but the preferred way if you want clean code and not rely on Tick-based Bindings.

[surreal peak]

Second option is less performant

Cause the SceneCapture renders the scene again

Even if only partial

[versed crypt]

so whats the point of second one then? If i can make same wthing with 1st one and easiedr

[surreal peak]

Second one would render the scene to a RenderTarget, that can be placed into a Material and the Material can be assigned to an Image Widget

Which means you can place it wherever you want into the UI

Instead of having a hole that just shows the actual scene

[versed crypt]

ah, thats basically what i wanted

prob not best option for mobile hehe

[surreal peak]

Probably not, no

I would suggest designing your UI/UX around just showing the character directly

Without any RenderTarget

Pretty sure Fortnite doesn't use Render Targets

[versed crypt]

last question for now, if i want to make, character "coming into the view" in a level, do i use like animation (i want char to come into a view of UI, and then you choose its skin)

[surreal peak]

coming into view?

Like walking into the view from outside of it with an anim?

[versed crypt]

imagine, you press "select outfit" and character walks into the scene (in front of level camera) and you choose

yeah, so its animation?

[surreal peak]

Yeah that is ani mdriven I guess

Here is the example of not using a Render Target

The UI has space to show the world behind it

The characters are standing in some small room

More performant, less fiddely with lighting, FOV etc.

That's the first option

[versed crypt]

yeah, i will basically make UI have nothing in middle, so character stands in middle and theres UI button on right side smth

[surreal peak]

This is also first option

[versed crypt]

level -> Char BP -> UI

[surreal peak]

Character is clearly behind the UI

[versed crypt]

do you have any examples of 2.?

[surreal peak]

This maybe. I don't know if their UI is in world, but I doubt

You can see the Character is in front of the UI, so it must be in the UI layer

But that's not necessarily Unreal Eninge of course

Other engines might have an easier time with this

But the result is the same I guess

[versed crypt]

couldnt you do same fiddling with Z?

[surreal peak]

Right side Character is in UI I guess

Or rather, rendered to something and displayed in the UI

[surreal peak]

Screen and World don't share any kind of Z value

[versed crypt]

whats this game?

[surreal peak]

Screen is always in front of World

[versed crypt]

so you cant put UI element inside world/level thats interactble?

[tepid raft]

what would be a better option

[surreal peak]

Diablo

[surreal peak]

You can, via WidgetComponents. They were originally made for VR UI.

But in traditional games, you usually don't do that

[versed crypt]

yeah, i was literaly thinking about how in VR these UI are

[surreal peak]

Most people calculate the ScreenLocation based on the Projected WorldLocation

[versed crypt]

but you could use for traditional and have a cheat way to do it 😉

[edgy axle]

RiderLink aint installing to engine after new update

[tepid raft]

btw exi how could i make my ai open and go through doors

[surreal peak]

2. In theory, but if you are a beginner, 1. is easier for now.

[tepid raft]

would you by chance have a guide or smth i could follow for that

[surreal peak]

Yeah sure, but the 3D widgets are basically meshes that render the UI on a Plane

So they will have resolution and AA issues

And might also not scale properly to different screen resultions etc., so they might be tiny for larger resolutions

I wouldn't use them outside of VR fwiw

[surreal peak]

No, you just need to add the Percent Binding on your Progress Bar and add the code you showed me into the new function that opens and return the 0 to 1 scaled percent.

You'll find tons of stuff on google for this, cause every Healthbar works like that.

Well, every ProgressBar based one at least

[edgy axle]

anyone know how to fix this error when installing RiderLink in engine?

[tepid raft]

i cant find much stuff on this as i either find one that only opens doors or moves around

[jagged sedge]

Yeah wait for jetbrains to fix it to work with 5.4
I don't think it's compatible yet

[surreal peak]

You quoted the UI response, not the AI one

No clue about AI opening doors. Not really an AI person

[tepid raft]

XD

[surreal peak]

Check #gameplay-ai I guess

[tepid raft]

ok

[edgy axle]

damn ok

[versed crypt]

alr thanks, I will go setup my ui

[edgy axle]

how come every time I open my project through the unreal project browser it says I needa rebuild from IDE cause the project is made on a different version, so then I do rebuild from Rider, and it works. But then the next time I open it from the unreal project browser it says it again

[inland crystal]

you have multiple versions of unreal installed, the uproject is set to one but you are trying to open the project with a different installed version via the browser.

you can right click the uproject and select the 'switch unreal engine version' option.

[jagged sedge]

I've had this issue for a year, I only build from IDE since then

[edgy axle]

can't even fuckin use rider, for some reason it's just started eating all my ram as soon as I open it

[edgy axle]

didn't work, plus it already displays the engine version as 5.4 in the browser

and if I ignore the warning and continue anyway, it just says it can't find the module and the project doesn't load

[versed crypt]

how can i get the instance of the BP_MarbleSelect that is in level and use it inside this WBP blueprint to change its material?

[dark drum]

Custom nav links. There's not much on them but there's enough to get the basics of how to make them and use them.

Alternatively, you might be able to use smart objects but you might need c++ for them.

[surreal peak]

Are you compiling with DebugGame in Rider?

[edgy axle]

I think so...

[surreal peak]

One usually does and those aren't the binaries used when starting the Editor outside of Rider

Starting the Editor outside of it uses DevEditor

So if you never compile those, this doesn't work of course

[jagged sedge]

That actually makes a lot of sense

[edgy axle]

nah it's using dev editor

[surreal peak]

The not sure. That's the only reason I ever got that

[surreal peak]

Aside from literally using 2 different engine versions

[jagged sedge]

Yeah same for me actually

[surreal peak]

But then again, in C++ projects I never open the project outside of Rider

Right, aside from the problem, you should use DebugGame

Gives more info when hitting ensures etc.

[jagged sedge]

I just never need to debug :^)

[edgy axle]

can't even use rider properly cause it's taking all my RAM

[surreal peak]

How much RAM do you have in total?

[tepid raft]

i know c sharp and thats abt it lol

[edgy axle]

16 gigs, but it takes whatever is free

[surreal peak]

Hm, 16 gigs is possibly also the lower end

[edgy axle]

so I could have nothing else running and it'll take like 15g

[edgy axle]

yeah I needa upgrade but can't really do that right now

[edgy axle]

I mean it was working fine a while ago

[jagged sedge]

I was at 16gig a few months ago too, I had to upgrade for the same reason you're describing though

[surreal peak]

Rider does get a bit weird laterly if you have it open for a while

It just gets super slow and laggy until restart

But the RAM usage idk

fwiw, the PC I'm using here atm (from a Client) has 128GB Ram 💀

[edgy axle]

pain

[jagged sedge]

Throwing money at it until it works is also an option, lol

[surreal peak]

The project is quite big, so this is probably even needed

I think our own machines are at 64

And not even all of them

I also noticed that some of the GPU can't handle our artists requirements for having Engine + 3D/2D softwares open at the same time

But GPU are way too expensive atm

(at least outside the usual gaming requirements)

[dark drum]

Then look at custom nav links, they might be called smart nav links. You can do those just using BP.

