blueprint

[maiden wadi]

Your team, or associated color though is a player defined state though. And relates to that player regardless of what pawn they're possessing, so it does belong on the PlayerState.

[barren tangle]

mmm regardless of what pawn... ok i think i understandµ

[copper chasm]

so when you pick a Background, you get to choose between one of two Attributes to boost. I put them in my Backgrounds Data Table as an array of Attributes (so I could set which two you can choose from) - how would I get which one the player picked? Probably use that background in character creation and store it in a variable somewhere?

Like, I guess I don't know the best way to do that without making a character creator, lol

[maiden wadi]

Am not sure what you mean by how would you get which one the player picked?

[copper chasm]

Well I changed it to a map with the attribute enum and a bool, and I can probably set one of the bools to true during character creation and pass that along

like right now, in PIE, I can pick the race and the code will populate all the attributes and hit points and so on, but I'm not sure how I would go about testing picking the background, because in picking the background I have to pick one of the two attributes to boost

I'm trying to test my code, to see if the data is flowing correctly to set all the stats - I can set them as default values and just check that I guess

[flat coral]

Is there like a "Safe" Set timer which won't reset a timer in progress? I can build that functionality obviously by checking myself but I just wanna make sure I'm doing duplicating effort

[maiden wadi]

Feels weird for me to think in that manner anymore. We do everything as definitions. You talk about enums and stuff to define things and my complexity alarm bells go off. Cause to me, a created character is just a long list of picked definitions. Each has it's own data to set up however it was intended during gameplay. Which we also use GAS for, so it's pretty much just a bunch of GEs to apply or abilities to grant.

[maiden wadi]

There is not by default. But if you can make your own C++ BP Function library. You can literally copy that function and remove the check code, and it'll do it.

Can paste you mine if you want.

[flat coral]

Eh... it's probably not worth it. Honeslty I'm solving the problem right now with this do-once but like... I know this is a little gross, right?

[maiden wadi]

Oh, wait, I read that entirely wrong. I thought you were trying to register multiple timers for the same event. 🤦‍♂️

[copper chasm]

I think if I start coding the character creation process, it'll fall into place

[flat coral]

Nahhh just trying to stop the timer from repeatedly resetting forever and never actually firing, since this code can run on tick

[maiden wadi]

You can just save the handle from the end and check if it's valid. If not, make a timer.

Else.. do nothing?

[flat coral]

There's a blueprint class where every time I try to rename it, Unreal crashes

Assertion failed: !ActorsByGuid.Contains(ActorDesc->GetGuid()) [File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Private\WorldPartition\ActorDescList.cpp] [Line: 50] Duplicated actor descriptor guid 'FA86AAB2F2DE2E9FD01640820EA9F1C7' detected: ABP_AreaEventActivator_C

[maiden wadi]

I think for me, my primary focus is as a UI engineer. And I've been pushed more into gameplay code lately. So I'm always trying to bundle correlated things together. People have a fascination with using GameplayTags and Enums to "define" things. And it can work. But you create an indirection where you constantly have to look up data for things. Have an enum or tag for some inventory stat? Look up the name for it, look up the icon for it. Have a gameplay tag or enum for some preset NPC monster? Look up it's name, Look up it's stats, look up it's icons and descriptions. Etc. etc etc. For every, single, tiny little detail in the game. Ranks/Levels, item stats, predefined npcs, items themselves, skills, talents, weapons, etc etc. All of it having an enum or tag to look up stuff. Meanwhile we just pass around the data asset that has all of that info in it. The asset is the key and the data. No more indirect lookups.

The main issue being that most of those things above go to different systems, not always made by the same person. So you end up with multiple systems with multiple ways to look up data from their keys. And it's just a nightmare honestly.

[copper chasm]

Well, my particular instance presently: I'm solo prototyping, so I'm trying to stay out of C++, I'm translating existing game mechanics from a ttrpg, so I pretty much know what everything is called, and it's very low impact gameplay (click to move top down with turn based combat) so there shouldn't be a ton of performance requirements.

I don't remember the exact number of feats in the game, but it's multiple thousands, having visible data at my finger tips to cross reference with a book is important lol

unfortunately, most of the stuff i've consumed online hasn't been super relevant to my use case, so I think out loud in discords and get scolded by folks who know more than me, and use that going forward 😛

[maiden wadi]

I think that was pretty much my learning tactic before I got hired at a studio too. 😂

[copper chasm]

Like for this instance, I'm trying to find something to get a feel for how I'd go about building a debug char creator where I just select the stat options, and I think I'm going to have to work backwards from examples where people make character creators that focus on all the visuals 🙃

[maiden wadi]

Whatever you do, remember to set anything with a combobox on fire.

[gentle urchin]

Passing around a pointer / reference to some data source is pretty free, so yeah you got a point about indirection

And for often what is not even a good reasonn

It just sounds lightweight passing around that tag

[woven spire]

is there a way i can make only the array elements editable in an instance and not the length of the array in a data asset? (this doesnt really matter but it would be nice to have)

[gentle urchin]

But in reality you end up doing a lookup here, and there, ans oh over there, plus UI...

[copper chasm]

in a stroke of genius you'll only find when I get a great idea, I just made X data sources so that each lookup is looking at its own independent group of data

when you make your goblin, you're selecting it from a list of charcreation_ancestries, which then will tell chardata_ancestry it's a goblin so when the ui looks for your ancestry it'll get it from chardata_ancestry not charcreation_ancestries

because if I do more work it makes me feel more smarter 🍻

[maiden wadi]

Don't forget encyclopedias. I still want to write that some day. Have plans to basically allow an encyclopedia widget to pull and categorize any definitions in game. So regardless of what people make, it can be looked up easily by players to understand the game's systems.

[copper chasm]

I really liked bg3's stackable tooltips

[maiden wadi]

Stackable tooltips? Like open one, move mouse over it and hover something else and open a second tooltip?

Haven't played it. 😄 My wife has. So I'm clueless.

[copper chasm]

Yeah, if you've got a tooltip open and there's a term or whatever that has a tooltip, I think you can hold alt? and click it and it'll open one on top

[maiden wadi]

I was actually looking at one point to try out how to do that in UE. It has the code to anchor tooltips like that but I never found out how to use them. Plus we started considering more gamepad friendly UIs. I don't know how BG3 is with that, but tooltips are usually a bad consideration for gamepads.

[dry sleet]

It was great; you could hover over a weapon and get like "Applies 50% Goblin Damage on hit." -- and then you can hover over 'Goblin Damage', press 'T', and you get a new popup describing "Goblin Damage: Applies 50 points of Agony every turn." -- and then you hover over 'Agony' and press 'T' and... so on.

I think it was definitely a necessary system to get non-DnD people to even have a chance to grasp DnD rules without picking up a rulebook!

[spark steppe]

is there a correct way to use this node?

without getting two different random locations?

[copper chasm]

Looking forward to figuring out something similar with pathfinder

[dry sleet]

Nav data I believe can be left unhooked, but the filter class I remember causing ensures if set incorrectly.

Unless it's been fixed in 5.4

[spark steppe]

i think it gets the filter from the controller by default

it was more about the two outputs on a pure node

[dry sleet]

Ah, gotcha

[copper chasm]

So I made a real quick and dirty character creator 😄

[dry sleet]

Ah, sorry, didn't see this part

What a mystery actually!

I've never actually considered a case like this -- what exactly causes that node to reexecute

[spark steppe]

my concern is that it's executed twice

[dry sleet]

Yeah, I get it

[spark steppe]

a pure node get's executed when the BP VM tries to resolve an output pin value

so for 2 outputs, it's executed twice

[dry sleet]

If I were to hazard a guess I'd assume the return value is safest to use without fear of reexec, but I don't rightly know

(as opposed to the pass-by-ref)

That node shouldn't be pure imo

[maiden wadi]

Yeah. I just went looking for that. They did it for consoles too, but in a different way. 🤔

[dry sleet]

Looks pretty elegant on consoles too!

[humble matrix]

Ima Try The Blueprint System When I Get On My Computer

[haughty jolt]

how can i draw line above my image in widget

and when i change wieport size its still above my image

how can i do this?

[gentle urchin]

So when working with fragments.. does the ui like query for fragments akin to asking for compoments in an actor ?

GetEquipmentFragment -> IsValid ->...

[maiden wadi]

Mine does. I think Lyra does pretty much the same.

[gentle urchin]

Here i am offloading all that into a more flat layered struct for ease of access

To avoid going deep into a nest to find certain info

[maiden wadi]

I also still make specialized data assets too though. Fragments I still keep as reusable functionality. Maybe a system needs it's own fragment on a bunch of data and I don't want to put it directly into those data assets for some reason, I can just add the fragment. But the core data for the asset still goes on it's class.

[gentle urchin]

But fragments are only ever 1 layer deep so shouldnt really be an issue i suppose

Right so an item would be
ItemCore + ItemFragments(0 to N)

[maiden wadi]

It's definition would be anyhow. The item itself is just a UObject with a pointer to that definition an array of other runtime values.

[gentle urchin]

Exactly

Kinda like my quest system is setup

Weirdly enough

With core data, and instance wrappers that actually have instance tracked variables

Thinking about it i could probably benefit from just wxposing the uobjects directly. Todays struct method is... very nested

And doesnt really allow for project specific expansion due to these structs

Exposing objects instead would totally solve that

Fuck... refactor 2.0 incoming.

[maiden wadi]

I have so much work to do on our new system. We moved to using Flowgraph stuff recently. Similar to the items, it's just an object with the QuestDefinition, an index for the active objective, and then an array of enums for tracking that objective's tasks.

[lunar sleet]

lol you’re only at 2.0? 😛

[gentle urchin]

Cant have multiple active objectives ?

Sounds very close to mine, altho swapped words

Questline (DA)

• 1 to many Quests
  • 1 to many Objectives

[maiden wadi]

You have multiple tasks for each objective.

[gentle urchin]

Im not at version 1.0 yet so is it evem a refactor at this point

[maiden wadi]

I modelled it off of staring at MMO quests.

