blueprint

[astral mist]

Consider the communication toward your game mode (or wherever you'll implement this) as well.

Are you binding or manually setting it up? It's often a bad reference or some other silly error that tends to get overlooked due to lack of code sanitation

[astral flame]

Im binding to my BP_thirdperson Char

[astral mist]

welp what if said character reference isn't available at the time?

[astral flame]

Let me go through my code maybe I missed something.

[astral mist]

assumptions break code!

[astral flame]

OMFG U R SO RIGHT I DIDNT PUT A CHAR REF XD

BRB let me try this.

[astral mist]

lesson: sanitize your code, double check everything and if a vital reference isn't valid... maybe sound an air horn or something.

[faint pasture]

Simple setup:

Character:
GainXP -> we have enough to level? -> yes -> call CanLevelUp
CanLevelUp -> math -> show widget LevelUpScreen
LevelUp -> apply choices

LevelUpScreen:
Initialize -> get at character, read its data, cook up choices, present them
OnChoiceClicked -> call LevelUp on Character, passing the choice data

[astral flame]

Okay so On level up I can do a if statement to apply the UI LevelUp_Choices

[faint pasture]

you present the UI when you CAN level up, and the UI makes the call to actually apply the choice

Here's a good way to think about it, hardcode some stuff into Character so your keyboard inputs (say buttons 1, 2, 3) can just call LevelUp, passing over some data about the choice.

Get the whole thing working with zero UI, just print strings and inputs

Then, just have the UI call the same events the inputs are

[astral flame]

So I have to do a function of each upgrade like for one of my upgrades it called "The Eternal Pulse" It upgrades the players stamina by 15% at lvl 1 so will the UI call the function of Eternmal Pulse?

[faint pasture]

Do you already have the functionality to do this effect ignoring any UI?

Could you press button -> apply EternalPulse?

get that working first

[dusky cobalt]

This thing that is logic about pages totally doesn't make sense.
Also you are setting variables on widget from the component, widget should just listen to changes and component should call (broadcast) them. If you put so much logic in one place and not separate concerns it's harder to fix the real thing.

[astral flame]

No, I do not have function ready yet... its more about the whole idea of figuring out how to call said upgrade and display the UI

[faint pasture]

Get the functionality working first

you don't know what "data about a choice" even looks like right now, figure that out

[astral flame]

So, this is what its going to look like, there will be 3 tarot cards to choose from each with a different description underneath said cards

[faint pasture]

idk if it's a class, a struct, a string, no clue until you figure out what your effects even are

Here's your mission:
Get pressing P on your keyboard to apply EternalPulse to your character

[astral flame]

Okay. Gotchu Will work on that now.

would you make eternal pulse a function?

[faint pasture]

Many many ways to skin that cat

if you're just starting, I'd make each effect an actor or component probably

[astral flame]

Would you have multiple functions because I also want them to have 3 levels then once the 3 levels are maxed out it can be displayed into the shop

[faint pasture]

you are putting that cart way in front of the horse

[astral flame]

Okay So I will prob make them components

[faint pasture]

Here's what I'd do for the first pass at making effects/buffs/whatever they are.
I'd make a base actor or component class BaseEffect (there's reasons for both, actors are easiest), with some functionality like Event Apply and Event UnApply, and a variable for what character they should apply to

then just subclass per effect

[inland walrus]

I get that but for what I have it's working, I just need to calculate the pages

it already does it if I'm calculating the whole inventory, but I just need it to do specific categories

[astral flame]

Okay give me like 5 mins Going to try this.

[faint pasture]

Effect_EternalPulse:
Event Apply -> TargetCharacter.MaxStamina *= 1.15
Event UnApply -> TargetCharacter.MaxStamina /= 1.15

[astral flame]

So I have an actor class as The Eternal Pulse lv 1 but how would I apply it to said third personal character

@faint pasture

[faint pasture]

how does that actor know about what character it cares about?

Something spawns that actor right?

[astral flame]

well the player would spawn it when selected

or am i thinking about it all wrong.

[faint pasture]

no that's along the right path

something somewhere is spawning it and will be able to set the effects variable MyCharacter to whatever it should be

in your case, the character would spawn it and set Effect.MyCharacter = self

give your base effect class a character ref variable so it can be told who to affect

[inland walrus]

Any ideas on a fix for this page issue, been at it for hours and it's exhausting😭

[astral flame]

@faint pasture why wont this work?

this is inside thirdpersonchar

[faint pasture]

Do you really want to have the definition of every single effect just be in the character?

[faint pasture]

I mean that'll work but it'll be a damn nightmare if you ever want to do anything beyond this

[astral flame]

I just want to get it working then transfer them

[faint pasture]

ok here's a question

where does the data representing if the character has Eternal Pulse applied to them or not live?

[astral flame]

idk tbh

[faint pasture]

The answer is nowhere

so if you had an effect like "removes Eternal Pulse", you couldn't do it

because you can't know if EternalPulse is applied or not

[faint pasture]

This will work for now though, if you just wanted to get UI to call stuff like this

but there'll be no Undo

because you have no way to know if a thing happened or not

the numbers just got magically changed somehow

[astral flame]

so i have to do a actor component, how do i call the third person char

[faint pasture]

already told you

the thing spawning this effect can tell the effect what character it cares about

Say the spawning logic was in your character:
Spawn thing -> set Thing.MyCharacter = self

How do you know who your boss is? Whoever gave you the job told you.

you have a variable MyBoss which is blank when you're unemployed and when you get a job they let you know who YourBoss is

[astral flame]

ok i get it now

Okay, So I was eating while reading this. My only question is Can I make the event of my player leveling up spawn the actor

[inland walrus]

bump

[faint pasture]

yes

[wanton mural]

I have a component as part of a blueprint, but even though that component has collision, when I do an "On Component Hit" event, it never registers a hit unless phyiscs are turned on. It can't do queries at all. Is this by design or am I doing something wrong?

[faint pasture]

projectile movement moves the root of the actor

just make the root your mesh

if you want your mesh's hitbox to be what it moves around

[astral flame]

is there a way to get my bp_thirdpersoncharacter TABBED NEXT TO THE MAP

it was before now its nto.

@faint pasture

XD

[faint pasture]

just drag the tab

[astral flame]

Its not working.

[faint pasture]

aight then

[astral flame]

Had to restart UE for some reason sorry to bothe ryou

[wanton mural]

Okay some follow ups.

I know that putting it as the root fixes things, but I'm curious as to why on component hit doesn't even register? Since the mesh is a mesh component, it should follow that it hits things?

If I make the mesh a root (which I was doing before), I can't rotate the mesh in the viewport.

If I make the root a collision component, my only options are cube, sphere, capsule, which kinda sucks. Is there a way to make a custom collision component?

[faint pasture]

Things only hit when moved by a movement component or physics

Event Hit doesn't just happen when a thing ends up touching another thing

Hit isn't built in at the base level, it's not automatic, the code doing the moving has to detect the hit and trigger it

[wanton mural]

Is there a way to forward that to other components then? Or is there a better way to have multiple/complicated hit boxes on something?

[faint pasture]

make your own movement

What are you trying to do here though, what's the actual problem?

[wanton mural]

Well I'm trying to just make a hit box for a projectile that's not a cube, sphere, or capsule. And in the future, I'll be curious about things like hitboxes for different actors in general

[faint pasture]

Or just use physics, attached actors will trigger event hit when moved by physics because the actual thing being moved is a merge of all their colliders together

[faint pasture]

How slow is this projectile going?

[wanton mural]

Physics is more spendy than queries though right? I was doing it with physics before and it worked fine, but I wanted a bit more control

And it's going the same speed as the default projectile in the first person template. 3000 m/s.

[faint pasture]

Then why do you need a complex hitbox?

In what scenario does the shape or size of a projectile ever matter? They're pointlike in my project. I don't use colliders at all, just line or sphere traces

[wanton mural]

Why wouldn't it? Different sized bullets, waves, AOE's etc

[faint pasture]

What do you mean waves?

[wanton mural]

Also, this extends, like I said, to things like characters. If I can only use the collision on the root, then I can't add a component and use its hit box to generate hit events

[faint pasture]

You can do whatever you want with your own movement component

Just the built in projectile movement component doesn't consider anything attached to the root, and for good measure

[wanton mural]

then why does the first person template or even lyra example use projectiles? Even games like destiny use collisions and not just simple hit scans

Anyway, the actual part that matters, not my game design, is that the hits are not generated by the components, but by the movement component then?

[faint pasture]

Because they just put the thing they wanna sweep as root

Are you trying to shoot a katamari damacy ball?

[carmine scaffold]

hello, im trying to create a damage system using Bp interface and i want to know if my player has a certain gameplaytag in order to cause damage if not it will damage the enemy. is this possible?

also, will casting be better for this situation?

[wanton mural]

I'm mostly playing around with a bunch of unique guns. Right now I'm trying to make a few "gravity" guns, so I want to do something like the tractor cannon from destiny that just pushes away everything in its path, but then I want to do something that kind of drags everything in its path

[faint pasture]

Spell it out in game mechanics

When you do X you want Y to happen if Z

[dawn gazelle]

Figure it out yet?

[somber gate]

What's the best way to set up abilities for characters in Blueprints?
For example, I have a Mannequin character and I want to add some new abilities to it. However, I also want each ability to be reusable across different characters. I assume this means I need to make each ability a function or something similar, but I'm not sure how that works in Blueprints.

Especially, the Timeline only exists in EventGraph.

I assume there's a way to collapse the function in the spawn laser box?

[dawn gazelle]

GAS if you're willing to invest the time to learn it.... Otherwise, you could use ActorComponents that you then grant to actors. If you really need to, you can make abilities their own actors, setting their owner as the pawn that can use them, and keeping track of the owned actor abilities through a component.

[somber gate]

Hello guys, what is the object of the animblueprint here? I've tried everything.....

[onyx tapir]

Mesh > Get Anim Instance > Connect
iirc

[somber gate]

Thank you, I'll try.

Working 🔥

blueprint is a lot of fun, but it really wears me out sometimes.

[carmine scaffold]

@faint pasture basically check if player has gameplay tag like invincibility or something in that sense. If so enemy gets damaged if not player gets damaged

I want to know if this is possible in an interface

[dark drum]

All actors have an event called apply damage. When triggered on an actor, it'll trigger the on received any damage event. You can create custom damage types that can be passed through. You can create a custom damage object and setup base logic for performing calculations/checks. These can then be handled on the person receiving the damage to decide what to do.

[dark drum]

You could but either a component or using the built in damage system would be better.

Too much copy pasting if you use an interface.

[molten panther]

Hi All,
NEED HELP!!
I am working on a 3D Platformer game for my portfolio in gaming and I am completely new to the Unreal Engine (No prior experience and Started on UE 5.5.4). I am using blueprints for this project and Stuck in one situation.
Requirement: --->
I want to create a breakable platform where player will jump and land on it then, it will start shaking for 3 seconds and then it will break and player will fall.

Issue: --->
I am facing an issue where player jumps and land on platform. It shakes for 3 second correctly and then both platform and player falls to the ground. But, The platform doesn't break immediately after shaking stops. It breaks when it falls to the ground. I want it to break immediately after the shaking stops.
I have attached the video of what is happening.

What I have done so far: --->

• I have added a Static mesh and created a Geometry collection out of it.
• Fractured it using UE 5.5.4 Fracture mode.
• Then Created a Blueprint actor and added the Geometry collection to it.
• Then added collision as a child component to Geometry collection.
• Added the logic of my requirements to the event graph. the flow is working partially except the breaking of platform.
• Tried to use solutions recommended by ChatGPT and Youtube and forums. Didn't work or Didn't get in my head 🙃
• I have attached some reference images of blueprint if it helps.

Not Sure Where I am going wrong. Need help with this. Thanks in advance! 🙂

[trim matrix]

Hey, hope everybody’s doing well. I’m building a game where the player is on a planet, but I’m having a problem with my camera. When I’m underneath the planet, the camera behaves oddly since it’s not aligned with the usual Z-axis. Is there a way to fix this? I’m using a spectator camera.

[inland walrus]

Sorry bro I fell asleep, I've just seen your dm, thank you so much man!!