[versed crypt]

I made dynamic buttons (which creates depending on dataset), i create buttons like this, then make button have onclicked, i want button to have function to change material of the BP that is dropped in level. How can I access Level references within the button or is there no way to do so?

[dark drum]

Something like this. It's an actor manager that allows you to register an actor using a name and then retrieve a ref to it somewhere.

https://youtu.be/RygVokx-mzk

[versed crypt]

hehe plugin your own videos 😛

will take a look

[dark drum]

Haha saves me writing out an essay. 😛

[versed crypt]

i kidna tried, to get reference, so in Level BP, I init the UI_BP (which has variable of Marble BP) so it passes to my UI_BP. Inside of UI_BP i made fx which changed the material (thats what i need) of the BP_MarbleSelect. Since button is the child node of UI_BP, I passed UI_BP as var to each button... (i think there shoudl be a way to get parent node ref????) and then i called FX from button using the UI_BP ref i passed inside of button, on press, from button passing the required material...

But something aint working the way i tried to do... maybe something with ref

I get "Blueprint Runtime Error: "Accessed None trying to read property WBPParent". Node: Set Mesh Graph: EventGraph Function: Execute Ubergraph WBP Marble Button Blueprint: WBP_MarbleButton". Bellow is my button on_click

[pearl wagon]

Hey Can Anyone tell How I can move my NPC Randomely and in a specific area only

through blueprint?

[dark drum]

How do you set wbpparent?

[dark drum]

You can use EQS to get a location that can be reached in a specific area, once you've got the location you can use the AI move to node.

[pearl wagon]

can you please explain more or share images and nodes of blueprint Actually I am new to unreal

[wanton radish]

How to check if variable is not null in bp? I know how to do it in cpp but I cant find it in bp

[dark drum]

This is a starter guide to EQS. It's best you give it a good read.

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/environment-query-system-quick-start-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3

[pearl wagon]

Thank you

[dark drum]

Assuming it's an object/class ref you can use the is valid node.

[versed crypt]

I got yellow ducked 🙂 yup i didnt set that sucker...

how do i get "THIS"

[wanton radish]

it's string. Im getting held item name. If none is held then it is null.

[dark drum]

The 'self' node.

[versed crypt]

https://tenor.com/view/wedding-crasher-hro-gif-25636997

when my macaroni of nodes work

is actor management system - easier? 😄

[dark drum]

Is not empty and is not equal to null.

[dark drum]

It depends what you're doing. I prefer it for scripted type events.

[dark drum]

As an FYI comparing strings can be slow. Its normally best to use a 'name' if you need to check its value.

[pure salmon]

I am having an issue where my enum property change is not being saved and so when later I call get enum and compare it, it does not show me the updated value. It seems to loss the value assigned some where along the line.

Addition to that, I have also tried using bool and many other method and am keep getting this random result where it works probably sometimes and sometimes it doesn't.

How can I fix this?

[dark drum]

I can't see anything wrong. How are you calling 'set interact' and the 'lmb interact'?

[pure salmon]

Sorted

Thanks

[hollow cove]

trying to manually control the view target is driving me insane in multiplayer. why does it just throw the camera in the center of a player when it switches possession before ive set the view target to anything

[inland crystal]

It's been a while but I think that the player controller has a camera manager attached to it, and that by default this camera manager has some behaviors, like automatically switching the camera to the possessed pawn on posession, but I'm not 100% on all the details here, I remember facing a similar issue in the past.

[dark drum]

What are you calling when it kicks the camera to the centre of the character?

[wanton radish]

FName?

[bleak wraith]

Anyone know how to implement pan camera movement with middle mouse button with enhanced input system (>5.1) ?

[dark drum]

Yea

[icy token]

Hi, i've recently been trying to make a rhythm game, and to make some of the workflow easier inside the sequencer editor, im creating a editor utility widget to automatically copy, shift, paste, and bind a selection of keys to a new section.

Currently I have successfully managed to copy and paste and shift the keys to a new section, but i cant figure out how to bind them to an event.

Thanks for any help!
https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/k5nepf3s/

[queen valley]

you want to bind animation keys to an event?

I remember seeing a video about this, but can't find it anywhere now

[icy token]

yeah, and i cant figure it out for the life of me

[dusky cobalt]

Hmm, so I have spells in my game and heroes, something like in league of legends / warcraft. Now I want to add spells to the BP_Hero_Base (from this I will have all the heroes). Now I wonder If should I add the spells to the Hero_Base (like array of spells that can be casted, and each key on keyboard activates different number from array) or should I maybe create actor component as SpellComponent so it's more modular? will this make sense?

[queen valley]

never added something like that before but generally for my systems I always make an actor component (I am a beginner in UE so take it as a grain of salt)

[jagged sedge]

Are you using GAS?

[dusky cobalt]

No, I'm making kind of very simple spells, should I use GAS?

[queen valley]

wait is GAS even supported in bp?

[dusky cobalt]

Like you know, spawn sphere with radius 200, and people on contact will heal from it 20hp every 1s per 20s.

It's a rts/moba type of game. Should I use GAS then? I didn't have time to check out GAS, I found some tutorial and it kind of fits what I need, but maybe GAS can do it better?

[jagged sedge]

GAS is a pretty big topic, it depends on the complexity of your game.
A plain ActorComponent to handle your spells would also work for a simple game

[jagged sedge]

Partially

[dusky cobalt]

Yea SpellsComponent does make a lot of sense. If I need I can give this to any even ''minion'' I want in the future and he will get access to spells 😄

[queen valley]

yea, I used actor components for my inventory system

[dusky cobalt]

thanks for help ❤️ always good to hear someone elses opinion

Does it make sense what I'm doing?
I will have 5 spells, and I need a way to check where was the cursor, or where will be the mouse in time of casting. I think I have to put it a little bit further and of course add more things so I will have previev etc, but so far I just want to if click 1, spawn spell in mouse location. Since I will have 5 spells and I don't want to put the same code, I made it into event that I will call when needed. Makes sense?

[lean plover]

@dusky cobalt, Event doesn't seem appropriate to me. I'd use a GetTargetLocation Macro, but it probably doesn't matter.

[dusky cobalt]

Is event heavier than macro? I forgot about macros 😄 I guess they are best for things like that? or maybe a function?