• Reach some place
• Get to location
• Press the red button
• Enter some place
• Go to some location
• Wait
• Kill some boss
• Blap the dude who just annoyed you from talking too much

[gentle urchin]

I also got paralellconditions, but its jsut some way to say that all conditions must be fulfilled at the same time, and not sequentially

Im not sure what it actually does tho, as its mot even a failing condition so

I dont really have a good usecase for it

🤣

But man the struct to uobject refavtor will be messy

[maiden wadi]

It always is. :/

[maiden wadi]

I just ditched tags from my inventory system.

[gentle urchin]

I use tags everywhere

Since it goes so well with my QS :p

Using the concept of Channel, which isnjust a way to say which external system we wanna listen to

[maiden wadi]

I'm really going crazy with this "definition as a key" thing. Gonna try it out for a while. It hasn't failed me yet, and it just makes my life so much simpler.

[proper tulip]

Why isnt the sword able to go from sheath socket to hand on 1 key?

[gentle urchin]

So definition is the lookup key?

IsQuestInProgress(const MyQuestDefinition* QuestID)?

[maiden wadi]

Basically, yeah.

[gentle urchin]

Avoids the extra work of making a second key as a gameplaytag, atleast

[humble matrix]

1st Time

I'm New

[tulip anvil]

1st lesson. don't take pictures of ur screen. take screenshots. use win+shift+s

[humble matrix]

K

Yea

[proper tulip]

long road ahead

[maiden wadi]

Also avoids people specifying wrong item per tag and such. I think most people avoid this because of the savegame fear of pointers. 🤷‍♂️

[humble matrix]

190 now

K

[maiden wadi]

Lol, 7.4k

You haven't experienced fun until you open the project and it starts at 27k, and after twenty minutes it's up to 34k and still rising.

[humble matrix]

When I Tried It Brought Up This?

[maiden wadi]

You drag your screen, then let go. Then paste here.

[tulip anvil]

drag the gizmo over your screen, then press ctrl+v to paste the screenshot.

[humble matrix]

Oh

Got It

[tulip anvil]

u can also save it as an image in the windows notification that pops up bottom right or the notification menu.

[humble matrix]

Yea

[bitter folio]

Say I'm making a dummy that has a health bar and so on, what blueprint would I create and how might I attach my mesh?

[surreal peak]

Depends on what that dummy is supposed to do

In theory just an Actor that you can put your health component and what not on

If it has to walk around, possibly whatever AI Characters class you have

Mesh would just be a Static or SkeletalMeshComponent if Actor. Or just the Mesh that comes with the character class if you choose that option

[bitter folio]

where about do I find the options for the mesh?

Sorry, I've never used a custom model before. Just started about a week ago

[surreal peak]

There should be tons of tutorials and Getting Started docs available for beginners.

You need to add it as a component, top left corner

[bitter folio]

Ah, thanks

[humble matrix]

anybody have a good blueprint for worldgen?

[bleak mica]

hi been a while since ive been here, but anyone know of a better solution for storing database data to be used across game modes and such (i think im explaining it correctly). as of now i have my database data converted into an array that is basically a bunch of structures and is stored in the game instance and to make it network capable i just pass it to the gamestate/playerstate. is this fine or is there something better.

[olive yarrow]

I have an actor next to this overlap who has a tag reading "health" as do the components... But when this actor explodes it should activate their sphere collision - thus touching the actor next to it and enabling what is in that actors blueprint. However... That doesn't happen..
The actor that should now be receiving just keeps on like normal. Any help?

[bleak mica]

that glare!!

[olive yarrow]

The laptop I sneak to work can't use discord 😦

I mean, the laptop I definitely don't sneak to work.

[bleak mica]

whats triggering the beenpopped event

are you calling it somewhere

i think collisions have there own overlap event

[olive yarrow]

I switched the sphere collision with a sphere trace by the visibility channel... But even with the other actor reading for overlap... It doesn't register the sphere trace

[bleak mica]

is it only supposed to trigger on overlap

only asking cause i would just use the collision spheres overlap event, not sure what your using the trace for

[olive yarrow]

Been popped happens when the canisters hp reaches 0, then is shoots off the sphere trace by vis channel

Cause the overlap wun't doin nothin'

[bleak mica]

so you have an object (actor) that when its hp reaches 0 it creates a sphere collision that anything within it that has the health tag should take damage

[maiden wadi]

What is the data for?

[bleak mica]

mainly a parts list that is used to build a mech which consist of hundreds of parts (probably a thousand in its completed form)

so i bring in my data from my database, then i convert it into structures, i then store those structres in any combination of datasets as arrays, which is just set in my game instance to be used when iver i need to use it

[olive yarrow]

Ya! But it doesn't seem to like that?

[bleak mica]

this is the very basic form of what you should be using

brb fr a bit

[copper chasm]

me: I'm gonna use SO MANY ACTOR COMPONENTS, my code will be compartmentalized and easy to understand!

also me: puts code from Actor Component beginplay into actor beginplay, forgets, is confused for thirty solid minutes why it's running twice

[olive yarrow]

Even goin back to basic like that don't seem to wanna make the characters near the explosion recieved anything (my print string never fires on the actors being touched)

[bleak mica]

are you trying to print string from the characters or the canister

if from the characters u need to cast to them if from the canister then just print string after the true branch

then off the cast call whatever event you have in the character

[bitter folio]

Hey so I made an Dummy to test damage of weapons on, but when I load in it looks like the health bar is in my face, I think its because of the Setup Health Bar node I have, is there a way to make it so it acts how it is intended (being its floating above the Dummy's head? without this node it works fine but the health does not display

[olive yarrow]

Aaaaahhhh, kinda like I did with my bullets... Shoot. I was hoping to avoid casting cause I'll have a few different bps... But it is what it is

[bleak mica]

thats where bp interfaces come in. i think thats what its called

[bleak mica]

looks like your dummy hud is being added over the player hud and not just attached to the dummy. i believe you need to use widget component

[olive yarrow]

Aye aye aye, my first project was aaaaaallll widgets which made it so easy

[bitter folio]

The HUD is over the dummy once Setup dummy hud is removed

[bleak mica]

from your picture i just see a blue bar and red bar then a red background which i am assuming is supposed to be the health bar for the dummy and the blue and red bars are for the player

[bitter folio]

well actually nvm I get an error, the Health bar is back over the head but not filled with health, and I get this

ignore the picture where the screen is red that was old by mistake

this is it now

[bleak mica]

and the bar is a progress bar correct?

[bitter folio]

yes

[bleak mica]

so in the bp of the dummy where do you call the progress bar to be added

[bitter folio]

I dont actually think I am

[bleak mica]

lol ok give me a sec to try and recreate it

[humble matrix]

Does Anybody Have Anything

?

[thin panther]

You might want to be a bit more specific there. Worldgen could mean anything from making minecraft, to a script that plants some trees.
A bit more specific perhaps, because most of what people know as worldgen tends to happen in C++, not scriptside

This channel tends to be more used for solving specific issues you've been unable to solve in blueprints, not requesting major chunks of games

[humble matrix]

Prob Trees Mountains Landscapes Lakes Oceans Etc.

[thin panther]

Yeah, no.

Those things don't get generated in blueprints

[humble matrix]

🙁

[thin panther]

Anything to do those things would be entirely handled in c++

BP is far too slow

[humble matrix]

I Guess Ill Have To Make A CPP Game☹️

[thin panther]

Since you're new, you might want to start small.

Look in the pins of #ue5-general

A newbie to blueprints and the engine in general isn't going to pull this off overnight, with or without other people's tools. No one makes their dream game first

[bitter folio]

As for what I have, its a custom event for the health bar, im trying to refrence what I did prior for the player but I cant find where I went wrong lol

Ok I think it was my interface messing up, though now the red health bar is covering the screen like prior

Thats everything I have going on in my Dummy BP

[bleak mica]

in your dummy bp add component of widget

[bitter folio]

Thats how I have it set atm

under the dummy BP if I remove this, it fixes and the bar is still above the dummy but is empty

[bleak mica]

in your healthbar widget

create binding for progress percent

[bitter folio]

Done that also

[bleak mica]

add to viewport adds it to the players view port

[bitter folio]

ah I see

[bleak mica]

then just do this in dummy bp

[thin panther]

The Accessed None error is due to this code.

It's a logical fallacy. "Get me the owner of the widget that isn't made yet, and then create the widget and set the reference."

Nowhere in that begin play is that reference set to a valid widget before you use it

[bitter folio]

where are you getting get widget

[bleak mica]

you would drag widget from your components list

[bitter folio]

I just get this

[bleak mica]

now off of that drag and type get widget

then from that cast to your progress bar widget

or just right click in you event graph and type get widget

[bitter folio]

is something wrong here?

oh wait

nvm

yeah no still empty

[bleak mica]

did you create binding to percent in your progress bar widget

and also what is you max health set to

[bitter folio]

100

[bleak mica]

ok then back in your progress bar widget

click your progress bar in the hierarchy, then in its details panel under progress click and binding

next to the percent

[bitter folio]

is that not whats set up here?

[bleak mica]

screenshot your details panel of progress bar

[bleak mica]

now go to graph up top

click you new function

[chilly geyser]

How to update widget without event dispatcher or interface using a direct reference?

[spark steppe]

just get the element and update it!? (or make an update method on the widget)

[bleak mica]

and do this

[chilly geyser]

Alright cool, How do I get a return node on a repnotify

[bleak mica]

and finally in your dummy bp only do this

[spark steppe]

isn't that an event? (which can't have return values)

[bitter folio]

still no update

think I see the issue though

[chilly geyser]

the other guy in multiplayer said I dont need to cast either, so I have like zero idea how to do it without cast/event dispatcher, or interface

[bleak mica]

sorry that was meant for someone else not sure what you needed

[chilly geyser]

ah, well rip lol

[spark steppe]

you have to cast if you use GetWidget on the widget component

also a ViewModel would be better to handle player health

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/umg-viewmodel

[chilly geyser]

Ive had issues when I had the widget setup as a component, so now it gets added at runtime

[bitter folio]

right so I connected a String to lmk if the cast fails, it seems like it is, I'm a little confused onto why though

[bleak mica]

all of this works for me

where is the event begin play and the sequence located

[bitter folio]

in the Dummy BP

[heady breach]

I'm trying to set up display options for my game and I keep running into this error when using the enable HDR output node. Anyone know what could be causing this?

