blueprint

[odd ember]

in general, there aren't a lot of tools in BP to give you exact measurements of an actor

[ripe rose]

even an approximation

[odd ember]

let alone half obscured ones

[ripe rose]

would be good

i know i could do this with like

a grid of line traces

lol

[odd ember]

do you care about the surface area or just how "visible" the actor is

[ripe rose]

i think i specifically want to know what % of the screen they're taking up from the perspective of actor #2

but knowing what % of them is visible and what % is obscured works too

i know there's a function in c++ for getting whether or not they're rendered at all, i already made that bp visible cus i'm using it for something else

[odd ember]

you can get actor bounds in 3d which would be a bounding box around the actor, giving the furthest extent of the actor in 3D. but it will also taken into account obscured parts

[ripe rose]

yeah i have to somehow figure out how much is obscured

the naive answer is a grid of line traces

[odd ember]

you'll have to do your own math for that

I don't even know how you would get it from line traces

let alone translate those values into screenspace

[ripe rose]

i'd just line trace from actor #2 aimed at a grid across actor #1's bounding box and see how many of them hit

[static charm]

https://nerivec.github.io/old-ue4-wiki/pages/get-screen-size-bounds-of-an-actor.html

no idea if this works, just googled it

[ripe rose]

hm

[sharp temple]

hey everyone sorry if this is poorly shown and a noob question but when i aim down my weapon scope when i shoot at a wall for example how would i do it so when i shoot the projectile is going exactly where the red dot is looking at because right now i look down my scope if i aim at some ones head the scope is aimed at the head but the projectile would hit the neck or chest

[odd ember]

I think you'll find whatever you're doing very hard to do in BP

[ripe rose]

me? i've done some crazy shit in bp

[odd ember]

well good luck then

[ripe rose]

thx

i might not even do it, i was just wondering if anyone knew off the top of their heads if there's an efficient way

i guess not

[sharp temple]

@ripe rose what's up?

[odd ember]

the math alone

seems like a rabbithole

[ripe rose]

well cranz i wouldn't be surprised if there were like striaghtup a function already built in just because of like

shaders

idk

like a different way to phrase the question is "how much of this is being rendered on screen"

[odd ember]

shaders don't deal with discrete specifics the way that ordinary code does

in shaders, everything is math

[static charm]

Darksounds, if youre using line traces make sure it's hitting the actor/enemy, and not just going through to the background wall.

[sharp temple]

@ripe rose in the actor blueprint can't you cut the shap or what ever is exposed into parts so what ever is exposed and what isn't it wouldn't be the whole thing sorry if this sounds dumb i only read a short bit what was said

[static charm]

there is an effiecent way, it's in c++

[ripe rose]

make the linetrace for the shot based on the scope's angle not the gun's

[sharp temple]

@static charm i'm not using linetrace i'm using projectile actor

[static charm]

u can search "get actor screen size in blueprint" and find a forum post and other results

[ripe rose]

darksoul i also fire projectiles in my game and i use a linetrace to determine the trajectory

if the line trace hits it goes towards the hit

if it doesn't hit then it goes towards infinity based on the camera forward vector

or osmething

[ripe rose]

that'd be one way to approximate it and would work if my whole game were based around this idea but it's just a thing i want to try

like checking LoS for multiple components

[sharp temple]

does it have to be that way because god dam i did not think about such a small thing like this

[ripe rose]

i mean it's not very hard to do darksoul

lemme double check how i did it

1s opening ue4

[sharp temple]

ok cool thanks sorry i stop using unreal for a while so my memory is all over the place

wouldn't it be best the tilt the projectile upwards a tad to go exactly where the red dot is?

[odd ember]

or project a rendertarget onto the red dot sight

from a camera situated at the end of the gun barrel

that way you preserve bullet physics

[sharp temple]

@odd ember i will be doing that to long range scopes to give it the magnifying look to it but red dot would keep standard

[odd ember]

if you're going to do it for other scopes then why not treat this as a scope and do the same?

solves your problem

preserves bullet physics

what's not to love

[sharp temple]

i mean i know this is a cheap lazy way but tilting the projectile spawn point up a little seems to get close

[odd ember]

sure but you're not preserving bullet physics

your gun is now shooting the bullet upwards

[ripe rose]

if you're trying to be realistic the bullet should shoot up and hit where the dot is aiming at a specific range

e.g. 100m

but beyond that range it should hit below the dot

unless you zero the sight

[sharp temple]

using rendering on a scope from my experience is a huge performance loss so i want to use it where it's needed not saying it's a bad idea what so ever just saying

[odd ember]

why don't you see if it's actually interfering with your performance first?

the creed goes: make it work, make it neat, make it fast.

[ripe rose]

i use camera location as my linetrace start, and (camera forward vector) * (range of the weapon) + camera location as my line trace end

if the linetrace hits then i "make rot from x" of (impact point - camera location). this rotator is used to determine the initial transform of the projectile on spawn

this is slightly simplified because i do some other stuff to offset the spawn location of the projectile and make sure it doesn't spawn inside of a wall and stuff like that

i don't have bullet drop though

so my application might be different

also if the linetrace doesn't hit, i use the trace end instead of impact point, so that it fires off into infinity at the angle of the camera or whatever

[ripe rose]

can you elaborate on this

or point me to a document

to read

[odd ember]

rendertargets are materials that can take realtime updates from e.g. a camera location

there's plenty of tutorials out there if you google

it's not a difficult setup

[ripe rose]

yeah i'll just check out a tutorial and see if it's relevant to my interests

might be something i want to use later

[sharp temple]

i will see what i can do @odd ember i need to experiment with scope rendering more i know you are right @ripe rose for what you were asking maybe there is some way to give vertices an identity for what is exposed or what isn't because i know it is possible to give landscape blocks an identity because i used voxel plugin before so i hope you find what you are looking for thank you both so much for helping me

[tight schooner]

I believe real guns have this function called "zeroing" and it's in a handful of games like Arma and PUBG

[ripe rose]

yeah i touched on that a bit

if he's trying to be realistic the bullet should shoot up at an angle based on the zeroing and hit the red dot but only at a specific range

[sharp temple]

@ripe rose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMeZuQOXGHM&ab_channel=UnrealCG i think i used this one for my project before can't remember if not just ask again

[ripe rose]

oooh

[sharp temple]

@tight schooner yeah i was curious on how zeroing works in real life because it is a mystery if you don't know lol but i obviously asked some people lol

[ripe rose]

you're saying make the scope see from the perspective of the barrel

rather than the actual position of the scope

i get it

anyway good luck gonna go lose some games of OW

[sharp temple]

this is how it is this is how i want it not perspective from in front of the scope or on the barrel only behind the scope

@ripe rose thanks for your help good luck on your project

@lapis zenith was thinking of doing that but need to test it out because not sure how the other player would see it come from the barrel when if i did that the bullet would be seen coming from the scope you know?

projectile

yep xD

i could use that trick and maybe replicate it in ways so on my screen it comes from scope and for other player it comes from barrel but that wouldn't be good on performance if i were to spawn the projectile 2 times

projectile does damage but that actually isn't a bad idea

using the linetrace to do damage i will put on my list

[odd ember]

well if it's fast enough

[sharp temple]

yeah will just have to work out timing

[odd ember]

bullet through air is near instant enough

[sharp temple]

well could to make the lintrace kick it when the projectile hit sorry i forgot how quick linetrace can travel xD

[odd ember]

line trace is instant

[sharp temple]

yeah sorry my bad lol me being dumb

me thinking about a projectile and a linetrace is confusing me

thank you both a lot i will have to use that when i add more weapons in 🙂

i actually think some games uses that system not sure or maybe it's just bad delay on battlefield i notice when a missile hits something there is a delay from when it explodes and when something is hit maybe they use some sort of linetrace to double check things

[odd ember]

battlefield uses some type of projectile for sure

[sharp temple]

yeah but i noticed there projectile spawn is always janky with rockets

[odd ember]

probably a heavy physics cost for rockets

[sharp temple]

probably yeah

[icy dragon]

Maybe BF put into account gravitational curvature?

[sharp temple]

i think the way they spawn projectile is just badly done don't get me wrong i love battlefield but some things they do is pritty lazy

[odd ember]

I'm sure they use state of the art tech to make all of this happen as well, and their entire engine is optimized towards this kind of action

[icy dragon]

I only (mostly) play boomer shooters, where it's as straightforward as rockets going through a straight line. That's as far as I'm aware with shooty bang bang in games

[sharp temple]

yeah the only thing that is probably going to hold them back is there servers

[odd ember]

I haven't played shooters in years

[icy dragon]

Logic is pretty simple, if unrealistic, but it's easier for netcode transmission.