[languid hemlock]

Unlike functions, flow wont wait event to finish before flow moves to the next node. So in some conditions, Spawn can run before Set

I'd use a function

[lofty rapids]

a function that you pass a class, and it gets the location and spawns the actor is what i would have

SpawnAtMouse or something

[obtuse dawn]

Hey so I'm trying to make a mission table system where when the player interacts with the actor it gets the position of the player camera relative to the table, sets the table's camera to that position, then switches the cameras so the player sees through the tables camera. I got the last part working but I cant make the second camera move at all. Would anyone be able to help me out?

[wise ravine]

Hey what does this mean?

[versed sun]

got transparent textures ?

like glass

[dusky cobalt]

makes sense, thank you for idea!

[icy token]

Looking for help in trying to bind a event to an event key for sequencer

[obtuse dawn]

I guess thats what thats how complex the different shaders are, it shows it in the nottem bar near the white area I guess it's a thermal camera but for shader complex. I don't really know it's just a guess, it's proly for optimization stuff.

[maiden wadi]

What?

[languid hemlock]

Should i clarify or am i wrong?

[maiden wadi]

The only time that is ever even the case is if you use a latent node like a delay.

[wise ravine]

Hmm, yeah I think you're right. Could be a UV mapping thing

[obtuse dawn]

proly

[languid hemlock]

The flow does not proceed to the next node unless the function returns something. But events do not return anything

So it runs event and directly moves to next node

[wise ravine]

Btw does anyone know if I can use Quixel Bridge assets/decals in my final game? I had packaging issue with it on my last project and had to publish without all quixel assets/decals.

[maiden wadi]

Your wording is just really confusing. Are you trying to say that if you put two functions in the same event that there's no promise that one function will run before the other?

[maiden wadi]

This is just shader complexity. Like Ryck pointed out with the question, Transparent shaders like glass cost more than a masked or opaque.

[obtuse dawn]

can anyone help me out with my thing?

[maiden wadi]

Multi or Singleplayer?

[obtuse dawn]

single

[maiden wadi]

Couple different ways to manage it. Could just possess the table if you made it a pawn. Would be the fastest way to get both input and view.

Alternatively you can do largely the same thing by enabling input on the table, applying a special input mapping context and then your set view target you already have.

Then the table itself could manage moving it's own camera.

[wise ravine]

Should I be worried if my interior of the same color as the glass ( and the interior isn't glass )

[maiden wadi]

It's not the same. Move into the train.

You see the same color because you're looking through the window.

[wise ravine]

Oh I see, my mistake 😅

[obtuse dawn]

Ight thanks I'll give them a try

[timber crystal]

hello friends how can i use a randomly node choice?

i try to say after the "move comp to" it gos to patrol a again or to patrol b how can i do that?

i have the patrol event for patrol b but how to implement that?

[obtuse dawn]

random Int?

[timber crystal]

ok let me try thanks

[maiden wadi]

Also AI Trees. 👀

[obtuse dawn]

Hey so I don't think thats what im going for, I need to move the tabels camera to the players camera so it seems like a smooth transition, what im having trouble with is getting the player's camera location and moving the tables camera there.

[maiden wadi]

Why not just use the blending option?

[obtuse dawn]

?

[maiden wadi]

The node you're using. SetViewTargetWithBlend. It has a BlendTime. If it's zero it's instant. If it's > 0, it'll take that amount of time to transition between two view targets.

[obtuse dawn]

Just tried it thats not what I mean, when the player interacts with the table the table will get the players camera world position and then set its camera to that world position, then when the camera switch it looks seemless and I can apply animations and stuff to camera 2

[maiden wadi]

Ah. Well if you need something more complex than the lerp that provides then getting the player's current view is pretty easy. There's a GetPlayerCameraManager. If you get that you can pull off of it and do GetCameraLocation and GetCameraRotation. These should match up with any camera the player is currently viewing.

[lunar sleet]

Maybe make sure you’re actually using proper blend time tho, sounds more like you’re overcomplicating it and using it wrong tbh

[timber crystal]

Thanks for the tip
For an Randomly chosen event i use "switch on int" with the "random integer in range"

sOLVED

[obtuse dawn]

W

[obtuse dawn]

I got it to work, thanks a ton, turns out I was over complicating things lol.

[wanton radish]

This gives me error. How to ensure that ItemName is not null?

doesnt work

cpp is easier

[lofty rapids]

you mean if it's empty ?

wdym null ?

if the variable doesn't exist ? or it's value is empty ?

[wanton radish]

If player has item then ItemName is something. If it doesn't then FName is nullptr

[valid elbow]

Hmm, maybe "isValid" check?

[wanton radish]

okay got it. My bad. I forgot that I must check if item is valid first. Then name will be valid too.

[maiden wadi]

I know that feeling very well. 😄 Happy it works.

[timber crystal]

hey guys somebody knows why that is not working?
I want that before the unit moves into my player char a exclamation mark appears but why i get an error an nothing happends ingame... 😦 i have unclick the hook for hidden ingame by the unit

[spring osprey]

any guess on why this is happening when pressing the interact button I made?

[maiden wadi]

Presuming you mean the red lines, it looks like debug draws from a trace or overlap call.

[maiden wadi]

The reference to the player character is invalid. You haven't set it to anything before that execution ran.

[spring osprey]

no, the thing in the bottom, it looks like it changes the aspect ratio and shows this in the bottom

[timber crystal]

i try it now in that way but still not ok...

[maiden wadi]

Oh, I completely overlooked that like it was the windows bar. 😂 That's a new one though. What all does your interact key do, and what hotkey is it? Does this happen when you play in Standalone, or only PIE?

[lofty rapids]

you set the variable to itself

[maiden wadi]

It's set to nothing. You're setting nothing to nothing expecting it to be something.

[lofty rapids]

your basically saying set A to A

[timber crystal]

hmm ok let me try thanks guys

[maiden wadi]

This is one reason I hate the idea of saving refs. They really are confusing to work with initially. It's a lot more easy to prototype and learn if you understand where and how you can get global references, because it'll also teach you how to create systems that allow you to store and get global references.

PlayerCharacter for example can always be pulled from GetPlayerCharacter as long as the player's controller is possessing a character.

[timber crystal]

thanks

[spring osprey]

I made the interact button to pick up things and put them in an inventory, it works well but it makes that visual glitch and I dont figure out why, it also happens in standalone but the visual glitch changes to a white box with 2 black lines in the middle

[maiden wadi]

What is the hotkey you have set for Interact?