Warning: Setting the console variable 'r.HDR.EnableHDROutput' with 'SetByGameSetting' was ignored as it is lower priority than the previous 'SetByCode'. Value remains '0'

[bleak mica]

ok lets start from the beginning

in the dummy bp you add component widget

[bitter folio]

right

[bleak mica]

in the details panel you set it to the progress bar widget

[bitter folio]

yeah

[bleak mica]

in the progress bar widget you set the percent value to a binding

[tardy ridge]

I have a situation where I had a C++ class for a level blueprint. The c++ class was renamed, and now I can't reparent the level blueprint to the new class.

Tried a redirector, and it didn't work. Furthermore. In the list of classes to reparent, many classes are just straight up missing. This is a problem that others have run into, but I couldn't see any good solutions to it

seems pretty broken

[bitter folio]

yeah

[tardy ridge]

There is also this in the logs, and I can't even select the LevelScriptActor as a base class, it's missing.

[bleak mica]

might be the wrong place to ask that, probably might get a better response/ help from the cpp group

[tardy ridge]

This is an issue in the blueprint reparent menu though, it's not listing the right classes, not even the correct LevelScriptActor that should be in the engine

[bleak mica]

in the get percent function you have this

[bitter folio]

yes

[bleak mica]

oh then idk then

[bleak mica]

and lastly in the dummy bp you have this

[bitter folio]

exactly

[bleak mica]

and the cast fails

[bitter folio]

correct

[bleak mica]

then either you are casting to the wrong widget name or the widget you clicked in the component details panel is not of the same name

[bitter folio]

that may be it

[bleak mica]

click the widget component in your dummy bp

then screenshot the details panel

[bitter folio]

does it need to be the name "ProgressBar_399"?

[bleak mica]

no i just put that there to try something

under widget class the widget should have the same name as the progress bar widget

mine is healthbar

[bitter folio]

got it

Lmao I was casting to player Widget

Thanks, sooo sorry that was way more difficult than needed

[bleak mica]

all good, always is

had plenty of omg it was that simple moments

[bitter folio]

yeah thats been my whole week pretty much

Just started

[bleak mica]

well glad i could help

[bitter folio]

yup thanks a ton

[bleak mica]

before i go to bed something came to mind that you probably have already done, but did you try recompiling everything: under tools>refresh cpp

and then probably a close and refresh and if that doesnt work. not sure if you are using source build or not but you might need a recompile after you regenerate project files

[heady breach]

You can use interfaces instead of a cast and you don't need a binding for this. Bindings are very expensive

[bitter folio]

how might I not use a binding then?

[tardy ridge]

Yes, tools->Refresh c++ project doesn't build anything, just refreshes the project files. But I did clean all of the files by deleting the Intermediate, Binaries and Saved folders and then doing an actual rebuild, problem still happens

[bleak mica]

ok then i have offered the only knowledge i know of the matter at hand, maybe someone else can assist or it could verywell be a bug

[heady breach]

1. Right click in content browser > Blueprints > Blueprint Interface. Name this osmething like "BPI_UI"

2. Open your interface and add an event by clicking "Add" in the top left, name is something like "Update Health UI". Once you've created this, in the details tab below, add an float input and name this "Health". Compile and save

3. Go into your widget, on the top click "Graph", then navigate to "Class Settings" on the left. Scroll down to "Inheritied Interfaces" and add your interface. Compile.

4. In your event graph, drag your progress bar variable into the graph and select "Get ProgressBarVar (or whatever your progress bar variable is called)". Drag off the node and make a new node called "Set Percent".

5. Once you've done step 4, in the same graph, type in "Event" followed by "Update Health UI" or whatever you named your interface event. Connect the execution and float variable to "Set Percent". Compile and save.

6. Open your character blueprint, and dragging off Widget>Get Widget, type "Update Health UI" and input the health variable or amount you want. Connect this to your BeginPlay in your character or your damage event.

No need for a binding (very expensive to run) and you can call this event any time without needing to cast which is also very expensive.

[bitter folio]

Thank you, i had like half of this already set up from a tutorial but ended up switching methods, ill get that switched over tmr

[heady breach]

np! Be careful with tutorials you see online since a lot of them have bad coding practices. A good few youtubers to follow is Ryan Laley or LeafBranchGames

[bitter folio]

yeah I have realized that over the past few days xD

ty

[heady breach]

npnp

[frosty heron]

🤮

Don't watch leafbranchgames, he is another youtubers that perpetuate wrong information and bad practices.

Whenever you see a video that says avoid casting use blueprint interface, just click on don't recommend and look away

Ofc he also said avoid tick 🤮

[heady breach]

The guy above is trolling. If you excessively use casting you're going to have a huge memory problem on your hands, since casting loads all objects associated with the BP. Not to mention you should make as little use of tick as possible since that runs the code every frame

[bitter folio]

I actually just ended up doing it now as I want to just get the dummy working lol, atm the health bar is just blank

[heady breach]

Do you have an amount set for your health variable in your player?

What are the amounts set for "Health" and "Max Health"

[bitter folio]

Health is 0 and max is 100

[heady breach]

That's why your health bar is empty, because Health is set to 0

Try setting Health and MaxHealth to 1

[ancient moth]

What would be the most appropriate way, of creating item pick up hints?

Because to show a hint, you probably need to cast a line trace continuously, to check if the player is looking at an item, but this seems quite unperformant.

[bitter folio]

changes nothing

[heady breach]

Remove the division in your first screenshot

[visual ember]

as always: depends

can have a sphere collision and simply highlight when in radius

[bitter folio]

like that?

[visual ember]

and for more "highlight when looking close enough" I'd do small vector math and get a dot product between vectors:

1. actor position to item position
2. actors looking direction vector

[heady breach]

Correct. Let me check one more thing to make sure

That should work

That's how I have it set up on my end

[bitter folio]

getting nothing

[heady breach]

Oh

Remove the binding on the progress bar

Almost forget

[bitter folio]

Oh

[ancient moth]

Hmm I was also thinking of having the collision to enable the line traces, because otherwise you have all items around you highlighted.

[bitter folio]

that was it

ty

[heady breach]

Yaya glad it works

[ancient moth]

But the collision thing, would be the only way, of having something that is not performed all the time right?

[visual ember]

you can combine two methods I mentioned. sphere collision to gather nearby items, then use mentioned dot product method to highlight only ones close to the center of vision

[ancient moth]

Yea but regarding the performance, the calculation wont matter, thats just a matter of how I want it to be.

[visual ember]

dot product method is way cheaper than traces at least

and don't worry about 5 or even 500 items. shouldn't be a big problem

though with 500 I would maybe start to cache or otherwise partition

[ancient moth]

Just to avoid lag spikes or whatever, I'm still kind of new to game development and for me having something every frame appears so heavy but its kind of needed and normal i guess.

[visual ember]

though the collision can also be just in front of the player, so we only consider what's in front of us

[ancient moth]

I was also thinking of having something that just catches the near range of the player..

[visual ember]

CPU is doing billions of operations every second. this is nothing to it for the scope we are talking about here

[ancient moth]

I'm also wondering, I probabyl want the player only to be able to pick up the item he is looking at. Maybe still line trace it? Or would you project the item to screen space and get the closest one to the center of screen?

[ancient moth]

yea ^^

[visual ember]

like...a collision sphere/volume? 😛

you can optimize it a bit by only checking certain channel

and having your items on that channel only

[ancient moth]

yea and just make it similar to the vision cone and close size

[visual ember]

so nothing else is even considered

[ancient moth]

Yea that was my second thought, because having the collision on the item would be nicer regarding that, but then you will have way more overlap

[visual ember]

you can use dot product for that as well. if very close to 1 means we are most likely looking at it

[ancient moth]

But you would say, projecting the pickup item, into the screen space and calculating the distance from the center is cheaper than having the line trace?

[visual ember]

but yes, otherwise trace is the standard way I would say

mostly due to straightforwardness of getting hit actor, etc.

but you are not crunching pi here, so don't worry much about performance

[ancient moth]

Yea I think I go with the line trace

[visual ember]

hook up something that feels good to work with

and later optimize if really needed

[ancient moth]

Yea I just wanted to avoid line traces every frame like some YT tutorials suggest ^^

[visual ember]

you have one player (probably). so one line trace. that's not much really

you can check it yourself how much of a hog it is. run 1000 or 1000000 traces and check the fps

[ancient moth]

Yea but then on top of that, there is the thing with having the "Pick up" widget facing the player. That would also be on tick to rotate it towards the player, since as far as I've seen screen space, will not scale the widget.

I mean even both probably will not be that bad, but I'm wondering what industry standards are, regarding this, because sometimes you find some solutions, that are just outdated and could be done way nice.

[visual ember]

it's for a split second when nearby an item. again, it's not a heavy operation to rotate something

[ancient moth]

I probably have to wrap my head around that, because it appears to be so much work but it probably is not at all in games context ^^

[visual ember]

it is simple, sure, but takes several steps to get everything working nicely together

[olive yarrow]

@bleak mica thanks for the help brainstormin'

[visual ember]

I will say just make a first version of it and don't worry much

[grim crypt]

im making a spline mesh blueprint that's writing custom primitive data into the spline mesh components
the values are correct in-editor, but it seems like theyre reset to 0 when the game is actually playing
does anyone know a fix to this?

[ancient moth]

Yea I'll do that, thanks a lot for the insights, really helped 🙂

[visual ember]

you're welcome! gl & hf

[frosty heron]

The huge memory problem isn't casting problem but hard reference problem. It's not casting that loads the object to memory.

Please stop spreading mis information.

The solution is to have native class and use soft reference. BLUEPINT INTERFACE is not a even a tool to address. Not only that will make debugging a nightmare it will defeat the purpose of inheritance.

And in the end when people need to access member variable or function they end up using hard ref in their interface anyway.