[odd ember]

and can't imagine going back

[sharp temple]

i played battlefield 2042 and it was buggy yes but brilliant but all the flying aircraft would randomly go on a crazy one teleporting around

that sounds like either bad servers which doesn't make sense or everything would be the same or replication issues

[fervent bramble]

I have an issue where whenever I launch my project, even in fullscreen or anything (It's the Third person example) the mouse is able to exit the window space, It's visible past the window space and I need to eliminate that

I've tried it as standalone as well

[trim matrix]

someone on the internet posted,

is bounded to run on even tick

link: https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/407253/index.html

there is a c++ version of the discussion on answers hub as well: https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/771971/mouse-temporarily-leaves-window-at-right-and-botto.html

[fervent bramble]

What's the Inputs thing? I'm confused

[trim matrix]

I am trying to set a custom time for my game and I realized that I could use Timer triggered by 'Event Begin Play' node; OR I could stay with my first solution, which was tick the Delay node. They are in the same ballpark of performance?

[trim matrix]

It is probably a Macro or a Collapsed Node

you should try to link it with this;

[trim matrix]

Got it?

[tight schooner]

impact should be minuscule either way if it's just a thing that runs once

couldn't tell you which has more impact, though you could always do a test where you spawn like 10,000 actors with that code and see what happens in a packaged project

[fervent bramble]

Not quite.. I'm trying to figure it out, there are a few things unexplained so I can't exactly get all the elements in there

[trim matrix]

the 'Show Mouse Cursor' boolean already exist in UE, so you get it by right-clicking on the event graph

[fervent bramble]

Target Self is what I can't find?

The SetMousePosition node requires something there

[trim matrix]

print your screen

[fervent bramble]

? screenshot you mean?

[trim matrix]

yeah

[fervent bramble]

Hold on, I gotta set it up again, I scrapped it to start over

[trim matrix]

you want the 'get' not 'set'

@fervent bramble on the self problem, the node already has it, so you do not need to bother

[trim matrix]

hmm, it will run while game is running

but I think being ignored every tick on the delay should not be better than the Timer

[fervent bramble]

I get an error when compiling though

[tight schooner]

sorry, I didn't quite understand your original solution. Putting a delay node on tick is a weird thing to do in general. A looping timer would be better. Otherwise you have a tick event firing but not executing anything useful on most ticks.

If it's just one actor, the perf impact will be unnoticeable but if you have hundreds of actors ticking, then...

[trim matrix]

strange, mine in Player Controller blueprint looks fine

[tight schooner]

fwiw the looping timer will also be more accurate in terms of timing, because a tick event can only fire on a frame, so when a delay depletes, it has to wait for the next tick to reset

[fervent bramble]

Yea I can't even get Show Mouse Cursor without disabling Context Sensitive

And even then It has the target attached to it

[trim matrix]

where you are trying to re-create this?

[fervent bramble]

In ThirdPersonCharacter Event Graph

Should I not be doing that

[trim matrix]

I am a rookie too but for that, I would use in Player Controller Blueprint...

generally you try to stick controls definitions and UI stuff in Game Mode derivatives, like Game State (for stats), Player Controllers (for controls)

[fervent bramble]

I'm using the Third Person Example project as my default. The only character related thing is the ThirdPersonCharacter I believe

[kindred pier]

I have a blueprint for an atm when placed on the map, you can deposit 200 money from it, and this is an int variable

oops sent too early

I want to create a child class of this bp and set the money amount to 100, but for whatever reason no matter what I do, I end up getting the same 200

[fervent bramble]

This right?

[late gorge]

hi, im having trouble with losing integer data when im passing a struct through different functions, it seems to always be 0 instead of being the index i give it at the start

anyone got any idea why?

[trim matrix]

as you typed, it is giving you an error... try to watch a video about Game Mode or read some documentation; but basically you want to create a Player Controller blueprint, create the scheme there and link it to your Game Mode

[kindred pier]

even just a subject in particular to learn up on would be enough for me

[trim matrix]

its late, I am out 🙂

[trim matrix]

why you do not update the value when you want to deposit 100?

[tight schooner]

BP 1 shows a struct being made and put into an "LCur Slot Items" array and the next screenshot shows it coming out of a single variable called "New Item". I don't know all the steps in between so I can't say specifically why you're not getting the int value you expect. Something like this could happen if you're accidentally setting a whole new struct instead of using "set element in struct" to modify one thing (or something along those lines; I don't have UE4 open).

Otherwise you can practice some normal debugging to narrow down where the point of failure is

[late gorge]

im using a combat framework and it's spaghetti to say the least... was hoping it was some dumb "oh those integers get reset when out of scope of a function"

or something dumb like that :\

pretty sure the point of failure is when it "sorts" the equipment slots, by moving them up an index

just ugh :\

[kindred pier]

the way things are set up for me it is easier to use inheritance

in this particular instance

ahh I figured it out, was setting in incorrect place, thanks for your time

[fossil skiff]

Did anyone follow marco medal's climbing tutorial? im having trouble with the jump up part

[gentle urchin]

Ignoring that you're using tick for this (test or whatever), on the non-pure function nodes there's a hint about who you need as a reference. "Target is Player Controller". This means that wherever you try to call this node, you must at the very least have a reference to the player controller you're trying to affect. If you were to do this inside the playercontroller itself, target "self" would work, because self would then be a playercontroller

Show Mouse cursor is also a variable that exist in the playercontroller. So target must be a valid playercontroller, and not "self" when inside the character blueprint

Regarding the variable, it is hinted to both in the contextual menu, and if you hover the target pin (in case you found it during "not context sensistive" search

[fossil skiff]

putting this code

rotates my character like this

any reason why?

[gentle urchin]

Not sure what the "Jump Up" code does

[dense mural]

How can i communicate between blueprints? I have a trigger box and a cube, as soon as trigger box overlaps with player i want the cube to move, how can i do that? Nothing i did worked.

[gentle urchin]

Multiple ways

hard referencing could be a method

Create an instance editable variable of the desired reference class in the trigger box, (probably need to make it a custom class), and point it towards the cube reference in editor

[dense mural]

This is my 6th day in UE4, can you tell me which nodes?

[wraith bay]

Hi, so I’m fairly new to Unreal Engine, and I wanted to make a “Slow trap” which slows you down when you enter the collision box, and I thought it worked at first, but since I have sprint, everytime I sprint within the box, my mov speed resets, is there away to disable my character to sprint while he’s in the box?

[dense mural]

I am quite new as well but how about an if statement and a public variable that trigger box changes?

[atomic salmon]

@wraith bay you can change the max walk speed and other settings in the Character Movement Component as the character enters the box, and reset them when it gets out of it.

The other way would be to use a multiplier to the input movements.

[wraith bay]

👌🏻

[atomic salmon]

@dense mural say that your Trigger Box is an a BP_TriggerBox and your Cube is in a BP_Cube. You can add a variable into your BP_TriggerBox of type Reference to BP_Cube. Then you click the little eye on the right side of it, so it is accessible from outside the BP. Now with both your TriggerBox and Cube in the level, you click on your TriggerBox and you should see the Reference to Cube variable under Details. If you click on it to set it you should also see a little eyedrop icon. With that you can go and pick the your Cube from the level.

Now the TriggerBox has a reference to your Cube and it can "talk" to it and call functions/events on it.

[fossil skiff]

its a user interface with a boolean i made

its just this nothing too fancy

[gentle urchin]

Im a bit surprised that the default triggerbox dont have any method of reference built in really, is there any way to use it beyond the level bp to pick up a reference, without subclassing it? Sorta defeats the purpose of it imo

[fossil skiff]

only other times i use the jump up code is here and here

[gentle urchin]

was just considering if the code in there could be the culprit of the rotator, and not the stuff you initially showed. If you try disconnecting the jump up call, see if it still happens

[fossil skiff]

in the anim bp?

[gentle urchin]

I'd suggest looking up blueprint communications. To add some visuals to Marco's explanation; I've made two new blueprints. BP_MyCube is the cube, and BP_MyTriggerBox is a child of triggerbox, so now some logic can be added to it.

[gentle urchin]

this part, so in the anim bp yes. Figuring out what's causing your rotation issue means debugging step by step, so walk through it. Either by debugging with breakpoints, or simply disconnecting chunks at the time to narrow it down

[gentle urchin]

In the TriggerBox I've made a variable for the object reference of the new BP_MyCube. I've also set the variable to instance editable, so it's exposed and can be changed in the editor

[gentle urchin]

When the triggerbox is added to the viewport, and i select it, the variable we set to instance editable is now exposed, and is by default empty

[fossil skiff]

Ok to give a brief explination, i have done jumping sides ways from walls to walls and it works fine. now im doing upwards jump which as u can see is causing me issues.

Without the jump up interface call event, my characters doesn't rotate anymore and looks natural. but i can't jump wall to wall side ways now.

[gentle urchin]

After clicking the shown button, you can then click onto the actor in the level that you want to reference.

[gentle urchin]

Then adding some simple logic to the Triggerbox, which now should have a valid reference to the cube:

[gentle urchin]

So my guess was correct. The issue is in your jump code

Next up would then be to check out which part of the code is causing you these issues. Either by using the debugging tools with breakpoints and whatnot,

or by removing parts of the logic and determining the outcome that way

just rubberducking it to yourself can also help shed light on the issue

[fossil skiff]

maybe i have branch thats stopping my character from jumping left and right

[gentle urchin]

You'd know that better than any of us really

[fossil skiff]

yea lemme try

thanks mate you gave me a better solution than what i thought of in 3 hours

[gentle urchin]

If you find it hard to follow your own code there's usually just one thing to do about it; refactor it. But if that's not an option for some reason, temporarily removing parts of it can get you a long way 🙂

[fossil skiff]

played arounf with it a lil and god an intresting result. ledge jumping up, i could jump side ways. only after jumping up i cannot so getting close lol

[ruby meadow]

Is Select node CPP’s Switch analogue?

[fossil skiff]

@gentle urchin mate thank you so freakin much

[worthy carbon]

How to create an system while when player picks up the weapon, the player will be able to fire projectiles?

[fossil skiff]

this fixed it idk why lol

@worthy carbon like a gun?

[worthy carbon]

Yes

[fossil skiff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6XBzGWoe0I&t=330s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ukx8V7Ryjg&t=252s

[worthy carbon]

Thanks!!

[fossil skiff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdjFm7YA8vI&t=421s

wait wait wait

[worthy carbon]

Okay

[fossil skiff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jcf5pQFicA&list=PL4wXBehVu_5-SlRrhdvpd7RlczgJkfftG&index=1\

this should help

[worthy carbon]

Ok thanks mate!!

[ruby meadow]

I so don't like his tutorials, completely inflexible systems in my opinion.

[fossil skiff]

really? they work really well for me

[gentle urchin]

A wast amount of the avaliable tutorials have very limited flexibility really

Some introduce very bad practices etc etc

[ruby meadow]

Yeah, it works. But you cannot expand it.

[earnest tangle]

It's not expandable how?

It seems like a reasonably decent method, you just need the interface on the weapon

[ruby meadow]

Maybe this tutorial is good.

But I speak about antithetical l another tutorials.

That are very bad if you want to make something bigger in your game.

[earnest tangle]

Right... Yeah often the tutorial just gives you the basic idea so you know where to start and you need to change it so it fits your project

It's pretty hard to make a tutorial that is exactly the way someone needs it without any changes because there's just a hundred different things that people want to do

[ruby meadow]

Do you know Reids Channel?

This man is fucking legend, he gives you a basic idea, BUT you can very easy to do something else with this system.

For example.

He has quest system video series.

[dense mural]

@atomic salmon @gentle urchin thank you fellas i got it!

[ruby meadow]

It's basic idea, but from this basic idea I made quest system like in Witcher 3 or something close with it.

[fossil skiff]

i plan to do that once i get my map up and rolling. i loved the grappling tutorials too.

[ruby meadow]

If you do Quest System, you can look at my expanded system of his Quest System video series.
But, of course, first of all, look at his realization.

[fossil skiff]

link?

[ruby meadow]

To my system?

[fossil skiff]

ye

[ruby meadow]

Okay.

[fierce axle]

Hi, Im trying to know if certain pawns are within a volume, but these pawns have a larger bounds generating overlapping events that I want to exclude from the query. Ive managed to make this work with box coli by using a "is overlapping component" node filter, however im trying to make this work with a trigger box and its begin overlap event doesnt give me access to the component. Is there some way to make this work?

example of the trigger box without component access:

is was trying "is overlapping actor" but that doesnt seem to work.

[trim matrix]

how to change a level blueprint variable value?

in editor

[earnest tangle]

you probably need to open the level BP and then change it from there, I don't think it's visible elsewhere

[crisp vale]

how could i do that?

[near yarrow]

right click the orange dot and split structure pin

you can split pins into smaller pieces and type data in or wire it straight in from another node

[crisp vale]

like this?

[near yarrow]

an orange becomes two pins. pinkish purple which is rotation an yellow for world position

right click the orange dot beside spawn transform with nothing plugged in

it splits into rot and location

you can split these dots into smaller structures

i think there is also a node called make transform

it takes a rotation and location as an input

transform is just both rotation and location in world space

a yellow location pin splits into 3 green float pins

x y z

[earnest tangle]

And scale^

[near yarrow]

yes and scale

[crisp vale]

thank you thank you

will try that

im still getting this error

all in the level blueprint

[earnest tangle]

Do you understand what those errors mean?

[crisp vale]

from what i have heard, theres like, no ref which i assume means reference

[obsidian pelican]

you try

[earnest tangle]

Yep, "Accessed None" refers to the value being None, and "trying to read property Char1" means it was trying to read a property called Char1

[obsidian pelican]

to access an actor which isnt there or not set+

[earnest tangle]

So yeah as Andrei's saying, those three variables it mentions in the errors are most likely not set correctly

[crisp vale]

i see i see

[obsidian pelican]

you could set it by default if it's visible in the editor but otherwise you'll have to use the set node

also you can use is valid and only if its valid and not none you then spawn

[crisp vale]

i got the char2 errors to go away by using IsValid

[wary tinsel]

I usually open the game in another viewport and I can check the flow but it's not working idk why

[crisp vale]

now whenever i start the game, character 1 gets deleted?

[obsidian pelican]

yan you paste your whole BP ?

[earnest tangle]

Typically if you want to see this you'd set a breakpoint on one of the nodes and then use the stepping functionality to see what happens, or print nodes for logging

[crisp vale]

so i go from this

to this

i dont know where 11 is coming from

and idk why 1 is deleting

[dark crow]

If it cares about the number then idk what you're up to 👀

You're doing a lot of logic in the Level BP as I've seen

[crisp vale]

should i explain what i have so far?

[dark crow]

Just send screenshots of the code

[crisp vale]

Player1Tp and Player2Tp are points in my level

should i spawn player controllers there too?

[dark crow]

Excuse me

[crisp vale]

whats up

[dark crow]

Do you know the basics of how UE works?

[crisp vale]

no

[dark crow]

Then why don't you learn that

[crisp vale]

i thought here would be a good place to start so i can ask questions more related to what i wanted to work on

but any recommendation on where to start?

[dark crow]

We can't really help you if you don't know the basics

There's pinned messages and official UE's learning site

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses/your-first-hour-in-unreal-engine-4

[crisp vale]

thank you

[dark crow]

https://learn.unrealengine.com/home/dashboard

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/learn

You can see some getting started courses in here

[obsidian pelican]

@crisp vale there is a ninja challenge going right now also winning a prize and in this challenges you learn the most basic things about it

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/become-a-blueprint-master-by-taking-this-online-learning-challenge

it's a good start also with BPs

[near yarrow]

this would be great for him

@crisp vale

i took a beginner c++ tutorial series by chili

it boomed my experience in ue4 by alot

he uses a framework tho

there are similar tut series out there

but his was the most helpful for myself

you are missing basic fundamentals which make it hard for you to get help. these fundamentals stretch across all programming langs

i guess its just how the machine actually works that you are missing. ive been where you are and i know how frustrating it can be

but there is a hump

and the determined make it over that spot

i promise it gets easier and more and more your knowledge of systems other people built become less of a problem

and the real enemy becomes time

i think blueprint ninja would help a bunch

and a little c++ intros or tuts would def help you alot

[lament trail]

Can anyone help with an easy question (I hope!) I need to get the current camera's full transformation as a matrix. I've got the location and rotation as x, y, z and pitch, yaw, roll but i cant see a in blueprints to get/convert which surprises me. What am I missing?

im looking to get a 4x4 row major matrix

Maybe just use an identity Matrix as the starting point...

[maiden wadi]

@lament trailNot fully sure what you mean by a matrix?

I mean I vaguely know what a Matrix is. But not fully following how the camera's transform fits that?

[lament trail]

I want to know where the camera is located and how it is rotated. A transformation matrix will hold all that in one nice package

I can build it manually, but i just thought there must be a convenience function/s

[open rose]

I'm not sure if this question goes here, but recently with my project I've noticed that when I do something that makes my character rotate (the way I found of recreating the issue is getting in a car driving it of the level and jumping out) when I get back onto a floor that is not at an angle, my camera will be on its side. Does anyone know why this is? (Sorry about my bad explanation)

[gentle urchin]

a camera isnt affected by scale, so i guess that would be why it doesnt exist?

[maiden wadi]

@lament trail Are you talking about this variable? As in getting the camera's Transform?

If so, you can make one from the location and rotation. Or if you have the actual camera component, you can get that component's world transform.

[gentle urchin]

i think you can use the camera manager transform tho ?

Seem to work

[lament trail]

ill give it a try!

[gentle urchin]

If ur using a springarm, you can also fetch the socket transform

hmm.. seem you can get the transform directly aswell, as Authaer mentioned

guess i should've checked that first ^^'

[lament trail]

ive got the transform... (easier than getting location and rotation separately)

now seeing how to convert it to a 4x4 matrix.

[gentle urchin]

Not sure what you mean by that, sorry

[lament trail]

Sorry! ill work it out and post back... see an example will help

This works!

the output string is 4 rows, each with 4 numbers. (4x4)

It describes the translation, rotation and scale. It is used a lot in 3d geometry calculations

I suggest this as a good starting point: https://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/matrix-transform.html

[gentle urchin]

Ah, didnt even know that was a thing

the 4th number doesnt make sense to me out of thebox ^^

[lament trail]

Thank you @gentle urchin and @maiden wadi for you help.

get the hang of the 2x2 matrix first and build up from there

[maiden wadi]

Ah. Fair. I've never had a use for them. I just do everything off of basic vector math that I need.

[earnest tangle]

Thankfully UE hides matrixes pretty well

They're annoying lol

[open rose]

I managed to "fix" this but I still have some issues, mainly being that now when I drive my car off the map at an angle and jump out, the crosshair stops aligning with the centre of the gun and changes when I look up and down, if anyone could please help it'd be appreciated, thanks.

This is what I used to "Fix" the original issue but its not the best, its on Event Tick on the Player Blueprint. I want to change the method though.

[open crypt]

I have a two different actors (a generic car and a generic AI pedestrian) that, during their construction script, pick out a skeletal mesh and a random material (given an array of material instances)

I'm experience some big hitches during level loading and I wanted to rule these out - how can I disable these actors from loading without removing them from the map/game

*If my goal is to test them for hitching the game thread when they load, I can't just delete them on their begin play, because their construction script will still run (and bog the game thread down) before the delete actor command fires. *

I have, AFAIK, put the correct project settings for streaming/asychronis loading

[gloomy walrus]

hey guys, I have a bit of an issue with camera shakes in UE5. I want to make an infinite one, but once I put the duration at -1 the camera no longer shakes. Any idea why?

[covert pendant]

Hello, I’m trying to find a way to allow the player to select pieces of a given text (like an npc dialog) an save the selected text as an array of strings to use it later, but i can’t find anything about selecting text in runtime for it. I’ve asked in the /r/unrealengine too, but it’s worth a shot to try here as well.
Can someone explain to me how something like this could be done with blueprints?

[earnest tangle]

It kinda depends on how you want to do it

Eg. is it just a textbox where you just drag the text similar to selecting text in a text editor, or what exactly

[covert pendant]

mmmh allow me to ellaborate.

When the player talks to an npc, they give back their dialog that right now is text. plain text.

The player should be able to select in that box like in the textbox, but not write, just select

and with that selection made, save an array of strings, to check if a keyword is inside

and if it is the player can access a new dialog option to ask about it

which leads to the npc giving more text.

Kinda like an interrogation mechanic, if that makes some sense?

[covert pendant]

so yes, like in a text editor.

[earnest tangle]

Hmm

Perhaps you could look into just using an editable text box for starters. That should allow you to select text, and there should be a way to prevent the text from being changed

[covert pendant]

If i can change the appearance of the editable text box, it would work, but there's that, how to prevent the player from writing.

[earnest tangle]

I don't remember from the top of my head whether it has a "read only" feature, but it should have a On Changed event. If you add a handler for that, and just override the text with the original value every time it fires, that should prevent the user from changing it

Beyond using the editable text box, you would probably need to look into how that works as you'd probably need to create a custom text selection widget

[covert pendant]

that could work, didn't think about it, but how do i save the selected text as an array of strings like i need?

[earnest tangle]

I would imagine there's some way to get the currently selected text, so what you could do is for example have a button which the player would then click once the text is selected

[covert pendant]

yeah, but that's the part i can't find info, get the currently selected text.

[earnest tangle]

wonder if that's a C++ only feature 🤔

[covert pendant]

Then i'm screwed. I'm an artist myself, just starting to understand how blueprints work and make some stuff myself

[earnest tangle]

Yeah it might be a bit tricky. You could alternatively have the text inside buttons which are used to select individual words by clicking on the words

[covert pendant]

I thought about it, bu the idea I was thinking about was an interrogation game, if the text is a text or a string i could make different languages. But with buttons i don't know how yo tell the UMG to build automatically a button for each word.

[earnest tangle]

Ah

[covert pendant]

thanks for the help, @earnest tangle at least with the editable text is a step closer to the goal. If anyone else has an idea, i'm all ears.

[gentle urchin]

Im not sure i get the usecase so hard to thinknof any proposal to it. Can you provide a per text example? What the npc would say and what the player could... choose.. from?

[covert pendant]

Ok, my idea was to interrogate suspects, using 5 predefined questions that would relate to each keyword (who,when,what,how, and where)

So, if the Npc says "I saw a misterious person running in the street" and you select misterious person (or person) and it is a valid keyword, you have access to those 5 questions

so it would say "who was it, again?" and the npc could say "didn't see it clearly, he was wearing a mask", (mask could be a new keyword to ask)

or "when did this happen?" and npc could say "around 8:30 pm"

[gentle urchin]

So by selecting text, could that be hovering the text with a mouse and clicking on it ?

[covert pendant]

but the key is to select the parts of text the player thinks that are important

Yes, like in a regular text editor

[gentle urchin]

Oh, so mark from start to end of a word sort of

And if the word is "valid" for further questioning , show those options?

[covert pendant]

a word or a phrase, since they are strings. But yes, you had the idea, if the word is invalid, the npc will say a phrase like "i'm not sure what you mean" or something like that

[gentle urchin]

Seem you need to dive into c++ for it

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/API/Runtime/Slate/Widgets/Input/SEditableTextBox/GetSelectedText/

[covert pendant]

So I need to use C++ to make a copy of the editabletext that has the GetSelectedText() Event?

[gentle urchin]

It would appear so

There's plenty of times where events that could be usefull are not exposed to bp's :-/

[covert pendant]

And how would implement it in the editor?

[gentle urchin]

Probably by extending the editable text box class and exposing it as a blueprint callable function. Im not very versed with c++ yet so cant really help much

Another alternative i can think of, but which would be messy, is alot of text boxes, one per character, and using on hovered while button is pressed to define the selected chatacters(which would become a word or a phrase)

Not very optimal tho

[covert pendant]

Not very optimal, no, and it has the same problem as the "words as buttons" suggestion that zomg made before

It makes translation almost impossible

[gentle urchin]

How so? The text that is inputed to create the text in its entirety could still be localized, couldnt it ?

Along with your string table of matching words

[covert pendant]

But it would need a separeate button for each separate word

and a phrase in englsh can have 5 words, and 2, or 8 in spanish

For the moment you helped me a lot, @gentle urchin now i now that i have to look into extending classes that are already in the editor, and since it is calling an event with syntax already in the documentation i assume that creating a new event for getselectedtext shouldn't be too difficult

as long as it is the only thing i have to do in c++

XD

First i think that converting the blueprint project into a c++ is in order

wish me luck. Remember me as a hero.

[gentle urchin]

Yeah i think the right way to go is into the c++ world. Pretty sure there's plenty of tuts showing the general way to expose events from c++ to bp aswell, if you need some extra input for it

I find just reading the docs doesnt always give me a straight answer without some pre-knowledge (which can be fine)

Other docs usually does this better, with proper code examples

[covert pendant]

Yeah, and i don't have a technical profile, so i have problems getting the knacks of this stuff, that doesn't keept me away from trying, ofc

[gentle urchin]

As long as you have some sort of sourcecontrol, things cannot really get that bad 😄

[odd ember]

just don't let BP classes inherit from classes that you have removed or renamed in cpp

unless you like project corruptions

[earnest tangle]

BP's and C++ follow the same basic logic

things execute in a sequence

[covert pendant]

Well I hop i don't break anything. At first this is the only thing i have to do in C++, the rest can be easily full blueprints.