[spring osprey]

E

[ornate linden]

In respect to this I'm still working on I learned about navigation system agents, added one and named it, and put that cooresponding name in the world settings and changed the color of it so I can tell it's using this new data. I set the nav agent radius and height to the same as my capsule component, check that it can walk, and set the default query extent to the size of my capsule component as well. my character still moves up 10 units of Z when I use AI Move To >.<

[lofty rapids]

if you take out the try add call does it not do it ?

i'm guessing it's probably something to do with that

[ornate linden]

also curious is you can rebuild the recastnavmesh without like deleteing it and the bouinds volume and putting it back down

[hoary junco]

so I'm trying to make a system where depending what key is assigned to an input action, a UI element changes, so if you want to interact with something and it's assigned to the E key, and you look at a box and you're in range to open it it will say "E - Open Box" but the E will be an image, like I have a bunch of icons for letters and gamepad buttons.
but if you rebound the interact key from E to F then it would change it to "F - Open Box"

how would I do this?

I have the linetrace set up to look at the item and it already causes the UI to pop up, but I just need the changeable icon based on what button is assigned to the interact action.

[empty anvil]

Hey, I asked this question a while back in a different channel but got no response so now I'm trying here. I'm working in unreal 4.27 and every so often upon starting up the project at least one of my timeline tracks will have disappeared, does anyone know what's causing this and how to fix it?

[hoary junco]

so if I wanted to do this in a way where it will switch between gamepad and keyboard, I'm guessing as long as in the array I do the keyboard as the first entry in the key binding list and the gamepad as the second entry then could I set up a variable for the index in the get a copy function to where it's 0 if the player is using a keyboard and 1 if they are using a gamepad? if so how would I detect that?

[versed sun]

try the 2nd pic

[hoary junco]

I am doing the 2nd pic

[versed sun]

the Array Get would be if you have multiple keys bound

i think

[hoary junco]

I know... that's why I asked...

I can do the rest what I'm asking for is how to detect if a player is using a keyboard or a gamepad

because then I can switch the index to where it will pull up the keyboard entry in the bindings if they are using a keyboard and the gamepad entry if they are using a gamepad

[spring osprey]

nope, still happens

[versed sun]

what's the Return Value text when using a gamepad?, you could look for a substring ?

[fallen lava]

Can you only use timelines on an actor? Is there a way to create a timeline in a gameplay ability? or in a component that can be added to an actor?

[versed sun]

you can make your own timeline

[dawn gazelle]

Timelines themselves are actor components so they can only be added to actors.

[sharp python]

I have a weird issue... in the first pic, Killer is filled out, in the second, it's None. What is going on here? 😮

[versed sun]

Here is a basic Timeline with 1 Float track in it

useable in components

[maiden wadi]

Issue is not clear. What is None? If you mean the pointer is not valid, what are you passing it Killer? How are you testing that it?

[white thicket]

How to get vector length between the character and the first object beneath it(I wanna enable ragdol when length is more then a specific value)

[sharp python]

When the execution gets to the first picture, Killer has a reference to the killing character in it. This calls the event in the second picture, but there Killer is None, and further logic fails because of that. 🤔 Is it possible that calling an event makes the code no longer synchronous and that's why the reference is lost?

[near totem]

I am trying to move some audio along a spline ahead of the player but my math isn't correct and it keeps sending it really far - any idea what's wrong?

[maiden wadi]

Not really. Not unless you used a latent node. But without a clearer picture of the code, it's not possible to state.

[maiden wadi]

Try something like this.

The bottom node being what your component location is set to.

[fallen lava]

thanks

[toxic copper]

if these two variables "Camera Previous Location" and "Camera Current Floor" both have the same value, and the timeline is just two points (0 sec 0 value, .2 sec 1 value), why does my camera display some movement when jumping up and down? both camera component and spring arm maintain the exact same location throughout the jump, yet there is clear camera movement. also if instead of using the lerp i just plug in camera current floor to z value, no camera movement when jumping

[versed sun]

disconnect the tick

[toxic copper]

it stops working as intended, the camera just becomes fixed to my character rather than the variable camera current floor

[maiden wadi]

What is this for? It looks like you're trying to do something on a timeline that should just be a tick interpolation.

[toxic copper]

im trying to have the camera become "platform-bound", but also have a smooth transition when changing to new platforms

previously i had this horrible set up, where it would switch to a "move component to" node shortly after triggering a new camera location, but then maintaining a "set world location" afterwards. the current method i linked above is much simpler and handles the transition in a cleaner fashion

[maiden wadi]

What is Platform Bound in this sense?

Cause I still feel like this would be easier on a tick interp.

[toxic copper]

basically im trying to create a camera system similar to super mario world. platform bound generally means its locked to the floor, and my characters Z movement doesnt move the camera up/down. in certain scenarios, the z axis "unlocks" and follows the character, and in some situations its "roof-bound"

[toxic copper]

it might be the case. I had no idea how to implement this and so im just experimenting with whatever came to mind

[frail swan]

I'm actually doing exactly that and was about to ask a very similar question haha

what I did is I created zones which send the camera mode and information about a spline to the "camera man"

whenver the player enters them

[maiden wadi]

Gotcha. So you basically just need a floor point. And to interpolate the spring arm to that point. Similar to what you're doing now. Granted what you're doing now would probably work, but I'm assuming the camera movement is due to the spring arm being attached. You would need to detach the spring arm from the character and manually move it with the character.

[frail swan]

My camera man is constantly doing a vinterp on tick though

So I've made these camera zones for my side scroller which basically tell my "camera man" component whether to freely follow the character, be fixed on one point, or follow a spline, when my character enters them. I'd like to be able to include something in these, particularly the free camera version, that prevents the camera from moving outside the bounds of a specified box. Or to explain it another way, I am trying to find a way to restrict my camera to a 2d plane, similar to how I can make it move along a 1d spline.

I'm wondering what the best way to pass the limits of, say, a collision box to the "camera man" for it to use as a limit for when I'm at the edge of a screen etc. would be, and how I would best use that information to allow the camera to move freely, so long as the movement wouldn't cause it to leave that box?

[near totem]

hey this worked - thank you so much!

[twin shale]

Does anyone happen to know why I wouldn't be able to edit the CMC in one class but I can edit the CMC in the other class? They both inherit from the exact same parent

[toxic copper]

Thanks for this, ill try to look into tick interpolation as ive never used this. whats strange is that using the exact same inputs (in theory), of X and Y values coming from get actor location, and Z value connected to "Camera Current Floor", the movement im talking about doesnt happen. so im thinking its related to the timeline or the lerp, because thats the only difference. however, both values connected to the lerp are identical, and i tried setting the alpha to 1.0 and not related to timeline, still same thing

however, i tried just bypassing the timeline altogether, and suddenly it works.. so it seems the issue is coming from the "Update" output on the timeline

no idea why though

this is what im referring to https://streamable.com/cypw8c

[maiden wadi]

Yeah. Not specifically sure what is causing it. But it definitely looks like something that would be better as a tick function. You already pretty much have it. It's basically... something like this.