You are a victim of people who don't know any better. If you want clarity just ask the programmers in #cpp

[bitter folio]

If I made a dummy to take damage is there anything I need to do with the collision box it uses to allow it to trigger on actor overlap events?

[frosty heron]

Things that needs to run on tick, should run on tick. Anything that needs to be smooth or evaluated per frame. E.g movement

The notion avoid tick is utter none sense. You use it where its proper

[heady breach]

Casting inherently loads objects. It's slow to do. That's simple knowledge.

Interfacing is not difficult to debug if you know what you're doing. Interfaces are used widely at numerous AAA game studios without issue. It's also recommended to use interfaces in official Epic docs and streams.

I also never said to never use tick. I said that it should be used as little as possible. Things like UI or niche gameplay tasks like interacting with game objects (pressing E on an object) don't need to run off tick.

[frosty heron]

Casting blueprint class will load the object casting to native class won't.

The issue with casting to blueprint class is the hard ref it created not the casting it self.

Casting is almost free and is not slow. You are talking out of your ass. But not here to argue, go to #cpp if you actually care about what is right or not. They will be happy to demistfy what you learnt in youtube.

And no says to not use interface

I am saying don't use interface to replace casting, that's Apple and orange

[heady breach]

Then be more clear. I don't care to continue this conversation if you're going to use language with me

[frosty heron]

What language?

I am simply saying you are wrong

And you can ask other to clarify that

[gentle urchin]

Casting is fine, tick is cool

Tick things that need tick

But beware that ticks fires every single frame. Use that knowledge

[lunar sleet]

Right tool for right job, at the right time, basically

[gentle urchin]

Yepp

And the casting debate is argued 10 times a day so

[ancient moth]

I have one more question, does it really make sense, to prefix every blueprint you create with it's type or is it just personal preference and why is it used so often?

[heady breach]

I want to clarify I never said to never use casting either. I use casting, but it's so far and few between and the circumstances where you'll need to cast is also very rare

[gentle urchin]

Its often part of some naming convention

[visual ember]

for a naming reference:
https://unrealdirective.com/resources/asset-naming-conventions

[lunar sleet]

Interfaces and cast can be interchangeable most times, if you know what you’re doing.

[bitter folio]

is there a specific kind of collision box I need a actor to have in order to interact with On Component Begin Overlap

[gentle urchin]

Project and structure dependent. I cast whenever i need to, but only to the most basic type that i need

[heady breach]

Yes, correct. Most times you can get away with interfacing

[lunar sleet]

Quicker for me to cast to something that’s already loaded because I know how they both work, so I don’t need to tell others my way is better

[heady breach]

Depends what's already loaded/needs to be loaded but yes

[ancient moth]

But I don't really see the benefit from it, If you look up a widget blueprint and every of them starts with WBP_ it's harder to ready and does not add to much, the only thing I would see, if you want to name the mesh/actor/widget/... all the same but idk.

[gentle urchin]

I use components over interfaces in 99% of the cases

Hardly ever use interfaces at all

[heady breach]

Components are good

Hell I should be using them more lol

[lunar sleet]

I want to, but I always forget to do so 😅

[ancient moth]

Thats a nice list, but still why? 😅

[lunar sleet]

Naming conventions are for you and other people who look at your project so do whatever you want, at your own peril

[gentle urchin]

You can make your own naming convention

[visual ember]

more or less what you mentioned last. to differentiate the same thing but in different forms. mesh, skeletal mesh, character, etc.

[gentle urchin]

Just share it with whoever joins you

[lunar sleet]

I don’t use WBP for example, just W_

[gentle urchin]

Shame on me still using wbp..

Tutorials clinging on to me from 2014

[lunar sleet]

It makes no difference tbh

[ancient moth]

Because looking at plugins, they also wont prefix there blueprints, would even be weird to use them prefixed

[gentle urchin]

I prefix mine

[lunar sleet]

I don’t make plugins

[gentle urchin]

SQQuest Plugin

[lunar sleet]

There, all cases have been covered 😀

[visual ember]

if it bothers you, don't prefix. just be consistent

[ancient moth]

I'm just affraid, that then one night I want the prefixes back for some reason, and start renaming every blueprint and waste a few hours but maybe i've got to sleep on it ^^

[lunar sleet]

Imo, once you get enough xp, you get so used to naming conventions you don’t even notice them

[ancient moth]

It does very much tbh ^^

[heady breach]

Dont worry, I saw a lot of WBP files working on some big titles even recently

[visual ember]

then run a script to do so. and watch your project fail to load next time due to some corruption

[visual ember]

also this

[ancient moth]

I even get bothered by the c++ prefixes, the U, F and S, they are "ok" but prefixing booleans with b why it already is of type boolean, thats just from back in the days, when the ide/text editor was not able to tell you the variables type

[ancient moth]

xDDD horrors! ^^

[visual ember]

hungarian notation will outlast us and many generations to come

[bitter folio]

does this event not work with actors?

[visual ember]

try to not worry and just bHappy @ancient moth

[ancient moth]

cAn't

^^

[gentle urchin]

Wordplay

Spicey

Atleast you dont have to iInput and qOutput

[ancient moth]

ok I gotta go now 🤣

[gentle urchin]

Yes, its coding standard to do so in my line of work

[frosty heron]

Is that imgui?

[visual ember]

that's just winapi, I think

[ancient moth]

That is madness!

[gentle urchin]

We also use type prefixes but im not doing that 🫣

[gentle urchin]

Time to check out replicated uobjects then... been avoiding this for far to long

[visual ember]

Weird size shouldn't prevent it from being displayed. How are you trying to use/display it?

[gentle urchin]

1000x1000 sounds rather large for something like a waypoint arrow getting 42x42 pixels on screen .. also try to use power of 2 sizes when you can

[frosty heron]

@gentle urchin Have you attacked fast array? I was told that it's good for large data like items but from what I read last night, it also support atomic replication?
Meaning fast array will replicate the whole elements instead regular struct where regular struct just replicate the delta.

Won't that mean fast array is inheretely more expensive for a collections of something, say item data?

[gentle urchin]

I have not, yet. Havn't really had any use for it, altho it does sounds like a neat optimization. Replicating whole element may still be cheaper due to not repliciating the entire thing, even if it's delta ?

but 1 to 1 it sounds worse in that regard

[shadow holly]

Hey so I know pure functions get called every for each time their return variables are used, but does anyone know if they are called once or multiple times in cases like this where they all go to the same node? Thanks

[gentle urchin]

once

[shadow holly]

Great thanks

[young meteor]

Hey folks

I have a mesh set up based on a spline following a tutorial. It sort of works fine but I was wondering if there is a way to have it do a "sharp turn" instead of this rounded corner (hope it is visual)?

The corner spline point is what is selected in the screenshot. I tried limiting the tangent lengths for that spline point, but it seems closest possible outcome is a round corner at the moment.
I would like it to be 90 degrees like the track below it.

[dark drum]

I don't think you can as the mesh is bent to match to spline. Hence the curve. You might have to handle the corners differently. You might be able to ignore corners on the spline and handle them separately and use specific corner meshes instead that have the perfect 90 degree corner.

[gentle urchin]

You can specify spline tangents manually

[young meteor]

Hmm, yeah.

[gentle urchin]

But placing a fixed mesh there is most appropriate , as pattym suggests

[young meteor]

What do you mean?

I can control the Tangent, but that won't make the mesh have a 90 degree turn still right?

[gentle urchin]

Doubt it, but maybe

Havnt tested that specifically

I set mine up with fixed corners , but not exactly 90 instantly, so to speak

[young meteor]

But even the point I selected in screenshot I have reduced tangent length to near 0. And still has a very soft bend.

[gentle urchin]

#blueprint message

Bad screenshot but the turn is 90 degree

#blueprint message

This shows it a little bit better

But not a fixed 90 degree, as i mentioned

Not dure a spline mesh would be able to do 90 degree at all

Wouldnt some faces get inverted by that?

Might work if the point itself is 45degrees off

[ancient moth]

I'm trying to remove a UMG widget on mouse down, I'm getting the debug string, but the widget is not removed.

[young meteor]

Thank you. Will look into your previous conversation you linked.

[tawdry walrus]

You need to get the widget that you want to remove and link it to the target "remove from parent" node

[ancient moth]

Thx 🙂

[dark drum]

Assuming you're wanting to remove the widget this logic is setup inside, using self is perfectly fine. If not as Silent said, you can connect a references to the widget you want to remove.

However, you need to be aware that the widget (with this logic on) would need to be in the focus path for it to receive the inputs to detect if the mouse button is down. This can be problematic when clicking on a focusable widget as this can result in it receiving the focus instead.

[ancient moth]

So the issue actually was, that this is a list item and I wanted to remove the list widget, but i was able to remove it with FindParentWidgetOfType 🙂

But for the list item Remove from Parent didn't do anythign, as it's probably expected i guess 😅

[raw dragon]

Hello guys. Can someone point me to the right resources to properly set up a player character? A buddy of mine uses finite state machines for his game in Unity. From what I found, behaviour trees are a bad replacement for finite state machines and I don't know c++ so I can't really program a custom one for myself. Do we just use the player pawn and player controller or is there an alternative I'm overlooking?

I worry that the character gets way too "conditional" later down the line, considering he has like 4 abilities and a basic attack. I don't want to have ten conditions, for example," If "basic attack" + 5 others are not true, then the character is permitted to do something.

Another suggestion was to use different input mappings and swap between them depending on the what a character is permitted to do at a time, but that also sounds like an inferior supplement to finite state machines.

(Also please ping me, if you have an idea, so I see it immediately.)

[sand slate]

Hello,

Can you open and load a level like this? I saw it in a youtube comment and im not sure if it works this way, maybe it loads it two times?

[frosty heron]

You can but it's not necessary to async load the level

The object ref should be a soft ref to begin with

What you do there will load the level before you open the level

So you end up with multiple world in memory at some point

[sand slate]

So its better not to use async here?

[frosty heron]

Depends, but in general no

Like I'm guilty of async load level too for my loading screen

But eventually I will replace it with a better method

[sand slate]

With level streaming?