[lost shale]

Quick question right here. I'm a unity c# dev who has recently started learning UE5 with blueprints and I have ran into an issue where a variable of type actor seemingly gets discarded from memory when I delete the actor referenced, So I was wondering if there is an equivalent to the new keyword in Blueprints, or a way to prevent variables from being discarded by the garbage collector? Help would be very appreciated:)!

[wanton mural]

well if you delete it then yeah it's gone. What are you trying to do exactly?

are you saying that the actual variable disappears from the editor instead of being null?

[lost shale]

No, it is still in the editor, but it appears that I cannot assign to it afterwards. Even when I assign to the variable, it still appears to be invalid. I know from prior unity experience where I deleted a object and I think either a list or object refence got removed from memory afterwards so I suspect it might be the reason

[wanton mural]

Are you using the Destroy Actor node?

also, share a screenshot if you can

[lost shale]

Yes, I am using destroy actor

[wanton mural]

when you get the chance, share some screenshots and that might be able to help us narrow down the issue 🙂

[maiden wadi]

Where you're making it fall, you need to create a field so that it fractures.

[dark drum]

You can set the variable to null (leave it empty) if you want to just clear the ref. Using destroy actor will destroy it from the world and mark it for garbage collection.

[lost shale]

@dark drum Does this mean any variables referencing the actor also get added to garbage collection after destroy actor is called? Or will it be left without a valid reference? or something else?

[dark drum]

If you destroy an actor, anything references that point to it will become null/invalid once it gets garbage collected. Before then you'll get log spam telling you the actor is pending garbage collection if you attempt to do anything on it.

[trim matrix]

hello, I wanted to make it so that when I enter the trigger box, a cutscene would start first, and when I enter another trigger box, it takes me to another map, and when I enter the one from the cutscene, it starts playing, but after a second it takes me to another level. Can someone help me, please?

[willow gate]

Do the trigger sphere and the trigger box overlap so that the player could be in both at once?

Also you're not checking for the player specifically in any way so any actor that enters either of those colliders will trigger these events.

[lime crow]

What's the beat way to handle the hud when a player dies? Setting all the references up or is it just easier to remove from Parent then recreate the hud again?

[faint pasture]

You don't need an interface, you just need some common way to call DealDamage

It's built in at the actor level but you can use an interface, a component, a common base class, whatever you want.

The code after DealDamage can check for tags and do the reflection etc. just subtract health from target unless target has invincibility, then subtract from attacker

[faint pasture]

Does dying have to imply that the pawn gets destroyed?

Or can being dead just be a bool

[mild jacinth]

hey im having some troubles with httpblueprint plugin provided by epic. anyone know how can I get nested json fields?

[lime crow]

The Pawn gets repossessed

[faint pasture]

You need to filter, either at the collision level or after begin. Overlap gets called. Unless you want to play a cutscene when a bullet overlaps the box, or an AI, or a landscape

[faint pasture]

Do you mean respawned?

I would just have a reset event and you can just keep the same pawn going the whole time. Unless you really wanna destroy and recreate it for some reason.

[lime crow]

So I have an custom event that ragdolls the player. Then in the game mode .. yeah basically respawn then posses the new instance of manny. So effectively when I call things on the hud I will get an access none, because as you know unreal only creates one version of the hud. So instead of setting all the references would it not be easier to remove the hud from Parent and recreate the hud?

[faint pasture]

If you insist on destroying and recreating the character, then yes, that'd probably be the easiest.

Just remove HUD from parent when the thing is actually destroyed and the rest of it should just work, you already have the bit to spawn the HUD and add it to viewport

Assuming the code's in your character, not your player controller. Where does this code live?

[lime crow]

You recon that's better than setting all the references?

[faint pasture]

I reckon it's better to just reuse the same pawn, but it really doesn't matter. Whatever you find is easiest

[lime crow]

Ahhh yeah it's a bit involved. So I have a hud class that spawns the hud widget to the screen. Then in the Player controller I do all my hud logic

[faint pasture]

Just recall the bit that sets up the widget.

[lime crow]

The hud class adds the widget to the viewport

[faint pasture]

When

All you gotta do is nuke the widget and make a new one when the pawn is destroyed. Whatever making a new one looks like, just hook in there.

There's probably some on-possessed node you can use to trigger it

[lime crow]

I see! Thanks. So when the hud gets called it will just automatically call any events that are on there? Like reset health ect

[frosty heron]

Resetting health?

Sounds kinda nasty

Hud shouldn't need to ever reset any variable.

At most you can make it point to a new owner to read

Then just display and initialize the attribute on possess or on owner change

[tender canyon]

If I use a Set Leader Pose Component, how do I use a Montage with it?

anyone can tell me？

[ruby cobalt]

I want to use the object orientation as a value to control sounds. but I have trouble understanding how the rotator values work, sometimes the Y axis changing will instantly "flip" or "offset" the X axis value. Is there a way to convert that?

[frosty heron]

It will just follow the lead component.

Montage or not is irrelevant

You can use montage or anim, the end result is the component you set to follow a lead comp will do just that.

Comes with drawback too, you might want to look at epic article in regards to modular character

[faint pasture]

Explain the desired mechanic. You want the sound to do what when the state is what

[tender canyon]

Do you mean that my body parts will also make the same montage as the main body?

I understand it，thank you

[spice viper]

I like your post listing what you tried and good explanation. I'm not super well versed on fracture physics, but it looks like it requires a physics collision which happens when it hits the ground. Try once the time has run out and physics is enabled, try calling these nodes

Add Impulse
Add Force
Add Angular Impulse
Add Radial Force

on the platform.

If that doesn't work, maybe 'hack' it with an invisible plane right below it that the platform hits as if it were hitting the ground. You could destroy that fake ground the next frame so the player doesn't hit.

[ruby cobalt]

not sure yet but for example sound volume can be controlled by object pitch..

the sound comes from elsewhere and the connection between UE and sound is already working.. my issue is how rotator value seems to "jump" i believe this is a solution around the gimbal lock problem but i'm not sure

[molten panther]

Yeah, I found workaround for it. So, I created a master field blueprint class. set it's activation type as on tick. and put that on my platform. so, when i step on the platform it shakes for 3 seconds (it doesn't have physics applied yet). then due to on tick event on the master field creates damage impulse on every tick. so it breaks the platform and as after 3 seconds the physics are enable, it kabloooms the platform. But, now facing an issue is that when the platform breaks, player doesn't fall to ground. Now debugging on that.

[dawn gazelle]

I'm not really familiar with the httpblueprint plugin, but I imagine that you use a structure to define the output. If you're trying to get the "player" field, then you'd probably need to create another structure that contains those particular field names and add it to your main HTTP result structure as the type for the "player" field.

[mild jacinth]

i tested around and googled etc, what worked for me was accessing nested json objecfts

[willow gate]

Hey all. In reference to my question yesterday about keeping my player inside the screen bounds by reseting the position to the oposite side when they get a certain distance outside of the screen, I figured it out and so I thought I'd share a bit of the code for anyone interested. Turns out that ProjectWorldToScreen and DeprojectScreenToWorld were the nodes I really needed. This function runs on a timer in a component on any actor that needs to stay in the screen (in this case, the player and the asteroids). I use a sequence to look for each edge (right, left, top bottom) and then make positional adjustments accordingly:

[faint pasture]

Well yeah, pitch use and roll break down at the extremes

The same orientation can be represented by infinite pitch yaw roll values

Try dot product, drive the volume by how much the things forward vector points up.

[molten panther]

Found the Solution to it. Need to add chaos field in the Platform blueprint. and make the activation type to On Tick. Rest of the flow is correct only.
Thanks for the suggestions 🙂

[dreamy marten]

One small suggestion, you seem to have that piece of code executed many times in your function, why not create a local variable for that "screen position" variable and execute the code only once?

Same for those two pieces of code

[willow gate]

Good suggestion.

[willow gate]

I'll implement that now. Thanks m8!

[livid flare]

Quick question, when and where unbind event dispatchers?

[willow gate]

That is contextual. What are you trying to do?

[livid flare]

I have a lot of event dispatchers bind in the begin play of many actors, so not referring to a specific use case, I was also wondering what are the conditions when I don't need to unbind them

[dreamy marten]

It really depends what those dispatchers are there for. Overall you should bind them only when needed and unbind them once you don't need them anymore for anything

[willow gate]

Well the answer is still pretty contextual unfortunately. 😉

Generally speaking, BeginPlay/Init are a good place to bind if you need the actor to always listen. Otherwise you just bind when needed. Unbinding is only necessary if you plan to keep the actor in the game world but you don't want it to listen for the event dispatcher anymore.

[dreamy marten]

It's mostly a matter of keeping control over your code. If those dispatchers trigger "context sensitive" code that may be problematic if triggered in some scenarios, then you will need to be more careful with binding/unbinding them

Random example: I you have a dispatcher that update health and can trigger the death of the character if health is < 0, if you don't unbind it you may trigger death multiple times which could cause issues

[livid flare]

I see, so I must remove some of them from the begin play.. I started questioning after some issues like things supposed to run on certain situations, being fired without any reason..
In case where the character have an hard reference to an actor let's say a vehicle, do I need to leave the bind untouched right?

[trim matrix]

Hey, hope everybody is doing great. im trying to make a game wher ethe player is on a planet but the map is gigantic. and the trees are actors and i cant add my foliage to a sphere so is there a way to still add my actor tree and foliage or some kind without experiencing gigantic lag?

[ruby cobalt]

thank you yes! this is what I need!

[past token]

What exactly is the difference between target and socket offset for a sprinarm component, they seem to do the same thing?

[lofty rapids]

ii think target is relativee to world, and socket is relatitive to springarm

[past token]

Sorry, but when you say relavtive to the world what do you mean, if you dont mind me asking, im a beginner and dont quite understand how that works.

[odd kiln]

Hi all !

Can I move a Static Mesh at runtime, via its socket ?

I mean, I move the socket, like it's the pivot point

[lethal pollen]

Hi!

[odd kiln]

And then the static mesh moves

[lethal pollen]

I'm using this on a Widget Blueprint. How can I disable it after using it once?

Thank you.

[odd kiln]

With a boolean

[lethal pollen]

OK. I was aware of that solution, but wondered if there was another one. Thank you.

[maiden wadi]

@frosty heron I couldn't find your name the other day to tag you, but you might be interested in this just for statistics. Hundreds of floating texts as well as an icon anchored to them at extremely little cost.
#blueprint message

[carmine scaffold]

you see the way i have it setup is that i use gameplay tags as a pseudo state machine for my character, and when i overlap the enemy those tags dictate weather i can damage the enemy or it damages the character.

id say its kind of like how sonic would jump or roll making him impervious to enemies and destroying them.

however i would also want certain objects to apply damage regardless of characters current state

[delicate torrent]

Good evening, can anyone help me on how to make an analog clutch for chaos vehicles?
I can make a switch clutch, which will just send the vehicle into neutral gear, how could one go around multiplying engine torque by clutch value? (0-1 float value)

I can't find any information about it

If I will reduce throttle input it will probably mess up future RPM dependent sound generation

[gleaming veldt]

Hi! Is this the right place to ask for some help? Need someone to help me with C4 programming desperately

[random pulsar]

how do i change dynamically the emmition of a material instance in a blueprint?

also neight this works

i want it to dynamically change in a range from 5 to 10 emission lets say

each second

[warped juniper]

@random pulsar in the material: Add a Time note, plug it into a Sine node, multiply that, and multiply your emission by that

[random pulsar]

but then all of the instances will have this effect,how can i filter that?

[warped juniper]

You can add a switch parameter to toggle it on / off

[random pulsar]

like this?
and whats the first 2 values?

[warped juniper]

Not the right switch

You want Static Switch Parameter

[random pulsar]

and what do i plug in the value?

found it

@warped juniper Thanks for help

[warped juniper]

No problem. Do tell if you need anything else!

[random pulsar]

yeah,actually i do
how do i randomize this effect?

[warped juniper]

Randomize what

[random pulsar]

the time

its constant now

[warped juniper]

Try multiplying the time node first

Before sine

[random pulsar]

and than what?
like the random value node

[warped juniper]

Just set some value to see how that affects the material. Then you create a parameter, and when you create the matieral, your BP overrides a parameters that goes into that multiply node

For example try to multiply it by 2 and see if it either speeds up the animation or slows it down

[random pulsar]

So i have the thunder strike sprite and i want this sprite to glow like a thunder,for better understanding

[random pulsar]

with 2 it speeds up

[warped juniper]

Alright. You can use a Divide node instead and create a single value parameter

Plug it in, and randomize that value in a "seconds to breathe"

[random pulsar]

randomize that value in a "seconds to breathe"?
i dont get it

[warped juniper]

Create a single float parameter that goes into a divide node

The node divides time by the parameter

[random pulsar]

yeah,did it

[warped juniper]

That parameter is how many seconds it takes for emission to go up or down

This is called a breathing light

[random pulsar]

yeah but how do i randomize this?