[toxic copper]

Thank you so much for this, truly appreciate it

[sharp python]

Thanks for letting me know the issue was unlikely to be what I thought it was. I looked at it some more and the event got triggered by some legacy code elsewhere. Thanks 🙂

[shadow isle]

Guys, can you recommend any tutorials on a simple inventory system? Just want to be able to add items I pick up in a list that I can check as an inventory.

[trim matrix]

Hello

Someone has a Solution for this Problem? When i walk against a moving object with Collision my Player is bugging around

[toxic copper]

im pretty new so grain of salt on this, but im also looking to implement something similar. couldn't you add a "min (or max) X value" float variable, and have your camera logic check the actor's X location value on tick with a branch. if the X value is greater than the float, then set camera's X location to "min X value" variable, and if less/equal to float, then just use the actors X value or whatever it was already using

[frail swan]

Thanks. I think what I'm gonna try is passing in the transform of the box, figuring out its outer bounds based on that info, then clamping the x and z values based on that. If this works, the next problem I'm going to have to solve is finding a way to make sure the distance from the edge of the map is consistent. But I don't think that's a problem I'll be able to solve until I decide for sure whether I'm using paper2d or 3d walls/ceiling

I'd like to not have to manually set the size/scale of the box to be exactly a certain distance from the wall every time I put one of these "zones" down but I'm sruggling to think of another way

[toxic copper]

hmm yeah you're clearly way ahead of me on this haha. How do you clamp the x /z values?

[frail swan]

"Clamp" is an actual series of nodes. I'm pretty sure I can use that. When I'm actually working in the editor I may find that it's not applicable but I can't say for sure until I've tried

you can give it a maximum allowed value. It basically does exactly what you said

[toxic copper]

oh my goodness

thank you so much, thats amazing

[ornate linden]

If I make a custom event and put a delay in it, then call that event, does the node after that event call trigger immediately, or after the latent is finished and resolved the event that has the delay in it?

[toxic copper]

I was in the middle of building out a series of branches checking if above max X, below min X, or inbetween, creating those 2 variables as well as an integer variable, and a Select using the integer as index to select between min X, actor location, or max X.. sounds like the clamp already does all that in a single node... though if the function is somehow the same, i wonder if the processing requirements change a lot

[ornate linden]

looks like the answer is it goes immediately. Is there a way to make the call of the event also be latent?

[maiden wadi]

What were you trying to do? Sounds more like you were trying to recreate InRange than clamp.

[hard estuary]

When i try to set show mouse cursor for the client from an actor it doesnt work or sets it for the server

[versed sun]

you could make it a macro

[maiden wadi]

Cause you've set it on the server. You are on the server from the moment of that ServerRPC

[hard estuary]

Yeahn but when i put switch has authority and go on the remote its not calling

[toxic copper]

basically to add "camera walls" to mark the end of a level or prevent vision beyond a certain point. so for example, when im near the left edge of the level, the camera no longer moves to the left, its X value stays static until the character moves further to the right beyond the min X value specified

[hard estuary]

How can i get the client only

I rpc to call the interface

[toxic copper]

or same thing for a roof/floor using Z values

[maiden wadi]

Cause you're on the server. SwitchHasAuthority is just a check like a branch. So Remote will never run.

[hard estuary]

How can i run it on the client

this doesnt work either

[maiden wadi]

Cause the client doesn't own the keypad.

[hard estuary]

Do you have any solution

[toxic copper]

so rather than this, i can simplify it to this.. but considering they seem to do the same thing despite visually appearing simplified in the clamp, i wonder if theres a big difference in processing/computing demand

[toxic copper]

also thanks for pointing me to the InRange node, i was using a combination of greater, less, and And booleans to check this in other situations

[maiden wadi]

Unsure of best result. I always handled this with a bit of back and forth. I don't use interfaces. One component traces to find the best interaction target, gets a second component off of the hit actor. Based on the data on that component it will run local and or server functions that the actor itself can run. But I rarely need both.

EG if I need to interact with something like a keypad or chest it's as simple as me throwing up a widget on screen because the actor itself is already replicated and ready. For a chest the RPCs to interact with it are done via the inventory components, as there's always one related to the player you can RPC through. For a keypad I'd likely do a generic RPC of an actor pointer with an instanced struct to pass generalized data through the RPC to the keypad like the key pressed.

And in this case when the user interacts with the keypad and the widget is put on screen, their inputs are changed to match like showing mouse cursor etc. Most all of this is handled for me via CommonUI stuff but you can largely do the same thing yourself manually.

[lusty shard]

Anyone know how to get the sun disk location?

trying to make a solar power system.. if trace hits sun, generate power.

[toxic copper]

im probably wrong but, i thought the sundisk was set by the directional lights rotation

[still breach]

why not avoid the headache and use if is day generate power. Would also increase the performances by a ton since traces are expensive to use to some degree

[maiden wadi]

I would be inclined to say simply trace in the opposing direction of the main directional light for a little ways.

[maiden wadi]

Cause Solar Panels don't work inside even if it's daytime.

[still breach]

@maiden wadi I thought about that, and in that case yes, do a trace from the object, not the sun

[maiden wadi]

Also don't work on the side of larger buildings.

[lusty shard]

I want it to matter where you place your panels. If you have them against a cliff or near a tall building, thats a choice you have to make.

[maiden wadi]

Lot of complex cases

And as long as you're not on a PS4, a couple hundred traces in a second or so isn't going to cost much.

[still breach]

I would have the trace start from the object then, would be much shorter and easier to handle; if collide with visible then return false

Because I feel like having a giant Trace that tries to covers the whole map isn't the way to go

[lusty shard]

There really should be a way to get the sun disks location though

it is a thing that exists in the level I thought

[still breach]

Well the skybox is your sun technically, its just a texture, the object doesnt really exist

[lusty shard]

got it

[versed crypt]

can you add image to button using blueprint and get'ers?

[toxic copper]

howd you do it? I was thinking of getting actor forward vector and mult by neg 1

hahah nice

yeahhhh

[lusty shard]

dang. nailed it

[toxic copper]

was just about to type it here lol

glad you got it tho

[lusty shard]

time stamped
https://youtu.be/ty6kQatXuw4?si=7T7KbvXo9PgTjGhH&t=879

[lusty shard]

i dont quite get why we would do - though

the sun disk is not in the positive x direction?

[toxic copper]

cause the directional lights location isnt going to help at all. the sun is so far away that regardless of where the actors location is, all that matters is its rotation / forward direction. no matter how large your map, anything using the opposite of the sun's forward vector will basically point at the sun

[lusty shard]

What is something that would use the opposite of the sun forward vector?