[acoustic tundra]

hi, maybe a simple question but i've been struggling with this for an hour now. I have a bp with a child actor. I want child actors to be deleted of all the bps of this class. I added a breakpoint and it is referencing all the actors of this class but it's only executing the loop for one of them (the one I hit). What am I doing wrong here?

[frosty heron]

Nah async load level

But it's a function made in cpp

[sand slate]

Thanks im going to look into this,

[dark drum]

Is it possible to make macro libraries only available for specific classes?

[frosty heron]

https://youtu.be/GwCD2WQ7-4U?si=uvQDdEjVWgUEL-CV

If you want to look at it but I won't recommend it. If you are after loading screen and you are using blueprint. You can buy plugin from the market place.

If cpp is an option, most common advice around here is to steal lyra loading screen plugin

[dark drum]

I've created a base class that derives from uobject but it can't use macros in any macro library, even macro libraries that that derive from this base class. Does anyone know what I need to do to enable it?

[young meteor]

Hey folks.
I feel like I'm in deep water here trying to control the "roll" of aircrafts in my game. They are following a Spline.
I figured I could get the tangent at the point they are currently at, as well as the tangent of the Spline a bit further ahead.

Then I get into trouble from there with vector math. I basically want to compare the two directions and if the tangent coming up a bit ahead is to the left for example, I would like to start rolling the airplane to the left.

Any suggestions? In screenshot I tried some dot Product, but I'm not sure about that.

[tawdry walrus]

I think if am not wrong there is a node named "compare floats" node

[gentle urchin]

But..

Wouldnt you just calculate target directionn

From current to some future point ?

[young meteor]

I'm confused at this point.

[gentle urchin]

In other words

[young meteor]

(not from your comment) From my own 100s of attempts

[gentle urchin]

Target rotation = FindLookAtRotation(Plane.location - Spline.future.location)

Future can be pretty short ahead i guess

[young meteor]

Just to make sure. I might just be confused here.
I'm looking to "roll" the plane. Like around the blue axis here

[gentle urchin]

Woops

Well

Roll would be based om the delta between current and target direction innsome future

[young meteor]

Agreed

[gentle urchin]

Bigger delta = bigger roll

[young meteor]

yup

So my issue is back to comparing two directions. Found out since my message I can compare Rotation instead of Tangent stuff at least.

[gentle urchin]

You only need some dot product

If you use direction vectors (current and future),

Get their right vectors, you can use dot product to set the roll

[young meteor]

But dot product returns positive both if the future point is pointing more to the right and more to the left as far as I can tell.

[gentle urchin]

Nop

-1 to the left

+1 to the right

As long as you use it on the right vectors

[young meteor]

This is with Tangents. Should get forward vector instead?

[gentle urchin]

Right vector*

I usually clnstruct my own as i dont trust splines (trust issues)

[dark drum]

If you have an instanced structure as an input on a function and break it, you get an exec pin and a wild card. Does anyone know what triggering the exec pin would do?

[gentle urchin]

Initialize the binding id suspect

[young meteor]

Feel like this prints the right stuff. (+ or - 90 depending on turn)

I'm probably messing up the Interpolation and rotation setting though?

[gentle urchin]

Delta time is GetWorldDeltaTime

Speed is prob gonna be faster

[young meteor]

(Running the function every 0,1 seconds on a "Event by Timer" function). Should I still change it?

[gentle urchin]

Change it to event tick my friend

But in theory it would be correct-ish

[young meteor]

Can I just save the Delta Seconds from my tick in a variable and then still run function every 0,1 seconds? (and insert that Delta Tick variable in the Interpolation time ofcourse)

[gentle urchin]

Not sure why youd put this on a timer in the first place

10 updates per second is rather noticable

[young meteor]

Trying to reduce performance cost

[gentle urchin]

This is important enough to take the cost of updating the rotation

[young meteor]

Calculating spline vector + future spline vector, dot product etc, for all enemies. Might not be an issue though.

[gentle urchin]

Other things should suffer instead

Adjust tickrate based on some distance tonplayer using npc optimizer or similar method

[young meteor]

It's a Tower Defense. All the actors are probably relevant.

It's all the enemies moving around the track.

[gentle urchin]

Aight

Atleast randomize start delay then

[young meteor]

Right.

[gentle urchin]

To actually save performance

[young meteor]

Good point. Can also check performance in insights in the end. Might not matter at all

[gentle urchin]

Yepp

[young meteor]

What is a "normal" Interp speed?

like 1?

FInterp speed sorry.

[gentle urchin]

Test a few

See what feels right

[young meteor]

👍 🙏

[gentle urchin]

You may want interptoconst

[cosmic aurora]

Hi, for some reason, my animation blueprint behaves the opposite in the viewport. I have selected the Spine in Transform Modify Bone, so when I rotate yaw only the player character upperbody will rotate, but for some reason the spine stays still and only moves everything below it. That doesnt happen in the animation blueprint,I checked it with manual values.

Some notes: I have a static camera in the level and the only way I found out how to rotate the player character was with "Use Controller Desired Rotation".

Thanks

[floral wyvern]

Greetings

Im developing a random dungeon generator, and wonder how to optimize "load level by name" node

First, I spawn "Room" blueprints, then I start spawn level instances of the room (like geometry, props, etc)

Loading a lot of levels during generation cause freezes, so Im using "bind on level shown" between level spawn, but they can spawn at the same time (because the code start for every room)

Any clue?

[spark field]

Anybody knows some good blueprint courses

What do you thhink about unreal sensei course?

[mild galleon]

hello everyone.
The following problem: I once renamed the widget for health bar.
Now, the casting always fails, even if i do that nodes again new in BP.
Any ideas? would be very welcome

(and any general comments on health bar)

[granite frost]

Which node is used to update the position of a text box of a widget in the blueprint? When I get the textbox reference it showed set widget slot positon for "position" search but not working

[coral void]

So I don't really know where should I be putting this but I'd like to create something similar to what's in this video from 8:30 to 11:30 ||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQzPOcENQsQ ||. I started out by following this tutorial (||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRggTwhiew&list=PLpzMHKXzqf9m7SIRngM3k3RuCt0KN077R||) and I managed to do it ending with rooms that'd spawn with 1-4 doorways leaving the remaining spaces open. I really don't know how to continue. How could I make the engine create "biomes" where the algorithm would be different? And how to I make algorithms to extend walls or something similar?

[fast compass]

Can you not use delay nodes inside tasks? I made my own Blueprint task for my AI, and in my Receive Execute AI event, i try to use a Delay node, but the Node after the delay never gets executed.

In my picture, the node Break is never reached.

[dark drum]

You should be able to but if it's not reaching the break function, it could be that the task is being destroyed before it happens.

[tall obsidian]

Hi , when I do packaging, the widget slider connecting with PCG graph does not work. Now I think the attached screenshot is the cause. what do you think?

[fast compass]

Hm you're right, if I put the delay as the first node, it does indeed delay.. Maybe it is because it tries to delay for each entry in a for loop.. Thanks though, I'll keep testing

This did the trick, thanks!

[nova grotto]

is it possible to delete specific pins off of blueprints id like to have this set relative location not take into account the x location

[wild crater]

If I put a breakpoint in blueprints it doesn't always trigger each time. When I put prints there, it happens more than the breaks. Why is this? It's super frustrating to debug like this (version 4.25.4 btw)

[lunar sleet]

Ugh idk about 4.25. Whenever that’s happened to me in 5.* it’s been because I had the wrong debug object selected, or any of them selected so only that specific instance would trigger the breakpoint)

[atomic salmon]

@nova grottoit's not possible, but you can get (current) the relative location and feed its X in the new one, so it won't change

[nova grotto]

im sorry what should i be looking up in bp?

[tight pollen]

Hello

I have pawn with camera, and I want replicate camera rotation

how can I do it?

some good way?

pawn is replicated

[nova grotto]

as in you want the camera to move the same way your characters facing?

[tight pollen]

I want to have the same mesh rotation on the server and on clients, when the player rotates the camera, the mesh rotation is still obtained from the server

and I would like the mesh server to be rotated in the same direction as the camera on the client

[nova grotto]

your gonna need someone better then me then good luck

[forest spade]

When working on an equip/unequip system where the unequipped weapon goes on the players back or hip, is it generally better to destroy and respawn the mesh in the right place, or keep the same mesh and re-parent and adjust transforms instead? Does it matter much?

[tight pollen]

attach to

(node)

[atomic salmon]

@nova grottoyou are setting a relative location, but you can retrieve the current one and feed its X into the Set relative rotation so the relative.X doesn't change

[granite dirge]

Are there any good tutorial providers on YouTube you guys would recommend for starting off unreal (blueprints)

Mostly done with c++ basics so I'll be revising it before attempting a hybrid workflow, thus I want to get around unreal engine and blueprints work first

[maiden wadi]

You don't update the position of a textblock. Widgets are added to slots. Slots belong to containers. If the Textblock is within a CanvasPanel, then the Textblock is in a CanvasPanelSlot and you need to use that to SetPosition via GetSlot->CastToCanvasPanelSlot

[devout tide]

@rare mortar #materials

[rare mortar]

Sorry! Will fix, thanks:)

[faint pasture]

If you know your way around the C++ side of things you don't need a tutorial

[granite dirge]

C++ language not unreal c++, so nope gotta do from full basics

[maiden wadi]

Depends on the case. Spawning actors "can" be costly. Plus replication latency and all. If you have an idea of "equipment", then it can be better to maybe just keep it spawned and attached or even spawned and hidden/disabled. Easier to deal with initialization orders and everything else than a weapon that can be constantly destroyed and replaced.

[granite dirge]

If yours is a single player then a inventory and overworld copy wouldn't be as expensive as spawning one when changed

I think atleast

[maiden wadi]

Unreal C++ is basically just knowing your macros to expose stuff to blueprints and knowing the UObject hierarchy. But for learning BP, I normally just tell people to find a "Make a {InsertType} game!" thing with 10-20 episodes and just follow along with it. If you h ave programmer expertise already, it'll click pretty quick. They're not always the best practice, but you're not going to find that from a tutorial usually.