[random pulsar]

i tried typing random,randomize and nothing popped out

[warped juniper]

You have to set that material value on a BP

Look into how to override material paramters with BPs

[random pulsar]

Yeah i reached the result i want

Thanks for guiding

[warped juniper]

You're welcome! Good luck with the rest of your work

[warped juniper]

Ah, you want it to randomize EVERY second?

[random pulsar]

yeah ahah

[random pulsar]

Btw,are u interested in testing the game im working on?

[warped juniper]

Well I don't really download builds from strangers overall

But if you have videos I can check it out

[random pulsar]

Sadly ,i dont,but may add a video(trailer) in a few days

[lime crow]

You might want to clear invalidate that timer at some point

[random pulsar]

No,I do not.There will always be thunder strike pickups on the level

[lime crow]

Ahh so they don't get destroyed?

[random pulsar]

They destroy,so the timer continues to run on destroyed ones?

I thinks the timer cannot continue to run on the destroyed one ,because they don't exist anymore.And my setup is just like a visual effect,so I think I made it the right way.
Of course there are better ways which I don't know but this one looks logical and works

[lime crow]

If there mesh instances you should be fine. But you want to be super careful with timers because they can run useless logic on destroyed actors. Personally I always have a way to clear it. But it's up to you

[random pulsar]

Mesh instances?I don't have mesh,my game is more from sprites.Yeah I get it,I know how to clear it.

[lime crow]

up to you man, if you are confident you dont need to clear them, then cool. If they are not handled properly it can can cause issues

[cloud garnet]

could use some help. Have a character who has a dash animation that plays when you hold a button and walk, but the animation won't change

using the paperzd plugin btw

[lime crow]

Thats quite tricky to work out, ive never used bools in that way - maybe thats causing an issue, it looks a bit messy, have you tried using jump to nodes or setting up a statemachine?

[cloud garnet]

can you elaborate on what those are?

kinda new to this and back after a break

[lime crow]

let me pull up one of my older projects im pretty sure i done a dash but it was ages ago, hopefully i still have the project to see how i done it

[cloud garnet]

ok

[lime crow]

does your player just have a walk, idle and a dash?

[cloud garnet]

yes

for now, at least.

might add more later

[lime crow]

i would re work it so its cleaner to be honest, it will save you a headache, hold up i found the project, let me test it and take some screenshots

[cloud garnet]

i am going to rework it

[lime crow]

I think having a simple state trees would be easier to manage, you can call a node, its called a jump to which is similar to playing an anim montage, but you just play the animation

check out cobra code on youtube, he goes oover jump nodes and setting up a basic statemachine that would really help i think

[cloud garnet]

will do

thanks for the tip.

i'll ping you if i get stuck while i follow the guide

[lime crow]

i have so many messy projects and honestly they always end up hell when things break, every project that has bad architecture has been a blessing in disguise because i have learned so much from it, unreal is solid man, there is so much to learn lol

[faint pasture]

per instance random

[cloud garnet]

when i get velocity to change animation, it won't change the animation.

[lime crow]

Ehh, it's tricky to troubleshoot without seeing everything but based on that alone you never want to check on o. Basically get a vector length xy, set the input to like 1, or 0.1 , if the float is greater than 1 the player can enter the state. That could be it. Ot it might not be

[faint pasture]

don't use equality on floats or vectors

if velocity.length > SomeSmallNumber is what you want

[cloud garnet]

velocity won't connect to the >

[lime crow]

Did you use vector length xy? Pretty sure that converts speed and direction into a single float no?

[cloud garnet]

i got it conencted but still won't work

[lime crow]

Let's see

[cloud garnet]

what do you need me to send?

[lime crow]

The logic

[lime crow]

Change the 0 to .1

[cloud garnet]

not working

[lime crow]

Or 1

[cloud garnet]

still no

want me to send the move code?

[lime crow]

Show your state machine

[cloud garnet]

this?

won't play walk or dash

[lime crow]

You have each animation plugged in right?

[cloud garnet]

wdym

[lime crow]

Click on walk

[lime crow]

Hold on, disconnect the rest a sec and just keep is walk in there

[cloud garnet]

it works now

[lime crow]

When? When you disconnected them other nodes?

[cloud garnet]

when i disconnected the play rate

[lime crow]

Yeah only keep animations in there

[cloud garnet]

i see

[lime crow]

The transitions is where you keep the logic you see

[cloud garnet]

still won't play dash tho

[lime crow]

How did you even get a float into that? Never seen that before. Show your dash and your dash transmission and your input logic in the Player bp

[cloud garnet]

might be a little messy but here you go

[lime crow]

And also show your input and your imc binding please

[cloud garnet]

imc binding?

[lime crow]

Jeso man, I swear you are really overcomplicated your logic here. Your plugging alot of stuff in all over the joint

[cloud garnet]

also this

sorry, new to this and i forgot which tutorial taught me the sprint mechanic.

[teal talon]

I have a data table and I need to edit a field in it. Is this a way to do it?

[cloud garnet]

how do i fix it?

[dawn gazelle]

DataTables are meant to be read-only at runtime.

[lime crow]

I'm trying to make sense of the wiring. I think it's ok. It's hard to tell. But where is your dash input?

[teal talon]

I was really really really worried that would be the case. I didn't even know it but something told me this is too easy for UE.

[dawn gazelle]

Technically you can modify them at runtime, but there's no way to save the data in the data table in a packaged game. You can use the DataTable as the base data, but then you probably would want to use a SaveGame and save any updates in there, making sure your code instead of always reading directly from the data table checks for saved values first.

[lime crow]

I see, does the speed actually change though when your holding a button?

[cloud garnet]

yes

[lime crow]

Ahha awesome! That's good. But you need the player to kind of dash rather than move faster right?

[teal talon]

I'll take the data and put it in a array in the BP. Then edit it as needed. thanks. You ROCK!

[cloud garnet]

i need the animation to change when dash is being held while moving.

[lime crow]

Yeah there's multiple ways of doing it. Like I say jump nodes worked well. In your case though you will want to add a Boolean so like can dash set to true when triggered and set to false when completed. Then in your animation bp on the transition to walk to dash you will want to do a is player velocity greater than 1 AND is dashing true. Then the player can enter the state.

If you are struggling with that I would just watch a simple dash tutorial. It's pretty much going to be the same even if it's not paper zd.

[cloud garnet]

ok so

we got progress

[lime crow]

Also make sure the only thing in your actual dash is the dash animation.

[cloud garnet]

animation does play, but it jitters between it and the walk animation when button's held

[lime crow]

Yep, I remember having lots of similar issues. Don't use triggered

Tru using started

[cloud garnet]

and canceled?

[lime crow]

Ehhh yeah and no. It depends. Try with just completed to start with

You will want to make sure the transition from dash to walk is done as well if you haven't already

And be mindful about the player going into the air if he's dashing because that can balls things up as well

[cloud garnet]

got it working even more

[lime crow]

You could even add a few bools for if the player is walking

[cloud garnet]

now all i need to do is to make it to where if i'm holding dash and not moving it's idle

and another issue

if i start dashing the anim won't go back to walk if i let go

[lime crow]

That you can do! That's just conditional logic.

[cloud garnet]

this look right?

[lime crow]

No

You will need to so somthing like:

Is holding sprint == False and get velocity, velocity length xy < than 400 or somthing (depending on your values) then can enter the transmition

[cloud garnet]

doesn't connect that way

[cloud garnet]

== false doesn't connect with get velocity

[lime crow]

Ehhh

Use a not Boolean with an and

And use a vector length xy like last time

Vector length xy AND not Boolean

[cloud garnet]

i don't get what you mean

@lime crow you're wording this very ambiguously

i'm also mentally drained atm

[lime crow]

If the player is not holdin sprint and the velocity is less than 300 then the player can enter the transition

Take a break man. I need to go to bed as well

[cloud garnet]

ok i'm sorry i couldn't get this working

long hard sessions for baby simple stuff is why i don't like gamedev

[lime crow]

Made progress man

Mate game dev is super hard. Even basic stuff is hard because everything is all tied in with each other. It's not easy

Maybe its my poor explanations though sorry

[cloud garnet]

you're fine

[slender dagger]

is there any way to find the last node you undid?

[storm orbit]

Is that in your anim graph? You can do what the default Manny Animation Blueprint does and cache the character's ground speed on animation update as a float.

In your transition logic, you can just "get" that variable and do simple logic (like greater than, equal to etc.)

[somber gate]

I'm having issue with the camera shake is not working intendedly. My workflow is:

• I create notifies syncing with footsteps in animation.
• In the pawn bp, I cast to the animbp and call both notifies and add camera shake event, however, I might have made some errors so it keeps printing events instead of calling event per footstep.
• Combining with the camera shake, I create a time stop function, when the time is stopped, the camera doesn't shake anymore, but when it starts to run again, the amount of shake seems to have accumulated and makes a big disturbing change.
  I hope to resolve these if anyone knows, appreciated!

p/s: I don't mind showing the blueprint setup since this is just my personal project.

[storm orbit]

How are you implementing your time stop? It would greatly affect how you stop your camera from slowing

[somber gate]

I slow global time dilation down while increase the same amount for the pawn.

[storm orbit]

And how are you performing the camera shake?

[somber gate]

I'm idiot so i'm pretty sure these are wrong XD

[storm orbit]

That first one with the anim instance mesh, are you firing the anim notifies? Or are you trying to bind to them?

Because based on that screenshot, you're firing both the left and right foot notifies at the same time

What's the context of that white execution pin? Hopefully not Tick 😄

[somber gate]

you got me! xD

I just learnt bp lately so I'm not familiar with the bp workflow, especially the fire and event dispatch. I'm still trying to decode what you just said.

[storm orbit]

Got it

Animation Notifies are "events" that trigger from the animation or montage itself

[storm orbit]

yep, those are notifies

What "type" of notify are they? Are the Notify States or just Notifies?

[somber gate]

they're just notify

[storm orbit]

Did you make a custom notify?

[somber gate]

yes, the "new notify" right?

so like, it's custom event if I understand it right.

[storm orbit]

Yes!, sorry I was jsut refamiliarizing myself with them

Is there a difference between both those anim notify tracks? Left Plant vs Left Foot (they seem to overlap in time)

[somber gate]

Oh those are just markers— the plant one.

below is the event

especially, I don't want to add camera shake directly in the AnimBP, because I want to trigger the camera shake only when sprinting is pressed.

So, I suppose I need to create a gate (bool) in pawn bp for it, when I press sprinting, the gate is openned and allow the events to be executed.

[storm orbit]

You can create anim notifies in the animation timelines, then "react" to them in your animation BP

So, in your animtion BP, you could dispatch a "cameraShake" event that you can listen to on your character BP and do the gameplay logic for the camera shake

that way your animation BP doesn't have to know about your character

[somber gate]

oh, so I need to do the other way around? Like, when Shift (sprinting) is pressed, I dispatch this to the anim BP, and allow the event (camera shake) in the animbp to run?

[storm orbit]

I would do it like this :

• Make an "OnCameraShake" event dispatcher on your animation blueprint
• Have your Anim BP listen to both your left and right foot notifies
• When that notifiy triggers, call your "OnCameraShake" dispatch.
• Make your Character Blueprint bind to the animation blueprint's "OnCamerashake" event on Begin Play (or some other initializing event)
• When you respond to the OnCameraShake event, use logic to filter out camera shakes (for example, only [ifSprinting] AND [notInTimeStop])

[somber gate]

Thank you! I'll try this approach and lyk later 😄

[storm orbit]

As a minor note, if you don't plan to do anything different between left/right foot plants, you can just do a single Anim Notify and just duplicate it over and over (even across different animations, like strafe)

Something generic like "FootStep"

[somber gate]

@storm orbit this works unexpectly nice and I don't think I need to address the accumulated shaking amount when time is stopped anymore 😄 (minor issue is it still doesn't shake while timestop tho)

[storm orbit]

Are you making sure to check if time is stopped before the actual camera shake function?