[maiden wadi]

The directional light.

[ornate linden]

What's the simplest way to get an element by index from an array? there doesn't just seem to be a GetAt(index) type node within its context

[maiden wadi]

There are two Gets. Get(a copy) and Get(a ref)

[lusty shard]

oooh I see. keep forgetting disk is part of the directional light.. got lost in the "its" and the "anything"s in the explanation.

[ornate linden]

hmm i don't see the ref one, and it's an actor in the array so ideally wouldn't want to copy it

[maiden wadi]

You do want to copy it though.

You have an array of pointers. Not an array of actors. Unreal would absolutely shit itself if you copied around objects everywhere.

[ornate linden]

ah that makes sense, thanks

[pulsar geode]

Hey all.
Question: I have multiple actors as part of an array, is it possible to get a specific component of an actor out of that array? Like when I call the actor from the array, can I then call a specific component that is part of that actor?

[lusty shard]

yep!

[pulsar geode]

How would I go about this? I am having trouble finding the correct node in BP.

[gentle urchin]

GetComponentByClass

[maiden wadi]

Pick a card, any card.

[gentle urchin]

xD

https://tenor.com/view/card-magic-world-xm-pop-out-move-card-trick-gif-16263664

[jagged sedge]

I can't believe there is no "GetComponentByName" where you just pass in the literal component name from the BP editor and it looks into a map to fetch the component efficiently instead of iterating

[lusty shard]

I forgot about these nodes. I would have cast to :/

[cosmic hill]

general question guys, is there a way to mark an input binding as "release key"? or do i have to juggle with logic to get it in ue4.27?

[jagged sedge]

Enhanced input plugin can do it

[pulsar geode]

Thank you very much for the help, that solved it! Have a good day 🙂

[gentle urchin]

Literal comp name 😔

[maiden wadi]

You don't really rely on names so much. Tags are much faster and more dynamic.

[gentle urchin]

I dont wanna care what someone named a comp i'm looking for

If i do want a specific comp, i need to filter it somehow anyways

[maiden wadi]

It's a very rare case to need a very specific component where there might be multiples. Handling rarely causes this kind of necessity. Usually you either need to get a special component like the ability system, or you need to iterate over all skeletal meshes for some reason or another. It's rare you need to care about one skeletal mesh in particular by tag or name. You'd usually care more about the bone it's attached to if it isn't the primary skeletal mesh or care about what mesh it's displaying, etc.

[jagged sedge]

Sure, but tags require iterating over all components + iterating over all tags
But considering we're not talking about 100s here it's probably fine anyway

[maiden wadi]

Even if we were, class and fname comparisons are incredibly fast. And since it isn't looped in BP, it's fine. Remember that FNames compare nearly the same as integers so it's insanely quick.

[flat kindle]

Hey yall, I got a bit of an issue, I'm trying to make a input for Gamepad controller and it's trigger and when I use it (Axis1d) it always returns an Action Value of 1 for some reason, is there any fix to this? (5.3.2)

[maiden wadi]

Are you using the axis key and not the cardinal direction one?

[flat kindle]

I am so stupid, thanks for helping I've been looking around for an hour 🤦

[maiden wadi]

😄 Been there, facepalmed that.

[pulsar geode]

Hmm... Another issue.
I have a camera attached to a bone but the camera does not move with the bone and stays entirely stable.
Any idea why this might be?

[rugged aurora]

I would like to limit camera rotation, however checking the world rotation to be within a certain range (< and >) leads to the camera overshooting and getting stuck. How would I get around the overshoot problem?

[twin shale]

Not sure if anyone will run into this issue, but if you do: I had an addition plugin that had references in the details panel of the CMC. The plugin was uninstalled, but the reference still existed. Unreal doesn't throw an error or anything or (from what I can tell) have a way to deal with this scenario. I had to reparent the blueprint to AActor which lost a bunch of settings, then reparent it back to the original parent. I then looked at the DIFF from depot and tediously replaced all my settings in the newly re-reparented blueprint. This fixed the error in the CMC display window and I'm able to see it again. Interestingly enough, the reference viewer did not have a link to this reference when I originally uninstalled the plugin.

The only way I was able to determine the plugin was the culprit was by re-creating the broken state in another file. Basically retracing my steps over like 8 different revisions

[toxic copper]

not sure if this would apply, but maybe use a clamp. that will lock it between a minimum and maximum, or otherwise use whatever value its at if in between

[maiden wadi]

Depending on the use case, you can also set min and max values in the player's camera manager.

[toxic copper]

im trying to make a platform that has collision from above, but not from the sides or below (so you can jump through it from below/the sides). Any suggestions on how to implement this?

I had thought of using overlap events and comparing character Z value to platforms Z value, and based on that, disable or enable collision. however, this would mean other actors would fall if i disable collision while jumping through. is there a way to disable collision for the specific actor rather than the object type? Or any other suggestions on how to do this?

[rugged aurora]

I think the built in player camera variables won't work as I am using a floating movement pawn

[maiden wadi]

What camera style though? The movement component doesn't usually matter.

[rugged aurora]

the project is top down

[maiden wadi]

Is the camera on a spring arm?

[rugged aurora]

However I created a custom camera pawn.

so the camera is detached from the character

It does have a springarm

[maiden wadi]

If you can enable pawn control rotation on the spring arm then you can use the limits in the camera manager.

Alternatively. You'll need to get, alter, clamp and then set the rotation values instead of adding to the rotation by an offset.

[rugged aurora]

I am not sure how the clamp fits into this. Each input action adds to the local rotation. and what also confuses me is how the camera even overshoots

[toxic copper]

maybe instead of having the platform change its collision, the better method is to change the overlapping actors collision, so that no other actor is affected

[maiden wadi]

It overshoots because you're adding to the local rotation without a clamp.

7 pitch minus 12 is -5 pitch. Add does not care about your check until next time it ticks.

7 pitch minus 12 clamped to 0 to 90 is 0 pitch.

The thing is that you can't use clamp with the add call. You have to get the current axis value, add what you want to it. Clamp it. Then set it into a new rotator and set that rotator.

[iron furnace]

Question, I just added an exponential height fog into my map, but it doesnt seem to affect anything regardless of settings, but the local height fog does work. is there a specific bounds or something else i need to have to make it work?

[rugged aurora]

I could then intercept the total degree value before using it in local rotation and correct it?

[maiden wadi]

Correct. Something similar to this in idea.

[toxic copper]

how can I have a dynamic "Cast to" with a target depending on whoever triggers the event?

[maiden wadi]

Depends on what you need to do with it. Can use composition with an actor component or interfaces usually.

[mental trellis]

Interfaces!