[gentle urchin]

Best practives are hidden in different articles spread across the web

[granite dirge]

Understood, I was hoping any pointers to tutorial makers with decent practises would mean less RnD from my side, but I'll go through and remember to improve the practises myself in this scenario

[gentle urchin]

Or on this server, mentioned by specific people in specific context :p

[granite dirge]

😂😂✌️

[faint pasture]

Just start here and try to do the thing.

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/gameplay-framework-in-unreal-engine

[nova grotto]

how would i be able to get the relative distance between 2 actors

[maiden wadi]

Target minus Start = LengthVector
LengthVector->Length = distance

Also semi sure there's a Distance node that takes two actors

[nova grotto]

like this?

[maiden wadi]

Should be.

Er

No, the entire vector

[nova grotto]

so im trying to get a camera to be between 2 actors but its still acting wonky did i do something wrong with the vector length part of this

[gentle urchin]

gotta study it a little harder

you want the entire vector

not just X

unless ofcourse, you only care about the difference in X...

[hollow bane]

Hey there,
I made a small stargate which i can go through and spawn at the other stargate. I just use a collision box and set the actor location and rotation. Now I have made an actor which only contains a cube with physics enabled. I cant make it work to spawn at the other gate. My understanding was that the physics is overriding the position so i tried to turn it off and and on again but no help so far. Any advice? 🙂

[heady breach]

Wouldn't you want to add both of these then divide them by 2 instead?

Because let's say your first vector is 600, and your second is -400. Your end result would be 1000

[gentle urchin]

which is correct result

but incorrect end result

[heady breach]

For distance in between though?

Exactly

[gentle urchin]

sorry yeah

iff you were to add them .. 600 + -400 = 200

[faint pasture]

That math isn't mathing

[nova grotto]

True im very bad with vectors i gotta change that

[gentle urchin]

probably want to ignore Z

so distance XY

[faint pasture]

If you want the camera to be between the 2 it should be at (Position1 + Position2) * 0.5

[gentle urchin]

or that

rip baileys brain

[faint pasture]

if it's for a fighting game cam do it like this.

Midpoint = (Pos1 + Pos2) * 0.5
CameraPosition = Midpoint.X, WhateverYouWantCamYToBe, Midpoint.Z

assuming the plane of movement is x and z

[dim siren]

There's also a Get Actor Array Average Location node I believe

[gentle urchin]

the less you need to reinvent , the better

[dim siren]

It can be quite convenient indeed

[nova grotto]

It is for a fighting game but it needs to be able to be done from any angle hence why im going for relative

[gentle urchin]

trying to do

[faint pasture]

So the center of the 2 fighters is easy. What do do regarding orientation is harder

Consider 2 fighters circling each other, they can rotate the camera 180 degrees right?

[gentle urchin]

wouldnt that mostly be something like a pawn placed dead center, with a springarm and rotating camera?

[faint pasture]

Now consider that instead of circling each other they just both advanced, ending up in the same final locations as the first scenario. Should the camera have flipped orientations when they crossed?

[gentle urchin]

guess it depends on what freedom you want to give them

[nova grotto]

Its like this switching between 3d and 2d

[faint pasture]

So you want the camera plane to be static whenever the 2d mode is engaged?

that makes it much easier

[nova grotto]

Yes when in 2d it would work like any other fighting game im just having an issue of it working from any angle

[faint pasture]

vector math

start with what you know, you know the positions of the 2 fighters

and you know the global UP vector

Cross product of any 2 vectors is a 3rd vector at right angles to both

[heady breach]

Get Actor Location of Character + Actor Location of Locked on Target / 2 >> Set Relative Location and Rotation

No need for floats

[faint pasture]

so Cross(UnitVector(A.Location - B.Location), Up) is the normal of the plane the camera can move in

[gray ingot]

Hi, i am now working on localization of my game, and i have set up all my text to translate, but how can i change the language form blueprints?

[faint pasture]

PointBetweenTheFighters + PlaneNormal * SomeNumber is where the camera will be. SomeNumber drives how far away the camera is

The camera rotation is PlaneNormal.RotationFromXVector

so on and so forth. It all is based on the plane normal which is based on the locations of the 2 fighters when the 2d mode is entered.

[nova grotto]

Ok ty i gotta head to work but when i get off work ill try it like this

[maiden wadi]

Be careful with this in the Editor. You'll change your whole editor to Chinese. And it's really fun to find the options to swap it back.

[thin panther]

Wait really?! It changes editor localization too?!
That's awesome, and really bad design lol

[gray ingot]

I have not experienced it, but thanks for warning! 🙂

[maiden wadi]

If you call SetLocale or whatever it is from BP in PIE, it does. 😂 I've gotten good at getting back to the locale settings.

[thin panther]

I genuinely have no words 😆

[maiden wadi]

If you want to test it in PIE. Open a widget and go to it's designer tab and change it from here.

It'll change all loc in your editor to that for FText you have done, but won't actually change the entire editor's locale.

[gray ingot]

Yeah, i only used this

[maiden wadi]

Loc is fun. Enjoy the incoming hell.

[gray ingot]

Thanks! XD

[maiden wadi]

One thing I strongly recommend is finding a way to attach context notes to your exports. Can do this with C++ stringtables, I don't know how to do it with BP only.

[gray ingot]

"context notes to your exports" I don't really know what it means

[maiden wadi]

One example that always comes to mind to express it is Private. We have a military oriented game. So they translated the accessibility dropdown menu. EG Public/FriendsOnly/Private. They translated Private to the rank of Private instead of Private as in secret/exclusive. Identical word in English, not in other languages though. There are a lot of issues like that that pop up without context in translations.

[gray ingot]

Yeah, i know it, i don't really have translate miss meanings, so it is okey i think

I have only 2 langs in my game, and i am good at both so it is easy for me

If i understood you correctly

[maiden wadi]

I mean if you're your own Loc team, then easy times. 😂

[gray ingot]

Yeah, i am all in one

Xd

[steady night]

Hi im trying to change the direction midd air of my "projectile" (using ProjectileMovementcomponent)

tips ?

[maiden wadi]

There is a call for that.. sec

[maiden wadi]

Oh, that was for local space. It just sets velocity. What is your issue with this code here?

[steady night]

hm, its not working xD

hm got it working

np

[storm shale]

A yes

Average forum interaction

[copper chasm]

It's not super important, but I thought you could hide unconnected pins on a set node?

[trim matrix]

Hey all, I'm trying to add an impulse at a random point along the top edge of a plane (technically a thin cube cause I wanted the reverse side to render) aligned to the YZ axis but for some reason the force and particle always seem to spawn in the centre of the mesh. Anyone have any thoughts as to what could be going wrong?

[faint pasture]

your random is rerolling

Draw debug point to make sure you're cooking up the location you think you are

[maiden wadi]

You should be able to in the details panel.

If you mean the SetMembers node anyhow.

[copper chasm]

Yeah it's weird, I know it exists, I just don't see it on this set node

It's not the end of the world, just would look cleaner to the eye

[trim matrix]

Thank you very much for that advice, turns out I was completely off on scale 🤦‍♂️ 🙂

[crude helm]

Hi, I'm getting quite a headache with rotating and moving this template (big gray rectangle).

The idea is, get one of the arrows (top, down, left or right), then spawn a new room (for now the same room), at that location.
Easy enough, just get the selected arrow location and rotation and spawn the actor there. Works just fine.

Now, just need to choose one of arrows to connect with the original. Rotate the spawned room and, the part that is giving me headache, apply the necessary offset on it.

I got it working with Top and Bottom, so if I pick Top (red), it spawn the new room at the red arrow location, since it is top with top, it rotates 180º, then move it correctly. Same with bottom.

But for left and right, I cannot get it to move correctly. Since it is kind of moving where it should, I guess my problem is with my distance calculation some how, which is just the distance from the center to the selected arrow. Either that or how I'm reversing the forward/right vector.

Well something is definitely wrong, as the select case for direction selected has everything as -1.... I don't get it 🤯

[faint pasture]

protip, transform and inverse transform are your friends here

[wanton goblet]

I'm running into an issue where I'm running a line trace in a spawned BP, that's supposed to trace to the ground and derive the impact point to spawn a particle system, but for some reason, it refuses to react on hit with landscape or ground planes, so it always returns 0,0,0 as it's hit point. Not sure what I'm doing wrong here.

[faint pasture]

show more of the math driving the start and end points

[wanton goblet]

It's a passed through logic from the enemy attack one momnet

[maiden wadi]

Minus 0,0,1000000

[faint pasture]

You're tracing to the characters bottom of their foot and not 1 cm further

[wanton goblet]

Can you clarify

[faint pasture]

you're stopping the trace right before it hits the ground

[maiden wadi]

This

[faint pasture]

trace further down

[wanton goblet]

ah

ok

[maiden wadi]

If that doesn't work. Your floor isn't blocking visibility channel.

[wanton goblet]

hmmm, that set the trace going the wrong direction

odd

on sec

[faint pasture]

show math

[wanton goblet]

My mistake, just had the value inverted

@faint pasture @maiden wadi thanks!

[faint pasture]

Im surprised none of the traces barely hit but maybe your floor is perfectly flat

[wanton goblet]

in this test scene, it is

[haughty jolt]

why this cast failed???

i cast from my camera pawn to my character its allways failed -.-

[maiden wadi]

Is your camera pawn a MasterCharacterBP?

[maiden wadi]

You should try to change the way you think of casting. Instead of reading Cast To MasterCharacterBP, read this as Tread As MasterCharacterBP. Which it can only do if it is one. So your camera pawn has to inherit from MasterCharacterBP to be able to cast a pointer of your camera pawn to it.

[haughty jolt]

its jsut a pawn and my character jsut a character

[faint pasture]

What you mean is "When I cast the return value from GetPlayerCharacter to my custom pawn, it fails"

You're either doing this too early, or your player's character isn't a MasterCharacterBP

[haughty jolt]

waht can i do?

i odnt know waht you mean

i jsut wanna cast to my cahracter

why it not works -.-

[faint pasture]

Show your character BP

specifically the top right corner where it says what its parent class is

[bitter folio]

Hey so I made a dummy with a health bar, and im using interfaces for it. I think I have my Create WBP Dummy Int widget setup wrong as it does not update and I get the shown error every time its hit, how may I correct this?