Is your camera control actually slower while time is slowed? Is the camera actually respecting the inverse time slow you have on your pawn

[somber gate]

ooh

I see

I need to update time dilation for the following camera

[storm orbit]

for time dilation stuff, you want to exempt most controls. The exception is like Breath of the Wild zoom in to aim type stuff

Also, don't think I didn't see the name of that effect container 🧐

[somber gate]

so here is where it all happens. The global dilation reaches almost 0 (0.001) while the inverse amount of that is added to actor custom time dilation. I suppose I have to some how add that amount to the camera as well

except Idk how to pull the cam time dilation 😄

[storm orbit]

Is that your character or your character controller?

Also, now that I look at the footage, it doesn't look like your camera needs to be exempt - it already is otherwise it wouldn't move at all

What you should do is turn off any camera lag you have (if you're using that)

anything physics-based will accrue impulse velocity while time is "practically" stopped

(that includes camera lag and camera shake)

[somber gate]

I can’t diffentiate both yet, but I assume it’s in the Pawn BP.

[storm orbit]

also, on the node where you set "custom time dilation" you should use Safe Divide not just divide because if it ever reaches zero, you might crash the game

But back to the other thing - you just need to turn off camera lag when you initiate time slow, then re-eneable it after the time slow wears off

and when you invoke the camera shake, add a Branch that only executes when time dilation is nearly equal to 1 on the pawn

[timber sierra]

I'd like to know if anyone can recommend some resources on how to use the struct FRotator? I'm not sure how to use this Rotator.

[somber gate]

one last question: In case there’re multiple executions that need to start with Begin Play or Event Tick, do we just use sequence? Can’t we call it multiple times in the board, or maybe, call it in another event graph. Because I feel very hard to read once multiples functions are created.

I used to think that I can wrap all function of an ability in a graph and then call it in the mainboard of the pawn blueprint (sorry if the terms are mixed up)

That way the organization is much easier.

[storm orbit]

Do you mean in blueprints or in code?

[storm orbit]

You can break things up in many ways.

• Multiple Event Graphs - This is good for organizing events and time-based functionality (like timers, delays, sequencing etc.) For example, you could have all your input processing done on one Event Graph you call 'Input'.

• Functions - Convert complicated, re-usable logic into functions you can call anywhere inside that blueprint. These functions are also available to any inherited child blueprints, too

• Function Libraries - These are like functions that can be shared across many blueprints. They don't have any of the context of other blueprints, so sometimes it can be hard to fetch all the data if you need to do complex stuff

• Macro Libraries - similar to function libraries, but they work like macros that can be shared with a specific class (and all its children).

For your question about sequence nodes, they are simply a form of "Flow Control" that allows you to break up some logic. It's important to know that NO TIME will pass between each pin in the sequence - the execution continues through all the same frame.

On the event graph, they are only really used for visual organization and breaking up latent functions (if you need a better explanation, just ask). Inside functions, they can serve as way to handle blocks of logic with the assumption that the function hasn't hit an end (i.e. a "return" node).

For example, you could have a sequence node in a function where you do some logic to try and find a solution (like raycasting for an enemy), and if it succeeds, you can return early. Instead of having to continue that same logic on the same line, you could preface it with a sequence node and do another test which assumes the previous one failed.

[somber gate]

Thank you so much for bearing with me and the enlightment

[oblique pollen]

hi,Why can 'standalone game' be used in the editor to initialize friend status normally, but cannot be initialized after packaging? I am using the Adevanced Session plugin

[storm orbit]

Are your other services working in the packaged build? You might also be running services locally while Playing in Editor, but when you package the game, it cannot find the local session you're hosting.

It's difficult to know as I don't have or use the Advanced Session Plugin

[oblique pollen]

Thank you for your answer. I am currently debugging and taking a look

[timber sierra]

code, I want to know the principle

[cloud garnet]

what's the default manny animation blueprint?

apologies for late response, I went to bed early last night lol

[storm orbit]

If you open the starter project or import the 3rd person template, there's a Manny animation blueprint you can look at to see thier setup. It's not the gold standard for anim bps, but it's clean and simple

[cloud garnet]

alright, i will check it out.

i see, template player is named manny

[storm orbit]

A rotator is essentially a collection of 3 properties used to represent the rotation of an object in discrete axes.

Its similar to the 3-ribg gizmo used to rotate objects in the editor.

The values are clamped between zero and 360 degrees, I think, so it doesn't over rotate, it just wraps around to zero or 360

[storm orbit]

It's a play on the word "Mannequin", which is why the female-type version in ue5 is named "Quinn"

[cloud garnet]

gotcha

one thing tho

i was using a state machine to manage my animations. does that matter?

wait a moment they use it too

didn't notice

guess what

[storm orbit]

Yeah, if you take a look they do a lot of setting of values in the event graph, then their transitions and state machines reference those cached values instead of asking the Pawn for its current state

[cloud garnet]

i got it working as intended and it was a lot easier than expected

i wish i didn't overcomplicate things

[storm orbit]

What did you end up doing?

[cloud garnet]

one bug i will have to work out is when i hold the sprint key and stop walking my character will still run in place

[storm orbit]

That's only paaaaartially correct. What wolfdogpaws above said is slightly more correct - You need to take into account what happens when you're still moving but aren't pressing anything (like aking the foot off the gas, you're still coasting)

That's why you might want to introduce some checks to the velocity of your pawn to make sure you stop doing sprint animation only when you slow down

[cloud garnet]

i see

i'll worry about it later, i got sleep to do. Thanks again.

[kind estuary]

Is it normal to have an HISM for each mesh in my landscape, like mountains, trees, hills, rocks?

i know this would be normally done using Folliage. But this is procedurally generated each time the level loads. Is there something i dont know?

[maiden wadi]

This is fine depending on map size and elements in the HISM. It's worth noting that e ven HISMs have an upper limit. If you have ever looked into stuff like PCG you'll notice they break apart HISMs by grid areas, so that there aren't as many elements in each HISM. It allows them to cull if all elements are off screen. Slightly faster renderthread costs.

[kind estuary]

thanks

[kind estuary]

upper limit? are you sure of this?

i dont know if i understood it well

so if you go above a number of instances, it has some kind of issue?

[maiden wadi]

Before Nanite and Lumen, HISM/ISM was largely to reduce the number of drawcalls. Each mesh even using the same material has a separate drawcall to it. ISMs are all one mesh so have one draw call. HISMs have as many draw calls as they have LODs, one per LOD.

This is no longer true in default UE5 where Nanite and Lumen are, every mesh, regardless of using the same static mesh asset, that has the same material will share a drawcall. You can use 50 different trees with the same bark material and have 10000 non ISM/HISM meshes in the level and it's still one drawcall. This helps with a lot of rendering cost.

But of course having 10000 static mesh components has a lot of extra cost for all of the extra stuff the component itself has to do. Each mesh has to carry it's own physics body, each mesh has it's own overhead etc. HISMs negate some of this because they're all one component per mesh type. So 10000 instances in a HISM is insanely better than 10000 loose static meshes because they're batched together and a lot of the checks for them are cheaper like checking if the mesh should even render. You have one call for a HISM and 10000 for the loose static meshes.

But that is still 10000 instances which takes up memory and has to be rendered. If you're looking at a scene and only looking at an average of 400 trees, and you have an ISM with 10000, you're rendering all of them in the HISM. If you cut that up into zones where they only render when the zone is in the camera view, you pay a lot less cost each frame.

[lime crow]

if i destroy my player, respawn him and posses, what happens to a component on the original character? does it get removed completly or is it added on the new instance of the player?

[kind estuary]

i think im getting it now. so what you are saying is basically the difference between ism and hism. because ism will render as one, so it checks only once if the ism is on screen and renders all the ism at once. hism will render by instances so it will check each instance.
so in this case if you are doing concentrated clusters or piles of rocks, then it could be more useful to use ISM

but if you are placing lose trees all over the map, then its better hism

so if we have millions of hism instances it has to check them to cull them, hence this could be the limitation difference between ism and hism, is this correct? @maiden wadi

[maiden wadi]

No, ISM and HISM are the same. The only difference is that HISM has LODs, so there used to be one draw call per LOD, cause you're using a different mesh for each LOD.

The main difference is between a basic Static Mesh and HISM/ISM

[kind estuary]

yeah but you were explaining how the HISM can have limitations by instances, whereas ISM does not have this problem

😵‍💫 idk

[paper latch]

So I have a blueprint system, and have presets for a variety of variables using Primary Data Asset class. To make a new preset, I need to make a new data asset, and manually entire the values for each variable that I want. Is there a way to create a button in blueprints that can create such a data asset and write whatever currently variables the blueprint has, to its own data asset?

HOpe that is making sense

[dreamy marten]

The components are tied to the actor (your player), if you destroy the player, all its components are destroyed too

[lime crow]

But if I'm respawning the player from class and possessing the new instance, surly that would have the same Component???

[willow gate]

Good morning all! So I know how to access and set up achievements through EOS and Steam but I'm wondering if anyone has any tips or systems they use to build a client side achievement system so that I' m not just placing "Write Acheivement Progress" nodes all over the place. I'd like a centralized way to track it all. I have a few ideas but I wanted to understand what some of your pros view as best practices for this. Thanks ahead of time.

[dreamy marten]

I use a somewhat hacky solution to do that, basically creating a blank blueprint then reparenting it to the proper class, it always worked fine (haven't tested in more recent version though, that's on UE5.1)
Here is how I do it:

• Call the function Get Asset Tools
• From there add a Create Asset function and populate it with the name of the new asset, the path (starting with /Game which is basically the content folder), then asset class blueprint
• From there use the function Get Blueprint Asset
• Finally reparent it to your final value

Though I think this can only work from an Editor Utility (widget or blueprint)

[dreamy marten]

If those components are on the base class, yes they will get created alongside the new class. Though they will all be reset to default class values (so you won't technically have the same components as the values and states will be reset to default)

Though for any component attached or added at runtime, they won't get automatically recreated on the respawned actor

[lime crow]

Yeah thanks. That makes sense. I'm having alot of issues with accessed none. It dosent make sense because I have done all the correct checks

[dreamy marten]

Keep in mind that all the other systems outside the player will keep functioning (UI, Controller, Gamemode, world actors, etc) and might want to access the player character while it is being respawned. Also if you have variables that should hold the reference to the character, they will become invalid since the character has changed

[lime crow]

Yeah it seems like hell alot of work to respawn a player. I was using teleport its not viable to use that.

[dreamy marten]

What are you trying to achieve?

Is it respawning the player after a death?

[maiden wadi]

ISMs and HISMs share this issue. Normal static mesh components do as well. You will just hit the limit muuuuuch higher with ISM or HISMs.

[mild jacinth]

is it possible to create a json object dynamically at runtime and set the field values

with json plugin provided by epic

[maiden wadi]

Unsure about that. I've always just use Json as a string mostly. If I'm doing something in Unreal I dump that to a struct and use it. I recall I've seen some people talking about setting specific fields though. 🤷‍♂️

[violet bison]

how to make certain channels not be detected by radial damage?

screenshot plz?

[dreamy marten]

Yes, you just need to load a JSON Object either from an empty string or file, then you can use the Get Field and Set Field functions

[nova coral]

I’m finding out that working with GAS and BP is almost impossible.. there are some hard limits that are not even documented in the engine. Quite frustrating

(Not just attribute setup but also core functionalities like MMC - you can’t snapshot an attribute when constructing it with just BP, so you can’t really access all the info you need from inside it)

GAS companion and Blueprint Attribute plugin do solve many of these issues, but I’m highly concerned about graduating out of my prototype build and going into a production phase with mandatory wrapper plugins that may or may not be updated in the future

I think I might just have to go cpp :((

[maiden wadi]

TBH, I wouldn't wish making a BP only game on anyone. It can be done. But you'll have wasted more time doing workarounds and derpy shit than if you take a bit of time to learn C++. And this point goes far beyond GAS. There are a lot of things you'll be severely limited by if you stay in BP only.

[sick sky]

GAS at a low level is hell in BP, like any complex system

BP only for anything code-related complex is usually laziness or stupidity

(imo)

[sick sky]

Cpp allows you to better understand engine to

[maiden wadi]

I don't think I'd be able to be a UI person without C++. Too much necessity to override and query slate and expose stuff.

You cannot do a good savegame system without C++. I still cringe at all of the double structs to copy data to a savegame.

You don't get subsystems, you can't extend GameUserSettings, you have zero access to online subsystems(without plugins), you can only do very basic networking.

Consider anything with high number counts out of the question.

Your AI will cost a fortune.

Despite what I'm saying, I love BP. 😄 But even outside of just GAS, if you're working alone or in a small team, C++ is invaluable.

[nova coral]

Well there’s the argument that there are many wrapper plugins that can provide most of the functionality you need as they did that work for you, and worst case anything else that you might really need - you can dabble into c++.

My issue though as I’ve mentioned is that I’m concerned about relaying on said plugins for future support as the engine does change quite a bit between versions

Also while I’m okay with JavaScript and use it for other projects, I just really don’t like c++. There’s just so much overhead and extras there to make the code (imo) just not fun to deal with

[dire hazel]

Hi guys, I want to move only head while I play an anim montage. Do you have any advice to apply the idea?

[nova coral]

It’s a losing battle though. I know I’ll just have to do significant more c++, I can already see it

[maiden wadi]

No one likes C++, except @twin tide

That said, it's much easier to work with if you follow a couple basic rules. And consider getting Rider as an IDE(free now).

[dire hazel]

I have seen some solutions at animation bp but I dont know how to apply it when I ignited an animation montage on character bp

[sick sky]

i kinda like cpp to

[nova coral]

lol some people would die on the hill that c++ is great. Which like, different strokes for different folks. But after using JavaScript (WITHOUT going into the performance aspect) I really understand the fun of a comfortable and powerful language

[maiden wadi]

You should look up simple gun firing kickback anim montages. Same principals I think for what you're looking for.

[nova coral]

—
So as I’m realizing I can’t avoid it, are there any best practices you’d recommend for c++ - i.e maybe always create base classes from it and create child ones in BP, or something else like that?

Essentially is there a known sweet spot between the minimal and most useful functionality you can create or should create in BP vs c++

[sick sky]

got a vid wait

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

50m, all worth it

usually in c++ you do core systems, in BP you do the content usaing it

[real vine]

50 min = 25 min if you watch everything in 2x speed :p

[sick sky]

then its a matter of preference

[sick sky]

and lose half the infos..

[maiden wadi]

Depends on what you're doing. At work we tend to put a lot of core stuff in C++ in base classes or libraries. Cause it's easier to debug, specially since you can debug cooked development games by hooking a debugger up to them.

It's pretty common for us to have a base class in C++ for most things, either actors or components.

[cloud garnet]

how do i make my flipbook sprites always face camera?

it's called billboarding, right?

[real vine]

You weren't wrong in this case. I had to slow that down significantly to digest all that. Fantastic video. Thank you for the share!

[nova coral]

yeah same

[sick sky]

if you want to start out in c++ check #cpp and https://notes.hzfishy.fr/Unreal-Engine/Extra/Learn-C++-for-UE

[twin tide]

https://tenor.com/view/sip-gif-26290143

[steady night]

hey guys, this might not be related to bp but, is it possible to have 2 audio listeners on splitscreen ? one for each player or rather a duplicate one since theyre both playing hte sound from same audio source ?

[odd compass]

is there a tutorial or something I can follow for setting up a pickup system with motion matching, using these animations? https://www.fab.com/listings/38420cbf-0776-4a95-aab7-685564215b28

[idle pelican]

Hey, I'm currently working on a dirt-cleaning mechanic for my game.
So far, I’ve managed to implement a system using decals to "dirty" surfaces. The player can clean parts of a decal simply by clicking on it (a portion of the decal gets removed by painting on a render target at the click location).

Right now, I’m trying to figure out a way to calculate the overall cleanliness of the level as a percentage. Do you have any tips?

My first idea was to calculate the percentage of the render target that has been cleaned, but with a large number of dirt decals, this might not be very efficient. I also considered using RVT (instead of decals) in some way, but I'm not sure about it.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[dusk solstice]

how to place mobile control above ui elements?
I just can't press the mobile control elements where there are ui elements.
thanks in advance

Please help!

[edgy forum]

What's the best way to setup state machine for a 4 legged creature to achieve fluid animation transition and rotations?

Are there any good packs or project that can showcase this?
Currently I'm copying how it is implemented in valley of the ancient project for echo but adjusting it for the creature. The one from Lyra is just too complex.

[exotic gazelle]

Can somebody help me really quick to make a "player ready button" for my fighting game pretty please?

[dire hazel]

Hi all, I want to let player move "only" head of the character while playing an animation montage. I tried something but couldnt do it at all. Image shows chart of character's mesh. When character attacks, the animation montage is played on bp. I need help. Thanks for your time.

[maiden wadi]

Drop a button into your widget, drop a textblock into it, and rename the text "Ready".

[exotic gazelle]

maybe i didnt specify im making a fighting game and on the character selection part, i made a button to confirm the options that both players choose and open other widget where the players can choose the map

but idk how to make it so that the game detects that the players are both ready

[maiden wadi]

You make a system for it. Usually players are ready once everyone has picked a character. So when someone picks a character and sets it, the game should check if all players have picked. If all have picked, continue on.

[frosty heron]

Local multiplayer (e.g split screen / same machine ) or networked multiplayer?

If the later then step back from your button and read pinned material in multiplayer, perhaps a dozen of times. Keep experimenting until you understand the basic of replication.

Checking ready state is very trivial. Can just be a replicated boolean in player state.

[tidal mulch]

hey everyone hope the weeks going great! i have an animation-ish question if someone could help me out!
how do i disable the character movement speed/ or set the character movement speed to 0 via the character movement component?

i control this animation state where the character is dodging punches, with the same controls that make the capsule move.

[minor pagoda]

Hello! Does anyone know if a component added with a GameFeatureAction should be visible in the actor components window or maybe in details while running the game as soon as we activate the plugin?

[simple sparrow]

dont know if this is the right place to ask but i have this problem where i can spawn the decal actor just fine in the viewport scene but when i spawn it during runtime the material doesn't load and is just a square default decal material.

[final heath]

Hey so I've been trying to set the custom Icon for my game, but every time I try packaging it the icon resets to the default Unreal Icon

Before and after

[mild jacinth]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-to-change-the-icon-of-your-game/352581/13
i dont remember exactly what helped but most likely it was this. been a while since i changed icons myself

it expects ico and 256x256. make sure to refresh file explorer with f5

if that doesnt work you can tick "Full Rebuild" in project settings which forces it to compile everything from scratch but i dont advise to keep it enabled otherwise you're going to have long compile times

[final heath]

I have full rebuild checked and I renamed my 256^2 .ico file to not include spaces, and it still happens

[proud sentinel]

sorry for necroing this, but did you figure that out? same problem

[devout oak]

Is there a way i could setup a 2 way keybind to go both directions on selecting the spell?
https://i.imgur.com/CXjnqNG.png

[indigo gate]

Not in any conventional way, I just had to create a custom function that replicates the built-in check with a capsule trace to check if there is enough space or not to uncrouch

[proud sentinel]

ah i figured, that was the solution i was coming to as well, i ended up overriding a lot of the crouch functionality in c++ and couldnt get the auto-uncrouching to stop

[faint pasture]

My guy you need a different sort of setup

At the bare minimum, you can replace all that with an array or set of those enums, call it SpellsIHave or whatever

that array represents the spells you have. If an enum is in the array, you have it, if not, you don't

then your test can be:

Input -> does SpellsIHave contain SpellIWantToCast? -> yes -> ok go head and cast it wiz

[mystic blade]

am i able to lock camera rotation when the parent its a child of is rolling and rotating?

[lunar sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/saint-meghan-markle-smm-suits-try-again-gif-27054650

[soft wave]

I think spring arm does that?... It remains stable for sure when "use pawn control rotation" is active, but I don't remember how it would work without that...

[faint pasture]

what any "lock" does is set the rotation separately from the derived rotation vs its parent

so yes

the built in ways typically use ControlRotation

[snow halo]

@dark drum btw why did you create a new gamestate to your oxygen system and add this component to your gamestate instead of adding the gamestate to your character?

[dark drum]

The oxygen system comp was put on the game state to treat oxygen more often a global variable. Something like oxygen in a spaceship or inside a submarine.

If you wanted it to be individual per person you could put the component on the character. You'd just need to update a few bits.

[snow halo]

Im planning on using this on as oxygen system but as a system to handle the stats like health, energy, etc.

do you think it's still a good tutorial for that purpose?

Im on part 1 at the moment only a few minutes in.

[dark drum]

I have recorded the next part where I show how to have oxygen depletion cause damage. To make a quick health system I just copied the oxygen system and renamed the vars. 😅 (Not sure when that will be uploaded though)

But yea, the same concept could be applied for general stats. Just put the comp on the character. There's nothing stopping you from putting multiple stats in the same system. (I'd probably recommend it)

[lime crow]

Bit of advice please. If I have a hud that I add to Viewport from the player controller. And I destroy the actor (the player) and spawn a new player in. The hud would still reference the original player right? So what's the easiest way to make the hud know about the new player? I have a reference stored to the new player in the gamemode.

[frosty heron]

Haven't you been told multiple times already.

Just wrap what you have as a function.

Pointing to new owner is as simple as creating a fresh widget and calling the same function.

[lime crow]

To create a fresh widget I would need to destroy the old one no?

[frosty heron]

Sure? But what's the actual issue

You destroy what you need, you add what you need.

Write down the flow on paper then implement in code. This is trivial.

OnPawn Possess -> init widget

On pawn death -> remove widget

[lime crow]

I was just tryingto update the widget you see. I saw on you tube that constantly destroy and loading widgets is bad practice. So I was trying update them with refrences

[frosty heron]

Who said that

Beside you are just destroying the old one and spawning a new one. This is peanut

For what you are doing, since I read what you are trying to achieve last time. Destroying the widget for the pawn that die and re creating a new one for the one you will possess is totally fine.

If you lose 1 fps, then you can contemplate but you are not even tanking any performance.

[lime crow]

https://youtu.be/7b7a20j0azc?si=n_y-EGIqI3ajgP1s

When you say destroy. Should injust get rid of the entire hud and load it in? Because I have multiple things on there, like text, images ect.

[frosty heron]

It's totally up to you

Like I said you take out what you need and create what you need.

This is not something you ask someone, the action depend on the project need.

The entire widget can just be a one widget called playerStats.

OnPawnDeath -> get W_playerstat -> destroy

OnPossessNewPawn (pawn) -> set W_playerstat -> initialise widget

Nothing complicated. Actually simple and straight to the point.

On possessing new pawn create widget for that pawn and initialise.

On pawn death get rid of the widget related to the pawn.

[lime crow]

Thanks yeah I was trying to do something similar but wasn't destroying the widget.

[frosty heron]

It's okay to destroy it too

For what you are doing

Makes no sense to reuse or pool widget

[lime crow]

Understood. Makes alot of sense to be fair

[frosty heron]

Of course for other need, you might want to get into object pooling. E.g floating damage text.

But for player stats hud. It doesn't matter yo ( in terms of performance)

[maiden wadi]

As a UI engineer, I can say that reuse is nice. And it can be easily achieved. However it requires some fundamental understandings that are best just achieved through experience. And most of the time this isn't really up to the designer so much.

The designer says "Remove this and then put this here." In the context that they want to remove the hud they had and place a new one there. As a designer I don't want to care about the reuse, I just want the hud to be refreshed.

As an engineer you understand the designer just wants to remove said non working widget and put a working one there that can initialize correctly. So you give them the tools to do so. Which requires placing containers that reuse widgets of same class like CommonUI's containers like the WidgetStack. If I have a UMyHudWidget class and I push it to this stack for the first time, it'll create a new one. If I then remove that instance and then push that class to the stack again, it will not create a new widget but reuse the one it just removed.

It's construct and activation code all still runs so you update references and such but does not recreate the whole widget again.

But realistically, the reuse code is not meant for rare events like respawning. The cases that this come from are things like buff applications where gameplay is constantly updating a lot of small widgets. You generally don't want to throw these away and create new ones due to garbage collection reasons. A whole hud being replaced every 2-30 minutes is a shrug. Buff widgets on multiple things being updated and replaced every frame or three from ability spam is an issue.

If your UI is more complex than simply being able to remove it and replace it, it isn't working correctly.

What is the component a part of?

I assume the character, but just asking.

I'm not seeing how this fails if you recreate the HUD after the new character has been spawned?

[frosty heron]

Try to make sure you don't recreate the widget before the pawn is possessed. And since maybe you are doing mp, that's even make it easier to do it incorrectly.

Address race condition. Hook up the event where it matters. I would probably just make an init function and call it after the pawn is possessed.

Oh if multiplayer then you will need to hook the binding else where since on posses only get called on server.

[willow gate]

Following up on a question I had yesterday: I'm trying to centralize achievements in my project and I ended up landing on a simple solution which is just an enum variable that I can add all of my achievement names into and then a function in my game instance which takes in said enum and a flot for achievement progress and then calls CacheAchievements and WriteAchievementProgress.

Seems like that'll work but my brain keeps telling me I need something more. Tell me I'm overthinking it. 😉

[maiden wadi]

Well that escalated quickly. O.o

[willow gate]

Seems a bit petty and more difficult than just skipping/ignoring replies from him but whatevs.

[maiden wadi]

Could work. In Red Solstice 2 we had a datatable of achievements and a wrapper that used the datatable handle to get the achievment name. Cause we used the same name for Steam and the datatable row handle. But we stored a bunch of other data there too relating to them.

[willow gate]

That makes sense. I'm always a fan of data-driven systems. I guess I'm just trying to think ahead of time if there is anything I need to do internally with those stats. Since they're being stored on the cloud via steam/epic game store, I am not seeing a reason right now to do anything more complicated.

[maiden wadi]

One note is also that enums are bad for scalability. While it might be unlikely that you'll pass 255 achievements, it's not impossible given DLCs and such. So anything like tags or fnames that can scale to infinite are usually preferred when there's an open ended possibility like that. It's a little less direct than having specific sets of states that won't really grow like Open, Closed, Locked.

[fading sentinel]

Hey guys, I'm building a 2.5D side-scroller game in Unreal Engine 5.5 using the Cine Camera. However, I'm concerned about performance issues, build size, and compatibility with low-end devices. Would switching to Unreal Engine 4.27 make my game more lightweight and accessible to low-end devices? I'm prioritizing mobile compatibility, especially Android. Any feedback on which version works better for mobile game development would be appreciated!

[willow gate]

This makes sense. Thanks. I'll rethink enums and take a look at a DataTable solution.

[lime crow]

im also building a 2.5d game, im using unreal 5.5 they are even making a template for a 2.5d game for ue 5.6, i would have thought they would have optimised things the newer the engine got, but thats prob not helpful

[maiden wadi]

There is nothing that 4.27 can do that 5.5.4 cannot. And you also have less tools available to you for bug fixes and such.

For other devices and even lower end graphic settings on PC you can disable certain features. You can always scale your rendering backwards, you can't opt into newer features on an older version though.

[frosty heron]

Probably addressed to me since I get a mention but didn't read the msg. Is someone offended again. I swear this is the last time I will even try to help anyone on this channel.

Sure I can sound condescending but I don't think i deserve the stupid abuses I experienced.

Called time waster etc. I'm done commenting.

[lime crow]

Na na that was me, it wasnt anything bad. i apologise. No abuse at all was given

[frosty heron]

👍

[fading sentinel]

Hey bro I know am not on this conversation but u have helped me in the past when I had issues and u don't seems to be that kinda person, u even take ur time to explain properly

Just ignore who pisses u off

[fading sentinel]

If that's the case why do many games still use unreal 4

I heard delta force mobile used 4 and 5 together

[frosty heron]

Upgrading is a pita if you have a lot of plugin

[willow gate]

Not to circle up for a kunbaya moment but I think it's important to remember that text based communication doesn't always carry the intended tone and sometimes direct communication styles can seem cold or condescending when really someone is just trying to be efficient. We're all hear to learn and help so remembering that can help us cut everyone some slack. I appreciate all the help I get in here.

[frosty heron]

Took me 3 days to compile

Had to fix errors and deprecated stuff

Not to mention naming collision too

[fading sentinel]

That's supposed to be the case but it isn't

A d plugins compatibility is another issue I have

Tho this game doesn't have voice chat or multiplayer but the agora voice chat plugin stops at 5.1

[frosty heron]

If performance is what you seek there's a way to fall back to ue4 settings in ue5

Laura had a msg in the pinned section #ue4-general

[maiden wadi]

Largely due to misconceptions and partially due to not wanting to go through the hassle. If you have a working product atm then it may not be worth the effort of an update. Specially if you have C++ code that requires API deprecation updates and such.

But if their only excuse is due to rendering, they're either misinformed or blatantly lying.

[frosty heron]

@maiden wadi thanks for the help with text rendering. I haven't got it to work optimally since every floating text is a widget component 😵 . But it works as intended for now.

Starting to lose frame when there are hundreds of component, so I might have to reactor if I reached the limit.

[maiden wadi]

I would definitely test out the NativePaint in a userwidget if you can. If I have time at some point I might git that in a plugin if you want to look at it.

[frosty heron]

Yea native paint is running in a user widget sorry not widget comp

But every instance is a widget, instead 1 widget rendering arrays of text.

Not sure if it's actually wasteful to call native paint function too many times. As far as I see the passed param is passed by ref.

So maybe not soo bad? No idea.

[snow halo]

btw why do you use a common activable widget?

I dont have it available is that a plugin thing I must enable?

[maiden wadi]

CommonUI, it's in the engine by default.

[snow halo]

I dont have such thing available here

[maiden wadi]

You'd need to enable to plugin. But it's not necessary unless you're subscribing to using all of CommonUI, which is a long topic.

[dark drum]

What Authaer said. Its adds some extra functionality which can be useful.

[snow halo]

I already have a widget, im just following pattym's tutorial which is this one: https://youtu.be/yzM1o7oQQ-A?t=78

im just following everything the way he does, looks fairly simply so far and straight forward type of set-up, im planning on using this oxygen system and then I'll change things up to fit closer with my own system, only difference is im planning on using this for health, energy, hunger and thirst, also I have 4 progress bars already where this looks like its going to be a set up for a new widget, I'll follow along and see how it goes, currently im on 1:11 of the part 2 of the series

This what my default widget looks like, I have a radial menu that opens up when you press "q"

and I also store my health, hunger, thirst, and energy on the same widget

the only bad thing I was doing is probably the way I was storing these health variables into my widget, and changing it via the widget

where's people where telling me I need a component system set up for these widgets, and several functions where before I was just activating certain events inside of this widget that were responsible for controling my stats, this is what many people told me not to do, and most people told me it's bad, which sounds correct, I just don't really fully understand why (yet)

[stuck plank]

I am new to your conversation so I might be a little out of touch on it but I can offer some perspective that might be helpful. I went through the learning curve myself over the last several years.

The key consideration is that your widgets should never be responsible for “holding” data. They are only ever a “window” to the data something else has.

And the best data is that behind something based off of UObject (meaning it is based off of a memory reference).

So rather than store health and hunger on the widget as, let’s say float values or a struct, give the widget a reference to the object that has these values. That might be your pawn, controller, actor component, etc. this way the widget has the updated data available to redraw without you having to “push” that information into widget variables.

Not sure if this helps but thought I would share if this is what you are struggling with.

[wary leaf]

Done this from scratch in less than a week. Tricks are accumulated since I struggle how to find the timing for applying a trick at the end of a given serie of inputs (and hold it as long as the last Trick Input pressed is not released).

Oh yeah and the relative Pitch rotation pisses me off...

[dark drum]

Just a slight amendment, widgets shouldn't hold gameplay sensitive data. Part of the reason why is because widgets aren't replicated so storing health in a widget for example, would never be shared with other clients.

Also, if I remember correctly, widgets never get created on a server only build.

[stuck plank]

I think what I was saying was the exact opposite of widgets storing data though. Did it seem otherwise?

[dark drum]

Just an amendment to this. The important part is gameplay sensitive. Things like what widget is currently active/selected or which item a widget is associated with etc... Sometimes widgets might create/calculate there own data but this would normally based on external data.

The key consideration is that your widgets should never be responsible for “holding” data. They are only ever a “window” to the data something else has.

[astral flame]

Hey guys anyone know how to remove a specific hud from viewport after a delay?

[exotic gazelle]

grab de return value from that widget and put a "remove from parent" node

[astral flame]

I tried that...it doesnt clear

[wild sage]

How can i force a crash in shipping builds? i'm testing my bugsplat crash report receiver

[merry mirage]

Make a function with an nullpointer and call it on an input?

[wild sage]

i already do that... but nothing happens

The engine throws the nullptr error, but not crash my game

[frosty heron]

yeah because you are in blueprint world

it will just throw an error msg.

You can make a custom C++ function that takes an object ptr if you want to crash the game.

[stuck plank]

Also keep in mind that accessing a null pointer is "undefined" behavior which means anything can happen. It can (likely will) crash, but it can also run just fine. So you might have to work a little bit to force a crash even in C++.

[frosty heron]

Accessing null is always crash in cpp

No extra work needed at all

[lime crow]

What is actually the best approach to a player that will die alot? Kill the character and the hud? Kill the character but keep the hud alive or just teleport the player to a checkpoint?

[faint pasture]

Teleport

IMO

[wild sage]

My team didn't include a C++ module in the project unfortunately, it's blueprint only

The only way I know of to do this in blueprints is using "debug crash", but that node only works in development builds

[frosty heron]

Just check for validity and print string self on is not valid

Yeah the point is to catch the crash on development

Why do you need on other build

[snow halo]

@dark drum btw, im reaching almost half of the second part of your video, I can't find this matching event called UpdateBar. It seems to be like a thing you are using gamestate, while im calling this on player character's begin play rather than on this game state that deals with entering water because your system is about water & im implementing on different use case. Is there any difference in using it on character vs using it on game state? Why is it that I can't find this Update Bar thing? Also this Update Bar function seems to be a function that exists inside of that W_OxygenLevel widget you made.

This function is also inside of my Central_UI parent of all widget system, it's called "UpdateHealth" thats the only difference from yours, but I can't find any matching events here on this Create Event node. It just doesnt come up yet for some reason. Is that supposed to be a globally available to be accessed function somehow?

[dark drum]

Yea, the 'UpdateBar' function is on the widget so you would connect a reference to the widget as the object on the 'create event' node. This will show the functions on it. When the event dispatcher is called, it'll call the function/event on that specific instance.

[snow halo]

oh wait, Im mistaken, so none of this should be on the first person character or game-state at all. I just realized your video isn't showing this to be on game state either. He's still on the widget when he's doing that

[lime crow]

It definitely felt easier using teleports! I was having a few overlap issues with objects that were still in the game then someone recommended destroying the player

[kind estuary]

Will this Get Actor of Class on each iteration. Or only once ???

[dreamy marten]

Only once because it is not an Impure function

The result will get cached

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

[kind estuary]

🫡 Got it

[wild sage]

I'm testing if I've correctly configured bugsplat settings in shipping builds

Because my game is on Steam as a shipping version and I want to receive crashes if this happens

[mystic blade]

how could i rotate an object around the player based on the horizontal rotation of the camera around the player?

think like a golf game and the way they usually visualize it with an arrow or something facing which way the ball is going to be hit

[plush ledge]

hi, does someone know why the spline spline mesh wont show up?

[snow halo]

btw I dont think I understand whats going on here on 20:24

https://youtu.be/yzM1o7oQQ-A?t=1224

Do I need a slot class?

or tagged slot? what are these gameplay tags needed for?

my widget is pretty straight forward, I dont have thing, inside of thing. Or widget inside of widget. It's all here

Also I dont have a UIStack Manager Subsystem

I guess it looks like that thing is there to deal with the question of: are you in the water? did you enter the water? are you inside of the water? did you exit the water and entered the surface where you can now breath air?

Thats what it appears here, kind of a "game-state" transition thing?

But in my case it will always be on screen so I guess I don't really need to have this conditional logic I believe correct?

[dark drum]

Yea, if it's placed inside a widget already then that's fine. No need to manually create and add to the viewport.

[dark drum]

That's for my UI Stack Manager I created that allows me to push widgets to a stack or tagged slots. Stacks and slots are registered using gameplay tags. I mentioned this in the video and showed an alternative method.

[steady night]

hey ive forgot the node, which one checks "what level is loaded" ? (which level im currently playing) ?