[toxic copper]

ok, never heard of interfaces.. something new to learn haha, thank you!

composition also sounds unfamiliar

on component begin overlap, i want the other actor to set their collision response to world dynamic to overlap, and back to block on end overlap

but im realizing that the component it calls to would likely be different for every actor, as its based on the component rather than the actor

[maiden wadi]

Sounds interface like if that's all you need. Just be mindful when reading up on interfaces related to Unreal. There is some really stupid info floating around regarding them.

[versed crypt]

how to: String + " " + String

[toxic copper]

append

[toxic copper]

roger that, ill keep it in mind. thank you!

[rugged aurora]

thanks for the example I spent the last 10 minutes adding it and understanding how it works.

[nocturne fossil]

very nice node unreal

[hoary junco]

so this is more a question of general preference but, figured I'd ask to see if anyone has insight on it. I have a system where there's a sphere trace that comes from the camera on its own channel, if anything blocks it, and it's not overlapping a wall or an object that would block the view to the thing in question, you can interact with it

generally what's the best range in terms of length and width of the sphere trace for interactables? Like how far away should be the maximum interact distance?

Obviously I don't want you to have to shove your face into every object in order to open it, and I don't want you to have to look EXACTLY at the item, I do want some leeway but I don't want it to be too far

any suggestions?

[maiden wadi]

Depends on game style. First or third person shooter?

[hoary junco]

first person RPG, kinda elder scrolls style

[maiden wadi]

Then I would say one of two things. Either specifically at the distance you intend to allow interaction, or that distance plus say 30-50% where the name shows but not the interact key yet.

[hoary junco]

well what I'm trying to get is what would that distance be?

I've figured out that 160 is the distance between the person's face and the floor if you're looking straight down

[maiden wadi]

Hard to gauge without playing. I think most of my personal testing ranges are around 300. But I'm not sure where I would finalize that. 300 is a bit far. Feels like you can stretch arms. I'd assume 160 is too low. Need to pick up things on ground without crouching somewhat easy.

[hoary junco]

I have a hard time putting into numbers what the actual interact distance should be and I've been playing around with a few ideas but none of them feel.. right if that makes sense I'm having difficulty pinning down a number

[maiden wadi]

Just depends on game though too. If you're going for super realism then like 120. Make them crouch to grab things on the floor. 😄

[hoary junco]

realism isn't my top priority.. I want the game to be a bit more casual

like I'm absolutely enamoured by TES4: Oblivion and it has been a dream of mine since it came out in 2006 to make my own game in that style, obviously an open world game of that size for a solo dev is a near impossibility so right now I'm making a tech demo of a single city with a small amount of surrounding environment and a couple of dungeons to really kick off the project and gauge interest

[maiden wadi]

200-220 might not be bad. Not in an FPS project to test though. TBF this is also something you'll get some community feedback on.

[hoary junco]

that's true, I'll try 220 for now because 200 is what I'm sitting on atm and it feels too short, I think I tried 225 and it felt too long so 215-220 might be just right

thanks for the input, hopefully I'll have something to share of this project soon

[maiden wadi]

😄 Feel free to tag. I like Elder Scrolls.

[hoary junco]

is there anywhere in this server to self promo? I've only been at it for 3 days so barely got the inventory and some basic UI done, but I've been thinking of recording dev logs and uploading them to YT

[maiden wadi]

I think either #1054845120236757103 or #1054845218723209226

[hoary junco]

aah thanks they weren't on my channel list

like I said there's really not much to show right now, I'm still using the default first person map and character, I really want to see if I can show the full body and feet below the character instead of it just being empty eventually, but everything's gotta start somewhere 🙂

I am still getting a weird bug with volumetric clouds though... if I pause the game by opening the inventory UI they do this

[silent stag]

Is it possible to change the collision of only a certain part of the landscape?

[hoary junco]

generally you'd put a gap in the landscape and fill it in with some kind of mesh that has different collision I'm pretty sure....

someone will correct me if I'm wrong but, that's how I'd do it

[maiden wadi]

Pretty much. Default landscape in Unreal is largely terrible. It's good strictly for basic terrains made at editor time with no runtime changes.

[versed crypt]

is it possible to edit datatable, is is straightfowrad? I can GET datatable stuff anywhere, but i dont see set?

[hoary junco]

datatables aren't meant to be updated during runtime

[versed crypt]

oh...

[hoary junco]

generally you pull a base value from a data table, store it as a variable, then change that variable during runtime

[versed crypt]

i made a character picking (with a store idea kinda), and made datatable to have booleans like (own it, etc), so if i cant edit those booleans, then datatable are just static mess?

like how would i make it, that i choose this char, I buy it, i apply it, and then when i press play game this will be the characte i will be as***

[maiden wadi]

Array of the datatablerowhandles of owned characters maybe. 🤷‍♂️

[hoary junco]

yeah I Was gonna say an array

[maiden wadi]

Stick it somewhere you can save/load it related to the player.

[versed crypt]

then what shall I use in this situation? To have player info (stuff he has, currency, unlocked characters) during life-cycle of game?

im trying to understand how data is being stored in ue

[hoary junco]

variables... lots and lots of variables.

[versed crypt]

so what do i make then?

like... where do i strore that data during life-cycle of game?

[maiden wadi]

I think a step back is in order.

What kind of game are we even discussing? What kind of game style? multiplayer, singleplayer?

[versed crypt]

its singleplayer

singpleayer/ puzzle

but will have API's in future hehe

[hoary junco]

so what you'll need to do first then is create a save/load system, then as part of that save data system, have an array of characters with a boolean attached as to if they are owned or not

[versed crypt]

what you mean save/load system? could you explain a bit in detail?

[hoary junco]

I've not tackled that part of UE5 yet, look up some tutorials on how to set up a save/load system

like you know how in most games when you hit the save button it creates a save file? I'm talking about that basically

[maiden wadi]

Writing to hard drive and loading from it. You make a child class of SaveGame. You put variables in it

[hoary junco]

^ yeah that

and in this case the owned characters would be part of that save data

[versed crypt]

doesnt that expose to exploit?

[maiden wadi]

Lol. You're making a singleplayer game. Just accept defeat there already.

[versed crypt]

heh, nevar

[hoary junco]

then you're going to be spending the next several years treying to exploit-proof your game only to have it cracked in 2 minutes.. it's not a game you can win

there's only 2 options to saving data
1: have it be an online only game that saves its data on a server where the player can't access that data
2: save the data locally and no matter what way you do this, it's prone to save exploits... there is simply no way around that.. As long as the data is on a player's computer, they can modify it.

[versed crypt]

I mean... that makes sense, any application you code, you will store either HDD/DB etc and user could edit unless you crack it up and encrypt sht

[hoary junco]

even encrypted save data can be broken really easily

[maiden wadi]

You don't necessarily need access to the saved data. You can edit the application at runtime too.