[faint pasture]

You don't add it to the screen so it probably gets GC'd immediatly?

What class owns this widget?

[crude helm]

I'm trying to see how that should help.
Basically what you are saying is that I'm mixing local with world location?

[bitter folio]

wdym, I have this in the Dummy Blueprint and its an actor

[faint pasture]

What's your goal? I'm assuming you have 1 room placed already, and you want to place another at any of the 4 rotations such that a door or whatever those alignment objects are line up?

[faint pasture]

You probably want a widget component

That's how widgets end up in world space like hp bars above heads

if that's what you're after

[bitter folio]

right its in the world, I just cant get it to update at all

[faint pasture]

how? Show the full BP

do you have a widget component on the actor?

[bitter folio]

yeah

[faint pasture]

and you're creating a 2nd widget

saving a ref to it

but it's not visible anywhere

[bitter folio]

All the blueprints I have

[faint pasture]

Cast widgetcomponents widget to your dummy widget class and save that ref

[crude helm]

Align the arrow from one room to the other room.
It spawn the new room right where the arrow is.
So the new room center is right at the old room arrow. Now I need to rotate and offset it so both arrows align

[bitter folio]

Oh I see

[faint pasture]

Why are you doing this? You already have the widget, its in the widgetcomponent

[bitter folio]

Working

[faint pasture]

So there can be multiple valid offsets and rotations?

[bitter folio]

Old methods, I was trying to refrence how I did my health bar for the player but I went through like 3 diff ways and had left over code, with that being said ima go clean that up, ty for the help

[crude helm]

woudl say yes, but for now I set to only pick 1 arrow at the time so I can debug. It works fine top / bottom, but left right it doesn't quite get there

[faint pasture]

OK first off where does the rotation come from, or do you just pick that?

I'm assuming the rotation and the 2 things to line up are set in stone, now just to move the 2nd thing to line them up right?

[crude helm]

comes from the arrow name, each one ends with L, R, T, B.
It does rotate correctly, the issue is the offset movement

[faint pasture]

Do you rotate first then move or rotate and move in 1 shot?

If you rotate first it's easy, just move by Arrow.WorldLocation - OtherArrow.WorldLocation

[crude helm]

I was rotating firs, then moving, now I'm trying with set actor location and rotation node, which I don't know how it applies

[crude helm]

that is what it is doing, but just don't work for left / right

[faint pasture]

If it's all the same just rotate first then move, otherwise you need to effectively do all the rotation math on your own end

[crude helm]

I just don't get how the inverse transform would help since you mention it

[faint pasture]

why do you have all these multipliers, if you've already rotated, just subtract the world space positions and apply that as an offset

[faint pasture]

It would help if you were trying to do it in one shot

[crude helm]

was testing, but setting everything to -1 so I can get ride of it later is fine.

[crude helm]

so I guess this doesn't do it at once?

[faint pasture]

That does it all at once

you have not rotated by the time you go to get locations of stuff

it'll be easier to set rotation -> do the subtraction -> set location

[crude helm]

Oh, I see, I'm subtracting, then rotating

[faint pasture]

yeah you'd need to rotate the subtraction in that case, with all sorts of math to consider how the arrow moves when you rotate the room

[crude helm]

should be easy to invert those nodes, lets see

[faint pasture]

It should be literally this simple
Set Room2.Rotation
Offset = Room1.Arrow.WorldLocation - Room2.Arrow.WorldLocation
Room2.WorldLocation += Offset

[crude helm]

Oh, you are also basing off the other arrow location, I'm basing off the bp center

noted, well it is the same, center of new room is the same location of the arrow

[crude helm]

Holly Fuc#@ look at all the sheet I was trying to do
dead simple

Thanks so much!

I'm on this crap for days. Had it working at some point but only around the first room, anything beyond room 3 would start to get offset again
Now it is beautiful 🥹

I can finally work on some new rooms and progress

[eternal gate]

Any way to get this bug to go away aside from restarting the editor?

The variable type changing from "thing" to "LIVECODING thing" after a live coding compile

[desert juniper]

heyy that looks awesome. I've also been working on some room / dungeon generation. it feels so good to see when it finally starts coming together

[crude helm]

Don't tell me, the struggle is real

[lofty rapids]

are you using c++ ?

i think #cpp will probably know more about it ?

[desert juniper]

fr. i've been working on mine for about 2 months.
there was definitely a lot of struggle in rotating the rooms / hallways to face the correct way around a pivot. had to do some math. i don't do math 👿

[crude helm]

Yah, I had my two brain cells almost frying trying to figure out this rotation and movement after rotating, I left the project a side for couple of times.

[desert juniper]

are you doing multi levels by any chance? (buildings higher / lower)
I've thought about faking it rather than doing crazy 3d delauney triangulation

[crude helm]

I thinking about it, it should be as simple as adding an arrow upwards now that the system is working, but I'll go with door locks and some sort of design before going vertical

[desert juniper]

yeah KISS is a good strategy lol. after this I'm faking as much as i can to avoid spending months working on a single system again.

[copper chasm]

I decided to start my prototype project over to be more forward with gameplay tags

😠

[gentle urchin]

No regrets™️

[wraith loom]

Is save game the only way to save player info to a server? If so, what would be the best way to save information? E.g. each player has a save file which holds everything, or each player has multiple save files for different information.

[scarlet timber]

save game is not ideal for servers you should use databases or EOS

[humble matrix]

can someone help me get physics?

in my game

[lunar sleet]

#multiplayer

[lunar sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/no-ragrets-no-regrets-fail-gif-4946750

[gentle urchin]

Ugh refactoring this Quest system really is painfull

[lunar sleet]

Will be worth it tho

[visual ember]

that's the first quest

[gentle urchin]

yeah just gotta rework everything about it

once it's done its gonna be good tho.. I think

[visual ember]

what's being fed to these?

[visual ember]

*let's pretend we didn't see it*

[frosty heron]

Nvm I just scrolled up and now it make sense

Usually after more than 4 else if ladder I would reconsider what I'm doing

[lunar sleet]

I mean… that whole thing is a mess

Idk why people think getting some fancy node/noodle plugin means it’s ok to make your code as illegible as possible, cause the lines are more straight

And that’s just the aesthetics lol

[frosty heron]

There is also some degree of precision with floats,

Probably want the node with error tolerance

[lunar sleet]

If whatever is plugged into all those branches is the same value, the first and second checks are completely identical

[wild crater]

Sorry for the late reply, but yea that's a good lead!

[tardy spire]

I'm new to Unreal Engine 5. I was trying to follow a tutorial on how to create a simple kart racer game, but when I tried to implement the wheel rotation movement from the tutorial, it didn't work. Sorry for my bad English. Here is the video I was following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcNsToxPm_U. I’m having a problem with the section of the video around 8:00 to 9:00. Please help!

[young meteor]

Hey folks

Is there a way to "snap meshes together" using sockets? (I know how to add an actual socket. Just not if I can snap them together easily in my level using those)
Or if you know a better way let me know.

I have a few different track sections that I would like to be able to line up easily.
Like:
Straight
45 degree bend
90 degree bend
crossover

[frosty heron]

what snaps to what?

[young meteor]

So that I can snap two track sections together.
Without socket I feel I can line up the pivot point to a precise location on one end of the track. But I need something to snap the next section to. Thinking a socket might be the way.

Stuff like such tubes for example

[versed sun]

In game or in editor?

[young meteor]

editor.

Hoping it would help down the line for in-game too, but that is not a requirement right now.

[dark drum]

Does anyone know if it's possible to have an editor utility actor call something if it's destroyed/removed from the level in the editor?

[versed sun]

are they uniform sizes?
Looks like they are

[young meteor]

Like 500 by 500 for example you mean?

[versed sun]

yes , but top one is 1000x 500

set your snap size in viewport

[young meteor]

Could maybe make them be

[versed sun]

45° might be hard

[young meteor]

Right, gives trouble when I start using 45 degree bends though.

I could maybe center the gismo and make sure they are 500 by 500 for example.
Then I can use the align tool, and move along local gismo direction after that.

Just figured there would be some sort of easy customizable snapping.

[gentle urchin]

Editor tool for placing them running constructionscript logic

[azure walrus]

Hello, do I have an error here? when I set the Bool Danger as True, I always get false

[frosty heron]

you need to understand which one get run first

event begin play run as soon as the actor is spawned

who knows when your event danger is called

[versed sun]

My brains thinks:
In construction, add a small collision Sphere around each socket
Check to see it it overlaps another meshes socket's Sphere
If it does, Set actor location to the difference between the socket points

but brain has been wrong before....

[gentle urchin]

Nice brain

Thinks same as mine

[young meteor]

haha

[gentle urchin]

So its good from my pov 🤣

[azure walrus]

ahh yeas ok Thanks 🙂

[young meteor]

What a smart brain you have. It's almost as good as mine 😄

[gentle urchin]

Also

You can have it move in a grid

[versed sun]

you can hold info in the socket's tag if you need to have different types

[young meteor]

Need to look into how construction scripts work.
But after that I guess an overlap sphere to trigger and then setting location based on a socket transform would work.

[young meteor]

Not sure what that means at this point.

[versed sun]

If you have Tubes, and you dont want them to connect to Wires, you can give the socket a Tag, and check for that before snapping

[gentle urchin]

Wowowow

Is that new?

[tardy spire]

Can anyone please help me? I'm new here.

[versed sun]

I think i did it in ue4

[copper chasm]

I'm hoping I don't regret it later - I'm not sure why I would, but I usually find a way lol

[gentle urchin]

I never saw it

[versed sun]

Advanced Dropdown

[gentle urchin]

Always looped them and compared the name
....

[visual ember]

https://dontasktoask.com/

[copper chasm]

So I'm working on character creation, and I want the character creation system to save the character data - would that just dump right into a savegame function? Wouldn't it make more sense to dump it into a SaveCharacter function and then put any characters we have into the SaveGame?