[dark drum]

'Get Current Level'?

[chrome pumice]

guys i created a cellshader following a tutroial and when i go on standalone game ist super bright. anyone knows whats going on?

This is in editor

standalone:

i followed a tutorial to create the cellshader back then but it doesnt seem to work for built or standaloneg ames idk whats going on

[willow gate]

Hey again smart people. So I have a simple equip/unequip system set up where the player selects a primary weapon and secondary and can then hold the left trigger to pull out the secondary. When they release, the secondary gets put away and the primary gets equipped automatically. This happens in a few simple functions. Somehow, somewhere, the equip primary weapon function is getting called inadvertently while the player is running around. I'm checking different places where this might happen, including anim notifies but so far nothing. I identified what was being called by putting a print string in the function to confirm my suspicion.

All that to say, is there any debug tool or node which would allow me to capture the source of that function call when it happens? Like "BeginEquipPrimary" was called from BP_(insert name here). Thanks ahead of time.

[errant crown]

You can slap a breakpoint inside of your "BeginEquipPrimary", then check the call stack of your blueprint via the Blueprint Debugger. More info here: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/blueprint-debugging-example-in-unreal-engine

[mystic blade]

bump

[maiden wadi]

Unsure what you mean with this? I love golf games, but not quite sure what the arrow is? Normally there is like a spline following the ball hit path. The only arrows are usually like wind directions.

[mystic blade]

like the arrow u can drag back that shows how much power is added to your hit

drag it back a little and it goes not very far

drag it back all the way and it goes very far

[maiden wadi]

Not fully following still. I'm used to power meters.

[mystic blade]

yeah a power meter

but an arrow u drag back

[chrome pumice]

How can i change the scalability settings to medium in standalone game ? its allways on epic

[maiden wadi]

If you don't have an options menu, press the console key, usually ~ and do "Scalability 3"

Or maybe 1?

[chrome pumice]

here?

[maiden wadi]

Low, Medium, High, Epic, Cinematic?

[chrome pumice]

wanted to do 2

[maiden wadi]

No, in your standalone game after you've launched it.

[chrome pumice]

i cannot launch it with medium settings by default?

[maiden wadi]

Uncertain. You might be able to do an override launch param. I've never done that for scalability settings. First thing I usually drop in is a quick options menu.

[chrome pumice]

i have a cellshader that makes the game look super fked up in epic thats why i dont want it to launch with epic

can i put a begin play node that just puts everything in medium in the gamestate begin play?

[stone field]

yes you can

[willow gate]

Thanks

[chrome pumice]

alright then ill do that tanks 🙂

[willow gate]

Is this for a golf game and what you're describing is what you want to accomplish or can you give us some more context for your use-case?

[mystic blade]

yes and what i want to accomplish

like imagine u drag ur mouse back to charge a shot. the power of that shot is represented by an arrow. the longer the arrow, the further your ball will be hit

[willow gate]

Gotcha. So you're basically wanting to do a trajectory preview which will rotate with the camera forward vector and also scale in and out

[mystic blade]

yeah

now im thinking i just rotate the arrow when the shot is being charged instead of rotating it with the camera

so when ur charging you can move ur mouse around to change the direction

i thought this would be a simple project to do but now im wondering if i need big math to do it

[willow gate]

Ok. There are a number of ways to do that depending on your setup but I think I would work on the prediction path first and then build the rotation functionality.

[willow gate]

https://youtu.be/TCQarlOO6IA?si=UXbu7rUsh1FnEGVW

This is a good starting point for learning how to do your path prediction

[hidden fossil]

So I'm trying to narrow down where I need to place blueprint nodes to switch out assets for two types of swordfighters (both male and female). One set of assets assumes that the swordfighters are chasing the player and represent the direction of travel, while the other two asset pairs are the actual sword attacks and represent which direction to strike from. Both asset types are defined using public variables within the base blueprint (facing left, attacking to the right etc.) and I need to know where in the behavior tree actions to put the references so that the correct asset is used. Right now, the running animations aren't being used at all (although the attacks certainly are as those were easily figured out with what I already have) so I just need to finish this out so that the correct asset is used depending on what's happening on-screen.

Any recommendations or pointers?

[ancient moth]

How can i cast a InstancedStruct back to a concrete type?

[storm orbit]

Use the GetInstancedStructValue node. It will correct cast once you hook it up to the correct "Break....Struct" node and use the "Valid" pin

[ancient moth]

Thanks! 🙂

[indigo hinge]

Hello, I'm making a strategy map grid. I'm attempting to spawn a grid made up of multiple unique instanced static meshes that are arranged in a set pattern. All told there are 55 individual pieces that make up a larger shape. I have successfully spawned each piece in the correct location using a blueprint actor for each static mesh. But I WANT them all to be in the same BP actor. Not sure if it's possible, I'm new to unreal and programming. So far I've attempted to just run all the code in one construction script and it crashes unreal immedietly. I've tried using an array for each static mesh instance, but because each piece requires it's own vector coordinate I've not been successful there. Any general advice or clarification on something I'm surely misunderstanding would be appreciated. (Note I want to keep the pieces as unique SMs so they are clickable and can have a variety of traits proc gened onto them) Thank you!

[ancient moth]

Is there a way of setting a timer, for a UObject without a world context? I have another object availabe in there that has a world context 😅

[frosty heron]

probably not in blueprint but you can deffinitly do that in cpp

just call the timer manager and pass a valid world context.

or maybe set timer by function work, I don't know.

[ancient moth]

Nah it does not 😦

Because I have some UObjects, that are just created as default objects, and they have a function, that gets a object (with world context passed). So either I'm creating a custom node that would allow me to create a timer for a object or I maybe duplicate the default object an set the world object on there right?

[glass blade]

i wanna move some data from my game instance to my player controller, can i use this node now instead of get game instance?

im confused about this number here

[ancient moth]

If I remember correctly, PlayerIndex 0 will always be the local player.

[glass blade]

im doing like a non local multiplayer can i ignore this number?

[sand shore]

is your game multiplayer at all? what kind?

[glass blade]

yep multiplayer, um non listen server so just regular dedicated server, its mostly a server autharative setup

[sand shore]

Hmmmm

My recommendation would be to not use any node that uses a PlayerIndex on the server, then. I usually don't recommend it at all

[glass blade]

how else would i grab the contents of my player controller then

[ancient moth]

Yea, you need some way of knowing, what player you are targeting

[sand shore]

But GetPlayerController(0) won't get in your way for the client code

[glass blade]

im targeting the local player basically

[ancient moth]

there might be 10 or 100 players

[glass blade]

player controller is not replicated

[sand shore]

there IS no local player for a dedicated server tho

[glass blade]

so the number shouldnt matter?

[sand shore]

Alright, godspeed

[glass blade]

im just trying to figure out

[normal badge]

Is this the right channel to ask something about texture issues?

If not, let me know.

But on my right page, something is not getting the texture... How can i fix that?

[frosty heron]

it depends whos calling

and player controller is replicated, just not client to client as client only know their own controller.

but server has everyone's controller.

so you can do RPC and replicate some variable Server to client

read the pinned msg in multiplayer channel.

index 0 for dedicated server would be the first player that connects.

a client calling index 0 will just get it's own local controller since it only know it's own controller.

[ebon quarry]

Anyone able to help a novice to blueprint modding work out what's causing a bug which sets the player location to 50km and stops POI from spawning.

It's a graphics mod and doesn't touch any behaviour regarding POI.

[celest trench]

Has anyone used editor utilities (this is inside an editor utility widget)? I am duplicating an asset then trying to get an editor property for a skeletal mesh component and set the skeletal mesh reference. It is failing to find the editor property. Is there something I need to do?

[snow halo]

btw Im trying to get this bind on my character, but can't find it. I can only find this bind inside of my widget that contains my Progress Bar

[snow halo]

I never fully understood binds tbh 😭

I also changed the names a little bit, like instead of oxygen im saying "energy" and stuff but that's pretty much it, and besides the game-state which im not using, everything else I think is the same, and I also have already a widget, I didn't make a nested widget inside of a new widget type of thing. That's also another small difference in my setup

but other than that very good youtube channel btw @dark drum I really like your other videos

[kind estuary]

no matter what i try Text Render with custom font never works

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-to-make-clean-big-text-renderers-with-custom-fonts/328859

tried this tuts

and many others

it always comes off with no text

or with the text very buggy undefined

should i just use Roboto (very ugly font)

i think i will settle with roboto

[dark drum]

Update bar would have been created in the widget (pt2) for updating the progress bar used to diplay the data.

[snow halo]

If so then why not have this logic inside of the widget itself? Im confused. I can't access the binds from my character

[dark drum]

The logic to update the progress bar (UpdateBar) is in the widget. When we create a binding to the OnOxygenLevel changed, we say, 'Call this function (update bar) on this object (the widget) when this dispatcher is called.'

Where you create the binding isn't to important as long as it makes sense for what you're doing. With you playing the widgets into a large HUD type of widget, it might make sense to create the binding in here so the large HUD would get the system and create the binding as it has access to the bars.

[snow halo]

but doesn't this method with the binds also work on tick?

[dark drum]

No, you're thinking of the property bind inside widgets. (that does happen on tick). Event dispatcher however, work differently. Behind the scene it just creates a list of objects and the function (delegate) and when the dispatcher is called, it goes through the list and calls the relevant function on the actor.

Event dispatchers are very power way at decoupling logic.

As an example, you have multiple places that need to know when the player has jumped. Having the player know about all these places and call a function on them every time the player jumps isn't very scalable. Instead you'd use an event dispatcher. 'OnJumped', this way those other things just bind to the event dispatcher and all the character would do is call the event dispatcher. The character doesn't ever need to know about those other things.

[snow halo]

Do you see any errors with this method?

This is my widget event construct

[dark drum]

No, that's fine. It does hardcode the widget to that specific stat but if you plan to make different widgets for each stat type (instead of reusing the same widget for all) then you're good to go.

[snow halo]

This technique with the event dispatchers kind of reminds of a Rube Goldberg's machine

it's not very intuitive either tbh for me but if it's modular & more scaleable then that means it's good I think

but in general im just used to using interfaces for everything

and I like the simplicity of just going to the widget and changing things through there, where's now with the components everything is inside of another thing and its so hard to keep track of it, but your method is still more simple than 99% of the shit i've seen out there on youtube

[snow halo]

also another useful fact I think I need to mention that Im making a first person game with only one player

[dark drum]

One way to think of event dispatchers is like a bell that makes a specific noise. When you create a bind it like saying, when you hear this noise do this.

The thing with the bell just does its thing and rings the bell and doesn't care who's listening. 🙂

[snow halo]

When I start my game I see the 100 number being printed, where is this system supposed to repeat if not tick but continue to fire the Drain event?

[wide light]

hi guys, i just switched form UE 4.27.2 to ue 5.4.4 but for some reason only one animation won't play anymore. i even checked with a print string if the code was working as intended and indeed it did print the string when it was suppose to play the animation

[dark drum]

A timer i think. You might not have ticked looping so it only fires once.

[dark drum]

on the 'Create Event' you have the wrong function selected.

[snow halo]

Now im using UseEnergy and its still the same

[snow halo]

Also I found I was missing this connection here, but this didn't make a change either

I also found another mistake here

Turns out I had more than just a few errors, I also forgot to include these 3 nodes. Now the change that happened is that I get the number 100 printed 3 times

[dark drum]

Whats the depletion value you've set that gets used in the 'UseEnergy' function?

[snow halo]

actually on your videos you change this back and fourth, im kinda confused what the problem is, I keep going back and fourth

[dark drum]

Yea sometimes I change things as I go along. I try to focus more on the understanding of why I set things up the way I do so this does lead to changes needing to be made. I normally provide an explanation.

[snow halo]

Omg I finally made it

[snow halo]

This was also corrected in your video 🤣 😂

I probably went over that one back and fourth quick and I corrected also my own correct version & downgraded to false & then turned it back to the correct version again

I was so confused going back & fourth with the parts

but it finally works

I think now I kind of have a good understanding of how these work, I normally never use max variables

and these dispatchers were always kind of confusing, but overall looks solid. Now all Im gonna do is repeat this thing for Energy, Hunger, and Thirst

Health is probably going to work a bit different though as Health doesn't automatically drain overtime unless if one of the other stats gets really low

like extreme hunger, extreme thirst or extreme fatigue

[dark drum]

Possibly but it might regen overtime so instead of removing health it'll add it. I did record a pt3 where i create a quick health system (using the same method) so I can demonstrate how to apply damage when oxygen is depleted. Not sure when it'll get released as I still need to edit it.