[earnest tangle]

so if you can make sense of BP's you can learn C++ too :)

C++ is just... more fiddly

:P

[gentle urchin]

In the start atleast

[odd ember]

UE4's cpp has training wheels

[covert pendant]

I'm living proof that that sentence isn't true XD

[odd ember]

so it's not that hard

you can still screw things royally, but the engine attempts to help you not do that

[gentle urchin]

Once you get used to it , surely you can get some serious gains from it

[covert pendant]

Gee, thanks for all the adivice guys. If you guys have any pointers of docs tutorials or some stuff that could help me

that would be a great first step to not "jump-in-and-see-what-this-does"

[odd ember]

I just google for answers whenever I have something I can't figure out on a mechanical level

on an architectural level... well, get the mechanical level right first

[covert pendant]

Ok, Ive found the MultiLineEditableTextBox.h in the Visual Studio

Bur there are dozens

I suppose i have to edit a specific one, or create a new one somehow.

[odd ember]

I would never edit engine code

rather, inherit from the class and make the changes there

[covert pendant]

and how do i inherit from the class?

[odd ember]

google is your friend

[covert pendant]

dumb question XD

[earnest tangle]

I think if you inherit from MultilineEditableTextBox, you can then access MyEditableTextBlock->GetSelectedText()

so you could add a new UFUNCTION(BlueprintCallable) into your inherited class which just returns the value from that

but this is more of a #cpp topic at this point I think :)

[covert pendant]

yes, it is, i'm gonna fiddle a little bit and if i get stuck (which i probably will) ask there

thanks again @earnest tangle

[earnest tangle]

np

[open rose]

my last follow up to this in case anyone wants to respond, I tested more and removed my "fix". I cant figure out how to actually fix the issue and if anyone can help it'd be really appreciated, when my character pawn is moved sideways, the camera and mesh get stuck like that when the player is moved back to up-right land. and makes the camera tilt as shown in the attached image here, as well as the issues shown in the previous message. I've tried google and it had no answers. that worked, thanks in advance to people who respond or even read this

[hidden grotto]

hey im new to ue4 and i made an ability code thing after following a youtube video and i wanted to add a counter so that every time i click the ability it prints the number of times i did it , for example it prints 1 then 2 and so on but it keeps printing 1 and i think i need help

[dawn gazelle]

Did you set up tries as a local variable?

[hidden grotto]

do i do that by typing event begin play set tries to 0 ?

[dawn gazelle]

If you created it as a local variable it would be listed under Local Variables on the left side. You don't want it to be a local variable as they are reset with each execution of a function.

[hidden grotto]

i created it as a normal variable

[dawn gazelle]

What blueprint is your Cast Ability function in?

[hidden grotto]

they are in the same blueprint

[dawn gazelle]

So you're spawning an ability actor, yes? Do you spawn a new ability actor each time you attempt to cast?

[clever helm]

ai behavior tree flickers when it tries to chase theplayer

help please

[hidden grotto]

yes it spawns a fireball each time i cast

[dawn gazelle]

Then each fireball would have its own "tries" variable. That's why you're seeing 1 each time.
You would need to keep track of the casts in a different blueprint, like your character.

[hidden grotto]

ok i get it thanks

[fiery swallow]

I've had an issue similar to this, and this probably isn't the method you are looking for, but I wanted a more dynamic realistic feel so my method was to actually make the gun look at whatever the crosshair's linetrace would hit, and then use Hand IK to keep the actors hand properly on the gun. This was achieved by finding the look at rotation of whatever the crosshair line trace would hit. It would then rinterp to the correct rotation. (It kind of felt like soldier 76's ult from overwatch). Probably a way more complicated way to do it but this is what I did when I also couldn't figure it out

[open rose]

although im not using hand ik, i had my gun do a similar thing where it would point the model at the linetrace, but for some reason my entire model is rotating, which affects the camera, which im guessing makes the gun do the weird thing where the crosshair becomes less accurate depending on where I'm looking, aswell as making the world appear to be at an angle. thanks for the response btw (also if you or anyone else knows a fix for this issue please respond this issue is driving me insane)

[late cave]

if you want to use beginplay and endplay, are actors the most basic option? I noticed that a plain object blueprint did not get those events... yet, I'm not interested in a world transform

[icy dragon]

There's an option for it in C++, but Actors are ones that are easier to spawn in BP than UObjects.

[earnest tangle]

UObjects don't have begin and endplay

so if you want something with a clear lifecycle, actor is a pretty easy thing to go with

[late cave]

I really wanted to use actor components, but I was baffled that there's no detach... you have to destroy and recreate them to move them between actors? (I was hoping for cunningham's law here, but nothing so far) 😬

[earnest tangle]

Components cannot exist without an actor

So they can't be detached

[late cave]

re-attach then

doesn't that make them child-actors? which is notoriously buggy?

ooh

[fiery swallow]

Child actors aren't buggy you're good

[late cave]

I thought literally everyone said they were? (And have been saying it for years?)

ahh

[earnest tangle]

child actor comps seem to work just fine, just don't try to detach the child actor it creates because its lifecycle is tied to the parent actor

[late cave]

This?

[fiery swallow]

I can't really imagine not using child actors personally. It's heaven

[late cave]

does this show up in the world outliner or actor detail panel somehow if you simulate in the editor?

I wanted to use components because I can see them in the details panel...

like the hierarchy, I mean

fantastic... that's what I'm doing then! thank you so much! 👍

very good

now to see if Unreal crashes when I change my parent class from actorcomponent to actor on this base class 😬

yeah, noticed... refactor time 🙂

[nova ledge]

I'm having a bit of trouble. What I'm trying to achieve is make my character turn exactly where the player tells it to like this: if you click the s / down key, you'll turn 180 over a certain amount of time, and if you were trying to turn left or right after you turn 180 degrees, well, you turn -90/90 depending on which way you go, also over time. I need to be able to do this as many times as possible. My problem is that with these nodes here (this is turn left, but it's pretty much the same for turn back, just with different numbers) it only works a few times if I were to change which direction I want to go in. I have no idea if this is a good way to go about it or not. If not, what's a better way? If so, how can I achieve my goal?

[late cave]

Whoah... that's a lot of nodes... if I understood what you want, I think I do the same... but mine looks like this...

And basically, on tick, I check what the pawn is doing against a state, so I don't accidentally run two timelines at the same time, etc...

[nova ledge]

I know that it's a lot of nodes, and that's honestly why I hope there's a better and less messy way to go about it. However if I remember correctly, I did something similar to this, but didn't work out, but just in case I will try doing it again

@late cave Ah, yea. I tried doing it again and it doesn't actually rotate for me, unfortunately. I'm trying to use an older version of ue4 so I can package it into an html thing.

[late cave]

what, exactly, did you add to make it stop rotating?

[icy dragon]

I think the community patch for HTML5 export is compatible with 4.25, but honestly there's no purpose to export it to HTML5, when Emscripten fails almost all the time.

[nova ledge]

To stop rotating? I have a set time to it.

[nova ledge]

Oh

[late cave]

sorry, I meant, what did you add that made it not do what you want anymore? 🙂

but ok, if it's some html5 issue, then I'm afraid I can't help

[nova ledge]

Ah, I changed it from Set Control Rotation to what you had. However for some reason I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually save it to where I can call it with a Get Control Rotation

Let me reword that. The Set Control Rotation doesnt seem to actually set it to where I can call it with a Get Control Rotation

[late cave]

Oh wait... you're moving the player controller around instead of the pawn? Ah... hmm... my player controller only handles input, and then relays that to the pawn, which moves around the world...

[nova ledge]

@late cave Yeah, Im trying to make it where you don't move it yourself, you just automatically run and stop when there's a place where you can turn. You can only choose which direction to go in at that time.

Oh wait, I think I misread what you said XD my brain is kind of fried from over the past few days lol

[late cave]

Np... then, I think I'll refer you to the master... 😉 but I still suspect you're overthinking the math here... you don't need to use nearly as many nodes to figure out the rotation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vszgkMwahDA

like... I use this, and that's pretty much it

[nova ledge]

What's that blue node called exactly? I would like to try that method.

[late cave]

which blue node? 🙂

[nova ledge]

Sorry, meant to reply to the pic below it XD also the one that's called Make PlayerPawnDirectionStruct

[late cave]

oh, that's literally just a struct I made to map the numbers to my words, so I don't have to see the numbers all the time 😆

[nova ledge]

oh XD

[late cave]

(ie "make literal struct", but you need to define the struct yourself)

[open crypt]

Watch a video on structs but make sure you always use the "break struct" when you are accessing a struct - if you do the "split struct" pin, you won't be able to use that blueprint without problems if you ever change what's actually IN the struct (meaning you go to your content browser and add new types of data or change existing variables on the struct, that's crash city if you do)

[crisp vale]

I have a character thats being created by Unreal, and after a second after running the game, it gets deleted and the camera changes

[icy dragon]

Are you sure it's deleted and not just getting unpossessed?

[crisp vale]

this shows up

it was this

right when it gets deleted

it goes from this

to this

[open rose]

I said the last message i sent would be the last but i thought id show my issue more visually just in case. sorry for asking about it a lot its just really bugging me. (this video is with the weird fix thingy i made)

and this one is without the "fix", which is where the main issue is and is the thing i need a solution for, the other video just shows one part of the issue better

[rugged nexus]

How can I convert mouse location to render transform angle on a widget

[winter kettle]

is there a way to know if a blueprint is a duplicate of another blueprint?

[livid lichen]

hi 🙂
i have just started with blueprints and i am following a guide that even shows what i have to do but i can't still get to work that my projectiles that i am firing having a collision. i set the StaticMesh of my projectile as projectile(projectile is an object channel that is as default block). So usually this should as default get stuck in every object but i don't know why it just flies through everything. I also tried to print me a string when a collision is detected but even that doesn't print me something

if you need anything more informations let me know and i appreciate the help

[fiery onyx]

Newbie to UE4, just joined here. I don't know C++ so I'm hoping I can get by with blueprints for the moment. I have the ability to make 3d models, texture, rig and animate but I wonder what is going to be necessary for a character editor

I'm imagining an editor where you can swap out and in parts for a character, morph targets for face and body, recoloring including additional texture overlays and an overall character palette

[somber crypt]

hello....random question and issue if anyone knows and/or has had a similar issue...
I have save game objects that I save the character I selected by index, and a save game with volume levels and mouse sensitivity levels. Everything works great in the editor, stand alone, and even launching the project from the ueproject. If I package my game however, I get a fatal error as soon as I try to save those save game objects in a save slot. I always am getting an EXCEPTION ACCESS DENIED. Is there something I am missing? This seems like a really simple thing and to have this much trouble with it seems bizarre. Thoughts?

Stack Trace (if it helps):

[jaunty solstice]

Hi Guys. Need some help completing an Actor Blueprint that fades a PointLight when receiving an event.
Using a Timeline node.
Attached shows my Timeline with a Float track and the incomplete Event Graph. What do I need to do to complete it and get it working?

[odd ember]

set your Time variable to lerp the alpha of the light

I would also use the timeline in this case as an alpha modifier

so limit the range from 0..1

then in the lerp node you can specify more specific values you want to move between

[jaunty solstice]

Will try thanks. One thing that has me confused aboiut the Timeline Node.
I assume the horizontal axis is time and the vertical represents the value changing over time.
How do you output this value? I only see outputs for Time and Direction.

[odd ember]

time is just what you called your float value afaik

if not, create a new float track and it'll automatically be visible

[jaunty solstice]

ah yes thanks. Time as a float track name was confusing me.

[odd ember]

I personally call the value Alpha

as I use timelines almost exclusively for alpha values, and it corresponds with the Alpha input for lerp nodes

[eternal drum]

I Found out how to smooth Axises!

without storing it in a variable and usinf finterp

[scenic kindle]

how to disable camera collision?

[livid lichen]

@scenic kindle https://bit.ly/30uFtfS if i am not mistaken you just have to set it to ignore at the custom collision preset

[scenic kindle]

on the bottom right, i don't have the collision presets

[livid lichen]

click on capsulecomponent

[scenic kindle]

but how do i make the camera ignore collisions

all collisions

not just the player collisions

wait i found it nvm

[livid lichen]

this one? 😄 https://bit.ly/3n5cO8L

[scenic kindle]

ye

[livid lichen]

collisions are a beast
mine is just gone but i didnt want it to go 😦

[pseudo pelican]

does anyone know how I would generate multiple equally spaced vectors from point A to point B?

[blissful gull]

has anyone else had an issue with socket transforms being wrong?

i call GetSocketTransform on this socket and sometimes it will be 90 degrees off

seems like gimbal lock or something

nevermind, its an issue with particles

[jagged kelp]

Does anyone know of a blueprint replacement for the default character movement component?

[tepid seal]

Anyone know how to add a key “ESC” function in widget

[gentle urchin]

Listen for input action -> bind to custom event or function

configure the input in the project input settings

[stone steppe]

Hi guys. Does anyone know how to stop my Character from facing the direction wherever my mouse points out? I want something similar to the ThirdPersonBP but my character doesn't stay in place.

[jagged kelp]

my problem is that the dynamic gravity plugin I am using does a great job for static gravity points but not for moving gravity sources like platforms, I need to find a way to have the character and gravity affected objects stick to a moving surface as they would in reality thanks to friction, right now a box that sits on a moving platform that is a source of gravity maintains contact with the platform but has the platform free slip under it as though it is frictionless

so I am looking for a solution that would allow me to move a character along with a moving source of gravity so that it maintains its position on the gravity source

[gritty elm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FwaHM6YSF8

[gritty elm]

you may need to uncheck use controller rotation yaw

[tepid seal]

Thx

[rigid dagger]

hello I need help

I am trying to get a sound to get footsteps working

[spark steppe]

yea, your name gives that away

[rigid dagger]

._.

[spark steppe]

use animation notifies

and send notifies when the foot is planted on the ground, then play sound

[rigid dagger]

sorry I forgot to mention that I am really new so I don't know most of the terminology

[rigid dagger]

issue is I don't have a character model.

[spark steppe]

it's literary the first google result when you search for it...

but here https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/Sequences/Notifies/

[rigid dagger]

I am not doing an animation project tho

[spark steppe]

so what is making the footsteps then?

[rigid dagger]

I am doinga game

[rigid dagger]

The key input

if u walk in a first person game, it makes the footstep noise.

that's what I'm going for

[spark steppe]

i see, i dont know the best solution for this, so wait for someone else to respond

[rigid dagger]

ok

thanks

Actually do u know anything abt while loops

?

[spark steppe]

i know everything about them

[rigid dagger]

good

how do I make a condition

?

[spark steppe]

the condition is just a boolean

either its true or false

the loop runs while the condition is true

[icy dragon]

I think the best way would be play sound at the player's location every few second (Delay), and adjust the delay length with the velocity.

[rigid dagger]

I got that but I am trying to change the condition based on keyboard input

[spark steppe]

i'm pretty sure that a while loop is nothing you would/should use for your sound problem

[rigid dagger]

Let me explain the logic

[spark steppe]

no

if it's for the sound, screw the idea

[rigid dagger]

While W is pressed, play the sound

[icy dragon]

Pedantry aside, perhaps that's doable in Tick.

[spark steppe]

yes rather that^

[rigid dagger]

Tick?

[spark steppe]

you implement the onTick event on your character

add a gate which gets opened by pressing W and closed by releasing W

[rigid dagger]

What does it do tho

[spark steppe]

and after that gate you play the sound

tick gets executed every frame

[rigid dagger]

Can u visualise it?

[spark steppe]

yea, for $20 bucks i will make a portrait image

[rigid dagger]

come on man

like on paint or on ue4 or sthg

u know?

[icy dragon]

So from Event Tick, you have a branch to determine if velocity is larger than 0 u/s. If it is, then execute a delay before actually playing the sound, with the delay duration adjusted by the velocity. Otherwise, do nothing.

[rigid dagger]

ok I will try

[spark steppe]

what you could also do, but also can't do because im not going to visualize it

[rigid dagger]

ok

[spark steppe]

is adding a sound component, detaching it, place it where you play the sound, measure the distance while w is pressed, and if it's over certain distance repeat the process

[rigid dagger]

I can't find a way to determine if the actor is moving

[icy dragon]

The delay duration is going to be relative to the velocity, so the curve would be curving downwards.

[spark steppe]

velocity (tells you if the actor is moving)

[rigid dagger]

yeah but which one

?

[icy dragon]

Just check if the velocity is 0 or not

[spark steppe]

the actor velocity

[rigid dagger]

how?

[icy dragon]

Though generally you want to be slightly larger than 0 due to floating point errors.

[rigid dagger]

I am asking how do I get the velocity and then compare it to a float

[spark steppe]

put the vector in a "vector is nearly zero" node

and add a tolerance of 0.05 or something

[rigid dagger]

I am really new to this so I really don't know much about the terminology

[native willow]

google terminology

[spark steppe]

xD

well you should ask if you don't understand a term

we don't know what you don't know

[native willow]

dont expect others to tell you what to do, just learn how to do it

[rigid dagger]

It's hard when I can't find too many resources

[native willow]

there are tons of resources

[rigid dagger]

Ik

but I don't understand them

because they use terms I don't know

[native willow]

a lot of ppl from here learned from internet resources so its doable

[spark steppe]

then you have to google those terms

there are resources about terms, too

[rigid dagger]

That doesn't work either because half of the results are about js

[spark steppe]

or ask in the general #ue4-general chat

[native willow]

1. You see a term
2. You google a term

[spark steppe]

then you put unreal engine in the search field, too...

[rigid dagger]

can you stop being so cynical

[native willow]

then add ue4 at the end of the term you look for

[rigid dagger]

but then it leads to more terms that I don't understand

[spark steppe]

maybe you should learn using google before learning unreal

[native willow]

im not

[rigid dagger]

Trust me, everything ur telling me to do I've done

[native willow]

we are not your teachers

[spark steppe]

...

[native willow]

we can be your advisors at most

[rigid dagger]

That's fine

[native willow]

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

that is literally the first result

from the guy I know btw 😄

[spark steppe]

but it uses animation notifies

[icy dragon]

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses

[spark steppe]

he claims to not having a character model and therefor no animations :>

[rigid dagger]

yeah

i don't

[spark steppe]

still you got 3 solutions suggested

[icy dragon]

Take some courses on Blueprinting first so that you have better understanding on the nodes.

[native willow]

oh but look at this

that is the second result

[spark steppe]

xD

niyo is really dedicated 😄

[native willow]

I consider this case as resolved

[rigid dagger]

:/

[native willow]

you have everything you need

[rigid dagger]

does anyone know any nodes that convert float to byte

[native willow]

the heck?

[spark steppe]

i highly doubt that you know why you would do that 😄

[rigid dagger]

i don't

trial and error

[native willow]

float is 32 bits while byte is 8 bits

so it doesn't have any sense

[rigid dagger]

fair enough

[icy dragon]

I cannot post this link enough so you better take your time going through the basic courses @rigid dagger

[rigid dagger]

ok

thanks

[bright frigate]

Hey so I have a timeline set up that determines my day night cycle. The timeline of course, starts from 0. But during the beginning of the game, how can I make it start from say 9 AM instead of 0 (midnight)? And then let it continue like normal?

at present it's like this. So that's like an hour every half second but this is irrelevant

[native willow]

there is a node SetTimelinePosition of smth like that

[bright frigate]

It's actually on auto-start and loop so I'm not sure what to put before it 😄

in the level BP

I'm using the original sun position bp from the plugin, should I make a new bp and inherit from it?

if I do this then it ends up going to the max of the timeline then hopping back up to whatever the first keyframe is on, meaning if I set the first keyframe to 6 am then it's gonna skip 1-5 AM

so I guess I should try putting it on beginplay

for now I only have one level so it's not a problem (and don't plan on more levels)

that kinda flew over my head unfortunately haha

[wraith bay]

How do I get a variable stored in my character's blueprint, in a level blueprint?

[bright frigate]

cast to player character, as player character pin -> get variable

@trim matrix by offset stuff do you mean use the "now" node?

[wraith bay]

=DD thanks!

[bright frigate]

for example

[wraith bay]

Thanks

[bright frigate]

not doing any level streaming, just have a single level so no worries about that

[jagged kelp]

is there a way to get a character to move with a platform if it doesn't have the character movement controller?

[restive oracle]

Hey guys, I have a cascade particle system that tries to imitate rain, I was wondering if it was possible to have an emitter spawn somewhere when a particle collides with anything so that it will 'splash'. How would I go about doing this?

[visual umbra]

How come this works?

[native willow]

?

[visual umbra]

Its using an array as target

[native willow]

its internally doing it for all of the objects I guess

[visual umbra]

I guess it must

[earnest tangle]

Target pin is special

[visual umbra]

So i can do this with all targets 😮 well thats nice to know

[earnest tangle]

You can also connect multiple separate objects into it

The main gotcha with it is that if the node returns a value, you won't get results for every call. So if you need to read results from it, you need to loop

[visual umbra]

I've done that by accident a few times

Gotcha

Very cool thanks all 🙂

[fallen glade]

could someone please explain these 3 terms to me ?

[earnest tangle]

afaik is excluded means it's excluded from valid areas to query

[fallen glade]

so don't go there ever, got it

[earnest tangle]

I have a system where you can mark doors as employees only which prevents customer npc's from using them, which basically sets the door to use NavArea_EmployeesOnly, which is then excluded in the NavQueryFilter which customer NPC's use

[fallen glade]

I see makes sense

[earnest tangle]

Don't really know about include and exclude flags though

[fallen glade]

It's good enough, thank you for your time @earnest tangle ❤️

[bright frigate]

ok I know you're gonna hate me for this insanity but hey it does work ... 😛

I just copied the original timeline where the first one starts from 6 am and auto start but doesn't loop and once finished it goes to the other timeline that starts from 0 which doesn't auto start but does loop lol

[undone quiver]

What makes this target parameter special, and how can I replicate it? It's a "Skinned Mesh Component (Object Reference)" and it's able to accept multiple inputs by default. However, if I create a function/macro with a Skinned Mesh Component (Object Reference) output, I can't connect more than one?

Would it say if it was an array/list?

Yes, the connector image changes, so that isn't it

Set Master Pose Component was created to trigger my OCD and destroy our BP Art.

[icy dragon]

Skinned Mesh is basically the Skeletal Mesh Component's skelmesh.

[undone quiver]

Thanks, but I probably said that wrong. What I can't figure out is how to create something in a macro of function so that I can output a single connection the way that Target parameter does.

This will not allow multiple connections.

It's a petty thing, but Set Master Pose Component has always bothered me because there is no nice clean way to connect everything. This one is tiny (4 parts) but sometimes they're huge

I'm one of these weird newbs who still believes I can keep my blueprints neat

[faint pasture]

Use an array.
Foreach Equipment actor
Get skelmesh
Set master pose component.

I do it on my attachment function. If skelmesh, set master pose component

[undone quiver]

That is cleaner. Thanks

In this instance it's only a little cleaner, but in larger ones it will be a lot better

It also bothers me that Target is above New Master Bone Component. Makes it terrible to try not to cross things if you have it all on the grid

[faint pasture]

Target is always the first parameter.

[undone quiver]

Yeah. Still bothers me

Would be great if we could re-order them

[icy dragon]

Would be great if it doesn't allow multiple connection to target at all.

[undone quiver]

👀 Whaaa?

If it were an array, I agree

[viral sundial]

Is it possible to reparent a DataAsset blueprint to a new class?

[supple dome]

a data asset blueprint yes, just file > reparent

if you are talking about an asset, no

[viral sundial]

Talking about a data asset created from a C++ class yeah

Thanks I'll recreate in that case

[crisp vale]

saw this in a tutorial, what is that target to player health thing?

[true ingot]

hey guys, does anyone know any good places to look when wanting to learn blueprints?

youtube videos or maybe an official site with a good work flow for tutorials?

[gentle urchin]

A binding to umg progressbar it seem. Health percent. Done wrong.

[crisp vale]

how could it be done right then

[gentle urchin]

If one would insist on using a binding, at the very least the percent is a result of current/max hp

Usually one tries to keep things event driven, so personally i'd stay away from bindings in the first place

[crisp vale]

the percent is what i want to get tho

and i dont really know how i would get it event driven to change the healthbar

[gentle urchin]

So keep using the binding, and add the division before plugging it into return value

[crisp vale]

wait, so the target to player health node is a Bind?

[icy dragon]

Just to make it clear, Progress bar value can only go from 0.0 to 1.0, and percentage is basically division by 100.

[crisp vale]

so like a percent used in math class?

[icy dragon]

Yes.

[crisp vale]

cool

[gentle urchin]

Yeah, sorry for my inaccuracy. Could've explained that better

[crisp vale]

its all good man

[icy dragon]

And I don't even get good math grades back at school days. 😛

[crisp vale]

im still in school i hate it LMAO

[livid lichen]

hi 🙂
i have just started with blueprints and i am following a guide that even shows what i have to do but i can't still get to work that my projectiles that i am firing having a collision. i set the StaticMesh of my projectile as projectile(projectile is an object channel that is as default block). So usually this should as default get stuck in every object but i don't know why it just flies through everything. I also tried to print me a string when a collision is detected but even that doesn't print me something

if you need anything more informations let me know and i appreciate the help

[crisp vale]

what node should i look for tho to get that one?

[gentle urchin]

To get the percent?