[hoary junco]

because that save data has to be unencrypted in order to be loaded into the game... which means someone can just create a socket between the encrypted data and the game itself and translate it.. that's how public APIs are generated for games that don't have them innately

[versed crypt]

i mean yeah sure... now it makes sense why sp games need internet connection

[trim matrix]

Wait, should save data be encrypted?? Im confused

[hoary junco]

there's no point in encrypting for reason I pointed out above

[trim matrix]

2: some games can prevent you from changing that data

[versed crypt]

yeah, basically, everytime user launches app, you give him a hash key from API, he then hapily decrypts data, everytime you save data, you encrypt it with different hash, so even if app is closed, its hashed with last key, and you store that key safely in DB 🙂

[hoary junco]

only if the data is stored on a server

[maiden wadi]

Realistically it's a bad dev move to care. If you're making a singleplayer, and people want to abuse it, let them. 🤷‍♂️ If you want a competitive game, put it on a server with authoritive data.

[trim matrix]

what if I don't have a server?

[hoary junco]

then the game can be tampered with

simple as

[maiden wadi]

Refer to the don't care part. 😄

[trim matrix]

but I don't want them to exploit lol

[versed crypt]

but its like, if i put in a store, where i could get a bit of money from you know... if kid with notepad++ can edit my stuff. man...

[hoary junco]

there's no possible way to prevent people from exploiting

[trim matrix]

there's one 100%, how does AAA games do it then?

[worthy jasper]

By using backend servers

[versed crypt]

isnt current AAA games require you internet connection even though theyre single player/

[hoary junco]

they don't XD there's cheat tables for every single player AAA out there

[maiden wadi]

Thing is, players can exploit multiplayer games too. But they just can't do it in a meaningful way if they're coded well. This is the reason stuff like EasyAnticheat exists for client side hack detection for aim bots and such because you can't reliably detect it from a server, and making aiming server auth feels bad to the player.

[versed crypt]

unless its android game and you have store and stuff

[worthy jasper]

Well there’s a lot of reasons they don’t 😂😂

[hoary junco]

your options are

1: server

2: your game can be exploited

there is no third options

[maiden wadi]

This isn't a cheat prevention. This is a piracy prevention.

Which also doesn't work.

[hoary junco]

yeah DRM can be broken really easily

[trim matrix]

server = backend server? Does it mean an actual physical server or a virtual free one?

[versed crypt]

only custom DRM like rockstar are tough ones as i know

[versed crypt]

basically Game <- API <- Your Database (API and Databse can be in one computer/server hosted)

[hoary junco]

there's no such thing as a truly virtual server, the data for that "virtual server" is being hosted on hardware somewhere.

usually on a server farm

generally game devs that host server authorative games buy or rent out their own server farms to host the data on

[trim matrix]

So I'd need to pay for servers?

[hoary junco]

yep

[trim matrix]

ew

[versed crypt]

if you keep your pc open 24/7 you can host on your pc 🤷

[hoary junco]

I don't see why it's even an issue.. like I said if it's a single player game who gives a fuck if it gets exploited it's only ruining their own fun

[worthy jasper]

They really aren’t as expensive as you might think and if your game makes money can be offsetted

[trim matrix]

but if it's a co-op game host system multiplayer..

[maiden wadi]

It's a giant waste of money for a singleplayer game though.

[worthy jasper]

mhm

[trim matrix]

I meant peer to peer

[maiden wadi]

Unreal has no P2P

And even a lot of Coop games don't really need cheat prevention honestly.

[worthy jasper]

I mean you could run an anti cheat but why?

[trim matrix]

a lot of ppl told me there was, I'm curious about that

[maiden wadi]

Realistically the only time you need cheat prevention is for public servers, or a competitive game.

[versed crypt]

if your SP game has in-app purchases or ads, then you need server so you have tamper-protection some kind of... not that people that edit will actually buy something but yeah, better this than indian tutorail how to get all paid skins on your game

[hoary junco]

then there's ways of doing client authorative servers
have 1 player be the host, or allow them to set up their own dedicated servers

then the host/server client stores the data.... that does mean if the host or the server client wants to cheat then they can... but the player clients that aren't hosting can't cheat.

but TBH if you want to stop the host/server client from cheating, that's bad because it also stops them from modding the game which... most co-op games survive the long term exclusively through modding

[worthy jasper]

Yeah but you are likely going through a backend for that

Huh?

[versed crypt]

i mean... ofcourse its backend (API and DB)

[maiden wadi]

Thing is, that stuff is still hackable. Like even in a multiplayer game with skins. You can force equip skins locally. Others won't see it , but you can.

[trim matrix]

the host will be able to do anything anyways, so yea, that's what I want

[worthy jasper]

Sorry platform. You aren’t really hosting your own stuff for that

[hoary junco]

then yeah that's possible... there's still ways to exploit it though....

[trim matrix]

how is that called? peer to peer?

[versed crypt]

oh, i was thinking of writing my own API and DB with Google services API's

[hoary junco]

it's called client authorative

it's not peer to peer

[worthy jasper]

TBH when you are doing in app purchases use a platform. Will save yourself a lot of headache and liability

[versed crypt]

true, but platform could be more pricier* but i will see

[hoary junco]

thing is, let me put it this way.... Final Fantasy 14, second biggest MMO in the world (or biggest depends who you ask) does not allow mods of any kind in its EULA, it specifically states no mods or addons

they have a huge modding community because it can all be done clientside and the server can't do shit to stop them, though it's mostly cosmetic changes that get made

[worthy jasper]

Oh yeah rest assured they will take their cut. But it’s better than your business going under because your server got hacked and all that credit card data is places XD

[versed crypt]

nah, you dont store any credit card details... everything is handled by Google API's or STEAM, or whatever you use, and tokens

[worthy jasper]

That’s a platform

Storing it is entirely a different can of worms

[hoary junco]

cheating happens in video games it's just a fact and even the biggest AAA corporations in the world can't stop it with their best efforts and in the end (like capcom) just end up hurting their modding community who actually loved the games and just wanted to change them a bit

us plebs just getting into game dev aren't going to stop it....

[versed crypt]

i thought you meant platform, as in... your whole database and game api's you want is some kind of company "easy unreal API" services...

[versed crypt]

nah but Mario kissing Luigi is bes... (Nintendo knocks on my door)

[worthy jasper]

You handle credit card processing on something that’s not you. Your game/server says “user a wants to buy X” and the waits for the api. The api returns “yep user a bought x” continue you aren’t processing it yourself is what I mean

[hoary junco]

I mean people have modded nintendo switches 😛

[versed crypt]

did you read what happened to the ones that released those mod's? 😄

[hoary junco]

nothing