Despite that though, hopefully, you should already have a good understanding to keep going. 🙂

I toyed around with using custom UObjects to define new stats but that stuff got complicated quick. 😅

[kind estuary]

i need to make a comic style bubble comment

https://toppng.com/uploads/preview/comic-book-speech-bubble-1155105217344cxemzwzw.png

like this

but it must adapt the size to the text

how do i make it so that the size adapts to the text inside

what do i search for to get tutorials about this?

oh i can do this using widget3d

[willow gate]

Appreciate this. I really should have learned about breakpoints and using the blueprint debugger a long time ago. I was mostly using other debugging methods for all these years but this is robust. I feel dumb for not getting on it earlier!

[maiden wadi]

You just need a 9sliced textblock, mostly.

[willow gate]

If you want it to be placed above the character in the game world, a 3d Widget is the right solution. If you don't need that, I would suggest placing it in your player's main widget for easy access.

[maiden wadi]

Er, not textblock. I mean an image around the textblock that is 9sliced.

Same idea as any other stretchable border mostly.

Just more margins on the bottom.

[willow gate]

Do they still have a 9slice? I can't find it explicitly when building a widget.

[maiden wadi]

It's the Box setting. Choose Box and set the margin to 0.5 to start.

Should be available on a Border or an Image.

The default has an issue though in that it stretches the centers. Not an issue if you want a clean border, but if you want a tiled border you need to make your own material.

[spiral kite]

isfront is constantly changing when closing and opening the door. i want the door to open opposite to whichever side i am on. apart from this problem i don't understand how to do replication. normal door was working properly

[snow halo]

nice, btw I wanna ask you a question, if you had 4 progress bars... how would you do it? Would you duplicate your stats component (oxygen system) and rename everything like 1 energy, 2 health, 3 thirst, 4 hunger, etc.? Or would you just create 4 duplicates of these functions here?

my problem is that maybe I will change my mind and I will remove energy if I see it getting too overbearing and its turning too much into an RPG...

and then on your begin construct of your widget or begin play of your character, would you also duplicate this code 3-4 times?

What would be more efficient?

[dark drum]

I would just duplicate the variables/functions, be sure to put them in a category to keep things tidy. 🙂

@snow halo if you're feeling adventurous, you could alway look at using custom uObjects for each stat with all the core functions and what not. It does add an extra level of complexity but it can make it more modular/dynamic.

[willow gate]

Hey all. Is there like an AIMoveTo equivalent that you can use for your player character when you want them to move somewhere specific, for instance, in a cutscene. If they enter a collider, it disabled input and then moves the character to a specific spot using the anim bp?

Or do you just unpossess, add an AI controlller that takes over and then repossess when needed?

[dark drum]

There is a simple move to location/actor nodes that work with the player controlled character but it doesn't have any callback for if the move fails or the location/actor has been reached.

It's actually the problem i'm currently trying to solve. 😅 (well find a better method than my previous (working) attempts)

[willow gate]

Thanks. I'll try this

I wonder why they didn't build in a callback.

[dark drum]

Not sure but... It looks like it creates a path following component (if not an AI Controller) and adds it to the player controller. I believe the path following component is what has the call backs. Not sure how much is exposed to BP though.

[true crystal]

Hello there. I have a question for the people who have worked with MetaHuman. Is there any way possible to automate the Mesh To MetaHuman process?

[willow gate]

I'll look into it but in the meantime, it would be pretty simple to just make a little function that checks the player's proximity to the desired location on a timer and then either calls a fail or success condition.

[dark drum]

Yea, in my previous attempts, I had a collision sphere I spawned at the location that had some event dispatchers I could bind too.

As an FYI, it doesn't look like any of the path following component stuff is exposed to BP.

[willow gate]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll figure out a solution. Might not be clean but I'll figure it out. 😉 Thanks for pointing me at this node

[terse spruce]

I have a small issue, when i trigger an event from a tick, Delay until next tick doesn't seem to work.
Ex: setting a location on tick which will trigger an end overlap event.
I would like to do something with 1 frame delay, but as i said in this case delay until next tick (placed infront of end overlap event) fires instantly.

My question: What is the right way to unsure that things will happen next tick in this scenario, using 2 delay until next tick works, but i have no idea if that can cause unforseen issues

[dark drum]

Show your current setup. I'm struggling to visualize what you're doing.

[terse spruce]

in this, movesomething will trigger the end overlap

but, dosomething will fire in the same frame even with delay next tick (unless i use 2)

[sand shore]

Is it possible that you’re seeing multiple end overlap events, one before your tick even happens?

[terse spruce]

no, since the tick has to fire to change to position that will trigger the end overlap

[dark drum]

how do you know it's the same tick?

[terse spruce]

i pause editor and advance a single frame

[dark drum]

As far as im aware, delay until next tick will trigger at the start of the next tick before the main tick event is called.

[dark drum]

Add this before and after the delay node.

[terse spruce]

when setting a delay of 20ms this is what i get, anything lower than 17ms for 60fps will go through at the same time i press advance single frame

[dark drum]

So like this. If you get the same number then yes, its happening in the same tick but its unlikely.

[dark drum]

what engine version are you using?

[terse spruce]

5.5.1

[dark drum]

run this command in the console.

'TimerManager.GuaranteeEngineTickDelay 1'

For context,

[terse spruce]

still fires when i advance single frame

[dark drum]

Print the time to know for sure.

[terse spruce]

set the command in console and begingplay just in case

ill try restarting the engine

nop still

[dark drum]

Odd, i'm out of ideas. 😅

[terse spruce]

thank you still, it was instructive 🙏

[dusky meadow]

Hi how would I show the player in an inventory screen and be able to rotate that player with the mouse like how oblivion does it ?
Left Oblivion Right my current attempt with render targets with no player model yet

[snow halo]

why is it a good idea to have so much dynamism and modularity? can't there be such a thing as too much of it sometimes ?

also I have another question, while customizing those stats here, I made some mistakes that caused my create event binds to have some error, and now it's possible to select more than just 4-5 functions through that green little node thats attached to the dispatcher/bind node

For example right now im able to see a lot of my Interface functions and a lot of my function functions

I think they're all there at the moment

What you're seeing here is for the hunger, but i also have this problem on my energy

What I can do is I can try to contrl+Z to see what I did wrong, but this occured after I deleted something

[iron idol]

did you delete the thing it was attached to?

[snow halo]

Im connecting the right event/function here, but for some reason this still fails

[snow halo]

no, the thing it was attached to exists in my stats_component I believe

[dark drum]

It's subjective but I think there's a minimum level of modularity that makes something easier to work with and tweak long term, which is good as a project scales. However, the more modular something becomes the longer it takes to setup so its often a balancing act with what you're end goal is.

For example, if you'll only have 4 stats, is there any need to make a system that would allow you to more easily and (if needed) dynamically add new stats? Probably not.

Sometimes though, for an extra 30 minutes early on, it can save you hours later down the line. 😅

[dark drum]

It looks like you've inputs on the selected function don't match the inputs on the event dispatcher you're binding too.

[snow halo]

I think I'd like to add a system in which my energy system connects to other blueprints & affects for example how much damage your axe can do vs trees or how strong your attacks are vs wildlife

[snow halo]

sometimes restarting my engine helps refresh & recompile everything and a lot of these errors usually go away

[snow halo]

first i've set up the inputs & later Ive set up these dispatchers after finishing making all the dispatcher parameters & the functions on Stats_component

[dark drum]

You might enjoy my 'Stop repeating yourself' series. I go over Actor Components and UObjects in more detail to make reusable logic. It's nice as you can swap out behavior pretty easily. And if you ever decide to move to C++ it opens a ton of other doors.

For example, i'm working on a hyper modular interaction system. Anything that can happen is an Interaction Event with an Event Proxy if I want to kick the interaction to the event graph of the owner of the interactable component. This level requires C++ but once you're in that mind set there's still a lot you can do BP only.

[iron idol]

^ His videos are really good.

[snow halo]

Does that mean it requires C++ knowledge?

[iron idol]

no

He's saying that the knowledge is easily transferable

[dark drum]

System design is a mind set. Understanding how all the pieces will be used and fit together.

[snow halo]

Ive learned c# some time ago when I was having fun messing around on Unity & made lots of games with python's libraries like pygame etc. but never used C++ on UE although Id like to get into it one day cause I like programming and i like learning new techniques

[dark drum]

Custom uobjects become your go to when you move to C++ land. 😅 Everything is a custom UObject with some sort of actor component to manage/use them.

[dusky meadow]

Anyone have any ideas ?

[dark drum]

If you just want to show the player, you could switch to a different cam that's looking at the character.

[iron idol]

could you just adjust the spring arm?

[dusky meadow]

Okay its just I want to only show the player and also the lighting needs to be normal regardless of location. Would it be better to have a seperate level with the only the cosmetics of the character and then render that and also how would i able to rotate the character ?

[iron idol]

i would not do a seperate level

the problem is what you are asking you are probably not going to get because its not just a simple answer

i would look through youtube. there are tutorials on this

[dusky meadow]

okay thank you both for your help

[iron idol]

np

i think gorka does it

i'm not a 100% positive but it might be in his rpg series. you might want to start looking there. can't speak for how good it is.

[spring magnet]

I've been seeing people saying that 5.5 has inheritance bugs. Any other word on this?

[maiden wadi]

Anything specific said or like... My friend heard from his cousin who heard from his brother who heard from his coworker who heard from some random person?

[spring magnet]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/some-inherited-blueprint-variables-breaks-after-upgrade-to-ue-5-5/2137164/9

https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/1hof3mp/psa_55_may_cause_child_blueprints_to_be_broken_in

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/inherited-blueprint-map-is-always-empty-in-child-classes/1646908

[iron idol]

damn. I wanted to upgrade from 5.4 too, but this sounds like a pita

[spring magnet]

It is, I've had multiple Fatal Error crashes in the past couple days, and I've noticed that the crash typically clears all data within inherited TMaps across all my widgets.

[iron idol]

oof.

[maiden wadi]

Whcih version are you on?

[spring magnet]

5.5.4-1035

[maiden wadi]

Doesn't help that people won't stay on topic. I don't doubt half of these are real bugs, but when when you come across some derp that doesn't realize they need to tick "Show Inherited variables", you just sigh.

Curious to test these though. I don't recall what my personal version was. At work we're on 5.5.4 and I haven't seen anything like that though.

[iron idol]

why would reddit ever stay on topic.

[maiden wadi]

Amusingly that one wasn't on reddit but the unreal forums.

[iron idol]

ah, haha. assumptions....

[maiden wadi]

At work though, our existing project has nothing really placed in the map though. It's 100% procedural which may be why we aren't seeing the issues.

Can you show the hierarchy?

[spring magnet]

If either of you have a moment, could you check to see if (regardless of engine version) you can make a widget containing a map that uses an enum as the key, and then give it some dumby data, and then see if an inherited widget contains the dumby data as well?

From what I can see, using an enumerator as the key will break the inheritance in 5.5 and 5.4 (but other variable types work as the key)

[maiden wadi]

I can test that in a sec.

[maiden wadi]

I can specifically bug this if I create the widgets. Create a map first. View it in the child and it looks fine. Go to the parent and change the key type to something else and the child looks broken until I close the child. forcibly reload it by right clicking and going to Asset actions, then reload. Then open the child and it's map looks fine again.

[spring magnet]

Good call, I see that on 5.5 and 5.4; the close and refresh seems to fix it.
It's been finicky with me because my use case is a map of Enum->Struct, and often when I add or remove a variable from the Struct, I get a Fatal Error and lose all data in all instances of that variable.
I can't find the cause yet but I worry about using it if its this unstable. I suppose I could try constantly closing all Widgets and refreshing all of them, every time I make a significant change. This might be enough

[maiden wadi]

You mean remove a variable from the struct in it's class? As in BP struct?

[spring magnet]

Yessir, or adding one too I believe. It's not a consistent crash so I can't say for certain what causes it

[maiden wadi]

Cause that shouldn't cause issues with a map. But removing properties from BP structs is like doing a fire dance in a room of tnt as is.