[crisp vale]

this one specifically

[gentle urchin]

You need the current health value and divide it by the max health value

[crisp vale]

so if a character has 950

i would need to do playerHealth/950 to get the %?

[gentle urchin]

Yepp!

[crisp vale]

bro im having more fun doing this math than math class LMAO

[gentle urchin]

So if current health was 950, then 950/950 = 1

[crisp vale]

yea

then that represents a full health bar

[gentle urchin]

Exactly !

[livid lichen]

imagine having fun in math in school

[crisp vale]

if the teacher is cool, then it can be

if they actually explain how it works even better

[livid lichen]

we just had one that told the ones that have problems that they never gonna graduate

[crisp vale]

i had a teacher like that once

[crisp vale]

im looking for a bind node and cant seem to find one like this tho

[gentle urchin]

Gotta make it fun/ interavtive and exciting !otherwise its hard to learn ;p

Not a node

You must in the widget designer select the progress bar

Then in the details panel theres a percent value

Next to it theres a bind button

Creates a function and there ya go

[crisp vale]

and it brought me to that grid

and the tutorial said to do that but idk how to get the node that they put there

[gentle urchin]

So whatever you insert into return value is automagically updated

[crisp vale]

but then how do i get the percent from a variable

if the variable was made in c++

oh god

[gentle urchin]

Do a division !

Create another value

Or

Use a hardcoded value

Last one is seldom recommended but oh well

[crisp vale]

but if i want the bar to update, dont i want the variable i created to be over 950?

[gentle urchin]

More important principles to learn at this stage

Your max health variable can be any value you chose. But the current health value cannot exceed this

Thats sort of the point of max health 😅

[crisp vale]

i thought i would have to call the variable set to do the division

bc i have this in c++

just to test damage working

but i thought id have to input that over 950 to get the % to set the value

i found the issue

i made 1 typo

[gentle urchin]

Not super versed with c++ but it would seem dmg is percent of max hp, which is hardcoded 950?

[crisp vale]

yea

[gentle urchin]

Normally

One wants to make the 950 a variable aswell

[crisp vale]

its supposed to be BlueprintReadWrite

[gentle urchin]

So its flexible in case rockets etc

[crisp vale]

man

ahhhh

i see i see

the variable is set in the character file as a variable, so it is changeable

[gentle urchin]

Ah

[crisp vale]

yea

so yk lol

[gentle urchin]

So 950 was supposed to be a variable?

Or do i not understand how that works? 😂🤔

[crisp vale]

so

lemme try to find the words

in the c++ file for the character, there is a variable called playerHealth which sets it to 950 for the character

[livid lichen]

in case you have a rpg system for example where yu can skill into health your maxHealth is changing. so having this as a variable is kinda usefull 😛

[crisp vale]

so i should have a variable for maxHealth and one for currentHealth?

[livid lichen]

[gentle urchin]

^ yes

For flexibility

I mean , it doesnt even have to be an skill to gain more hp

Imagine you needed to tune the game

It was completed

[livid lichen]

yeah true

but with skilling it's maybe a bit more easy to understand 😄

[gentle urchin]

And youd need to walk through all the code for every place you might've hardcoded 950

Fair ^^

[livid lichen]

squize you coincidentally cant help me with that aswell right?

[crisp vale]

aight, i made a second variable for max health

[gentle urchin]

Is it a custom mesh? You could compare it to the fp template

make sure the mesh actually has collision

[livid lichen]

this is the collision for the laser. https://bit.ly/3pheqPv

[gentle urchin]

So it has a collision volume?

[livid lichen]

it's a sphere yes

[gentle urchin]

Ah

[livid lichen]

the weird thing is if i collide as my character with an enemy, my print string, that i have created in the laser, says that i am colliding with myself

[gentle urchin]

Wait, is the laser hitting urself?

[livid lichen]

i am not even shooting there

it's triggering the moment i am walking into it https://bit.ly/3BW4qP7

[gentle urchin]

What does the laser logic look liike

[livid lichen]

oh damn i'm dumb. i tried to change the colour of the print string of the laser component but i have forgotten that i have another print string in the collision of my enemy BP

[gentle urchin]

😅

[livid lichen]

so i know now why it's showing if i am touching the enemy

that's how i am spawning the actor https://bit.ly/3jARo2H

[sage pecan]

Hi, I'm unable to line trace to the direction of the camera, it will point down everytime I fired

I figure is the end point that is having issue, is there any better way?

[odd ember]

try with get component forward vector instead or getting it off the rotation

@sage pecan

[livid lichen]

i thought you may meant myself @odd ember

[sage pecan]

I copied from one of the guide now, it seem the multiplication & addition is needed

Can anyone explain the logic behind those 2?
I don't really understand it

[sage pecan]

I've tried this too

[odd ember]

the forward vector is a direction

you multiply the direction with a range amount (the float) then add it to the location where you are, to get a location "in front" of the object

[sage pecan]

Ohhh ok, so if without the addition, the location will be from origin right?

[odd ember]

the location would be from origo, yes

as in, 0,0,0 in the level

[sage pecan]

Yupp

I got it, thanks man

[forest sable]

Good evening..

I have been struggeling with getting the delta of a 2D vector

Can someone help with that

[odd ember]

delta how?

delta position? distance?

[forest sable]

just the diffrence between that 2d vector last frame and current frame

[odd ember]

save it to a variable on tick, next tick check the previous value against it

[forest sable]

so only if it's diffrent i should set it ?!

[odd ember]

that's up to you

I don't know what you're doing

I'm just telling you the means of getting there

the only thing that is important is that the comparison happens before setting the vector

[forest sable]

I seem to be struggeling with the part of setting the variable, and doing good when subtracting it

[meager spade]

Get absolute value of what you use to set it minus the variable to get the delta and then set the variable afterwards when you are done with the delta (important)

[odd ember]

I understood it as just checking if it's different per frame, not different in size or length

[meager spade]

I have no idea

[forest sable]

I'm lost dude

[odd ember]

I have no idea what you're doing with all of that

mouse position into set

[forest sable]

just trying to set it only if it's different

[odd ember]

is all you need

then BEFORE that

make your check

[meager spade]

Isn't it cheaper to just set it regardless?

[odd ember]

so e.g. MousePosition() == new

[faint pasture]

Current value minus old value. That's it. If it's not changing, the Delta will be zero

[faint pasture]

Why? It's cheaper just to set it than to check.

Not that that matters at all.

[forest sable]

Like That ?

[meager spade]

Fuck the branch

[forest sable]

done

[meager spade]

😄

[odd ember]

do yourself a favor

[meager spade]

Unless you are doing a bunch of calculations after the set new

[odd ember]

and use true branches for expected outcome

[forest sable]

I feel so Dum 😂

[odd ember]

select nodes evaluate both values

a branch does not

[meager spade]

I meant as in it's not needed. But it depends on if he does a lot of calculations or not

If he does it might be worth having the branch to not do the calculations unnecessarily

[faint pasture]

If you're worried about performance, don't even check. Just set it and forget it.

[odd ember]

if you're worried about performance, learn cpp

[forest sable]

But then IT doesn't work

[odd ember]

just leave it if it works

[meager spade]

Have the branch in that case

[forest sable]

when i set it is the same time when i'm checking for the current time

[odd ember]

too many cooks in here

[meager spade]

Yeah, I've finished eating soon so I'm out

[faint pasture]

Wut

[forest sable]

Look they bot are given the same value at the same time

[spark steppe]

because you set it

you can't use the time variable as input for oldtime if you already updated it

[faint pasture]

Yeah LOL why are you doing that. Just at the end of your little bit of logic here, save the value as old value, and then use it the next iteration

[spark steppe]

just set your time after the calculation (e.g. when you rotated the object)

[faint pasture]

New = Value
Delta = New - Old
Do stuff
Old = New

[forest sable]

That's It let me try

[undone quiver]

@forest sable I see what you were thinking, but don't think of a node as a point in time. Wherever the node sits in the chain, when you poll it you are going to get its value at the time you poll it. Hope that made sense.

[spark steppe]

well, actually it's a point in time, but you have to consider that your execution is also a "time flow"

[undone quiver]

I think he was thinking about it like "when" that node ran its value should have ben x, so polling that node should always have the value at that time.

[meager spade]

Yeah but most of the time we'll consider everything in the same frame as happening at the same time

[undone quiver]

right

It's "order" but it isn't "time"

[spark steppe]

it is time

[undone quiver]

Then why didn't he get what he wanted?

If that node represents a value in the time that it was run I mean

[spark steppe]

because he didn't consider that if he sets it, that using it at a later TIME will have the updated value