[frosty heron]

Saving is just the act of writing to storage

you can do what ever you like

just make sure the design make sense

[copper chasm]

I guess this is more a design question than a blueprint question, yeah

[frosty heron]

You can write straight away, you can pack the data and write it together with other attributes, it really depend on you imo

[copper chasm]

I want to think long term but I also don't wanna try and learn to swim in the ocean, if that makes sense

[gentle urchin]

Some games seem to save entire worlds lol

2 minutes in - savefile >50mB

[copper chasm]

If I keep the saving strictly to the character creator for now, later when I build a proper save game I can just feed that data in

[frosty heron]

but the optimal solution for something like this is abitary tbh, it really depends on the project.

not really an aswer that people can just say, oh just do X

you can always keep it simple ofc

[copper chasm]

sure, I guess I was asking more for opinions on my thought process

[frosty heron]

Press button -> Finalize Character -> Save

My game is 1 Character Per slot

So i just create a new save slot when character is finalized

Save game for slot 1 , 2 , settings

[copper chasm]

I get you

I think 😂

Is there any reason I'd want to put my tags anywhere other than defaulttags.ini?

[gentle urchin]

Organization

Collections

Editing Rules

[copper chasm]

UE will load tags from every source I tell it to, and I can put each "category" in its own source?

Maybe a little too compartmentalized, but I don't hate the idea

[tardy spire]

@visual ember What should I do? I can't speak English very well. I use ChatGPT to translate, but I'm not sure. This was my question.

[frosty heron]

I add tags as native tags so they are reachable in cpp

[gentle urchin]

I dont split them at all yet. Probably comes back to bite me

[copper chasm]

the adhd, it forces me to start every thought with "how can I do this with the least amount of self-sabotage" lol

[frosty heron]

doddle on paper

Planning before attacking

ofc I am never satisfied too because as we learn, we think of better ways to do stuff

[gentle urchin]

Smart

[frosty heron]

but if you keep re-doing your work, you will never finish the game too

[gentle urchin]

I use Miro for this

But sometimes pen and paper is much smoother

[copper chasm]

If I had a dollar for every notepad I own with some bit of game info doodling in it

I'd pay someone to make the game

[gentle urchin]

Wouldnt pay very much huh

[copper chasm]

I have a BOOKSHELF of notebooks 😦

[gentle urchin]

250 notepads barely get you 2 hours these days

[gentle urchin]

Now transmute them into a game !

[copper chasm]

https://tenor.com/view/wizard-gif-12220203423945843896

[gentle urchin]

I have a (virtual) bookshelf full of abandoned projects

[frosty heron]

I love doing UI

probably the most time I had fun when doing my character creation

I'm doing a very painful way of loading the assets to

using FStreamableManager

[gentle urchin]

Painful?

[frosty heron]

woulda use UE5Coro if I am not such a noobie

it would be 2 lines vs 30

[gentle urchin]

Its 2 lines for me 🤯

Well 3 but

Curly dont count

(Found out you can also do batch loading of assets in a bp macro )

[frosty heron]

void AAGCharacterPreview::ArmourLoaded(UObject* LoadedObject)
{
    if(IsValid(LoadedObject) && IsValid(LoadedObject = Cast<USkeletalMesh>(LoadedObject)))
    {
        USkeletalMesh* ArmourSkeletalMesh = Cast<USkeletalMesh>(LoadedObject);
        GetMesh()->SetSkeletalMesh(ArmourSkeletalMesh);
        OutlineArmour->SetSkeletalMesh(ArmourSkeletalMesh);
        //Set Mesh Anim Blueprint to the Armour Anim BP
        if (ArmourAbpPayload == nullptr)
        {
            ArmourAbpPayload = NewObject<UStreamablePayload>(this);
        }
        ArmourAbpPayload->SoftClassRef = CosmeticDataArmour.AnimClass;
        FStreamableClassPayloadDelegate ArmourAnimClassPayloadDelegate;
        ArmourAnimClassPayloadDelegate.BindUFunction(this, "ArmourABPLoaded");
        ArmourAbpPayload->AsyncLoadClassStreamable(ArmourAnimClassPayloadDelegate);
        //Start Loading Armour Outline Material

        for (int i = 0; i < CosmeticDataArmour.OutlineMaterials.Num(); i++)
        {    // Load Every Outline Material for the Armour //
            LoadArmourOutline(CosmeticDataArmour.OutlineMaterials[i].Material, CosmeticDataArmour.OutlineMaterials[i].SlotName);
        }
        
    }
    PostMeshLoaded.Broadcast();
}

^ What I got 🤡

Coulda just be something like this

AttachedAudio.Add( UGameplayStatics::SpawnSoundAttached(co_await UE5Coro::Latent::AsyncLoadObject(HomingSfx), PSC));

cbf refactoring

[gentle urchin]

Puf

This looks painful :p

Im using a lambda thing

Thats my level of knowledge 😂

Which just calls the function when the ssset is loaded

In a case like yours id batch them all, and call the function when they're all loaded

[copper chasm]

So the thing I liked about using Enums was that I could use them as data and also convert them to player facing information - with gameplay tags, I'm going to have to manually convert Ancestry.Dwarf.Forge to string values that will display in a readable way, I think

unless I just handle that strictly through widgets somehow, which I think makess the most sense

[frosty heron]

converting them is one node away?

[copper chasm]

if I convert to a string, it's structured in an ugly way

[frosty heron]

can you show an example?

[copper chasm]

it's not a proper example, but

[frosty heron]

why do you need to convert them too?

Enum is just an integer with a name

[copper chasm]

If during character creation, you pick Gnome, and it gives you the gameplay tag Ancestry.Gnome, and then you pick the Sensate Heritage, it gives you Ancestry.Gnome.Sensate, and then I need to translate that to show Gnome and Sensate respectively on a character sheet widget

I could convert the enum to a string and use that for UI, if I convert the gameplay tag to a string, it's got gameplay tag formatting

I'm thinking it's gonna be better code, but twice the work

which is fine, I just am not sure if there's a better approach

(not an actual use case example, just showing I'll have to edit that string or set the gameplay tag to a UI text specific or something)

before, when you picked gnome, it set the ancestry enum variable on that character, and I could just pull that and convert it for UI

[frosty heron]

not sure what the problem with this. You can always just create a function to format the text.
not to mention you can't really do typo so less headache with bugs.

if it's for definition you can just make a map pair of GameplayTag and FName(description)

[copper chasm]

How would you format it to not show part of the tag?

[frosty heron]

like the . ?

just replace the . with space

you already convert it to Fname/String you can format it as you wish to display as a text.

[copper chasm]

hang on let me see if I can do what you're suggesting, I'm likely just ignorant of the format node

[frosty heron]

you can format the name/string

[copper chasm]

Sure, I just meant I'm ignorant of how to format it in a way that would ignore parts of the name

I've only ever really used format to combine multiple variables into a single line of text, not to chop up a variable

[frosty heron]

can you elaborate on "coverting" the tag for UI?

[copper chasm]

In the insance of my above screenshot, I only need the word "Sensate" to show on the screen

It's probably better to just use a map like you suggested earlier

instead of trying to subtract text from every tag with formatting

[frosty heron]

so you just need the last text from the tag?

[copper chasm]

In most cases, probably

[frosty heron]

you can just format it, find the index of the last . found and just use that as the text

Substrings or w/e it's called

i am out of touch

it should be just one node away too

I used enum too for something simple. Mostly UI stuff like to define pages

but for something more defined like attributes, characters, types, etc. I would totally use game play tags

[copper chasm]

well eventually, for the character races, the info will be relevant for lots of other stuff (conversations, race specific feats, whatever) so it made sense to convert it

I'll just try the map for now

kinda works like I'd want, and then I can use the gameplay tag for game data and the enums for user facing data

and if i build the data table row to naming conventions matching the gameplay tags, that would make that much easier too I think

cool, off we go

[frosty heron]

Im not sure why you want to involve enum here

[copper chasm]

also to prevent typos and make selection easier

[frosty heron]

gameplay tag is there to prevent typos

[wraith loom]

Common sense tells me that is true, but why?

[frosty heron]

Enum is just a named integer, you already have gameplay tags, I don't see any reason to involve enum there

[frosty heron]

What?

It really depends on your game man, you don't need databases for every project.

Look at baldur's gate, multiplayer game, but we save the file locally

[copper chasm]

the enum is for the player facing data, and I can't get the gameplay tag to format the text the way I want, it's potato potato from a map of tags to names or tags to an enum containing all the possible names

[frosty heron]

I am doing listen server too, no data base, nothing. Just save the data locally for each player.

[wraith loom]

I don't trust players enough for that

[frosty heron]

you can format the text in any way you like. I suggest to look at strings manipulation first before dropping enum

[frosty heron]

Is your game dedicated server?

[frosty heron]

You don't need to trust them, if you are making co-op game, you shouldn't care if they cheat or manipulate the save file

[wraith loom]

I'm not making a co-op game. I'm going to try EOS.

[frosty heron]

if you are using listen-server model, you shouldn't waste your time preventing cheaters

because you can't

even a 10 years old kid can use cheat engine

[copper chasm]

Would you mind showing me a basic example? Because looking at the string palette for how to parse down the info, I cannot for the life of me see how it would be any less effort than just typing the 8 races into an enum and using those

[frosty heron]

8 races into an enum?

I am not understanding the objective here

why are you using enum at all

so if there are like 100 races, you are going to make 100 enum?

that's labour extensive, apart it still doesn't make sense to me anyway.

[copper chasm]

I guess I just don't understand the manipulation

I'll look into it

[gentle urchin]

ParseString (delimiter = .)

[copper chasm]

I got that far, but then i don't know what to do with the index

I know he said lastindex, so I'd be getting the last .

[gentle urchin]

Ancestry.Dwarf.Sensate becomes
StringArray(
0 = Ancestry
1 = Dwarf
2 = Seesate)

[copper chasm]

and then probably something about left chop or whatever

[gentle urchin]

No chop needed

This splits it

At the . Mark

[copper chasm]

google is so difficult to read through for anything other than the most basic ue tutorial trash D: