blueprint

[odd ember]

which I can perfectly understand

especially given the half assedness of most proprietary systems

[faint pasture]

Like for one of mine,
"Button down fires projectiles, which all detonate on input release"
Works very well as an actor or component as it has state (list of projectiles currently in the world)

How many on a character at any given time?

If you're going super data driven then learn GAS. Are you calling buffs/status effects abilities or just the classical spells/abilities like WoW or LoL?

[odd ember]

GAS requires cpp

let's remember we're in #blueprint

[icy dragon]

As if there's no case of C++ heresy in this channel whatsoever

[faint pasture]

in BP i'd just make 1 Ability = 1 actor/component
Unless it was a super simple but combinatorial system like Path of Exile, in which case I'd go data driven

[dreamy ice]

sorry, probably 5 abilties max at a time, they will range from status effects to physical animations that spawn predefined actors afterwards.

[faint pasture]

Yeah just use actors for now.

[dreamy ice]

it just seems wrong to spawn actors in my component on my character to handle an ability. I

[faint pasture]

BaseAbility has event BeginAbility and event EndAbility, subclasses implement them and you're in business.

[odd ember]

use objects instead then

[faint pasture]

Well you need state and logic. Either combine them (Components or Actors), or seperate them (Logic in a component, state in a data only struct or object)

[odd ember]

if you're interested in creating a system, you should consider using some design patterns for this regardless

[faint pasture]

There's pros and cons to both.

[dreamy ice]

hmmmmmmm

[odd ember]

like I said, consider a system where abilities execute in a similar manner, and are processed equally

[dreamy ice]

It won't be too complex as abilities can't be queued and are immediately executed or not executed at all.

[icy dragon]

If it feels wrong to spawn an actor for abilities (even not ticking), then go for GAS.

[faint pasture]

That would be the seperated data driven approach, which can be super robust, but will make weird on-offs hard to do.
Fireball would be super easy.
Ability that triggers once you take 3 hits in 5 seconds and causes an AOE around every nearby enemy would be super hard.

[odd ember]

right but they still need to resolve, and you have to consider resolution order potentially

[faint pasture]

Wait till he finds out that many MANY games spawn an actor per bullet.

[icy dragon]

Sure, C++ coding would be required, but at least no spawning actor, according to your peace of mind.

[dreamy ice]

ughhhh what a waste!

[icy dragon]

Ssshhh. It's the danmaku alliance secret 😉

[odd ember]

I don't know many games that spawn bullets as actors, that seems excessive

[dreamy ice]

y'all are destroying my brain here.

[icy dragon]

And still managed to get excellent framerate to boot.

[faint pasture]

Absolutely not a waste really. Don't prematurely blow your load optimizing yourself into a corner and getting nothing done. A game that exists and works is 100x better than one that doesnt but is algorithmically perfect.

You're in #blueprint , speed is not of the essence here.

shit working is

[odd ember]

I think it's less to do with optimization and more to do with not accruing technical debt too fast

which is very easy with systems like these

[faint pasture]

Imagine the technical debt needed to rework your entire ability handling system for a new spell you want to make instead of just making a damn class. There's reasons why people go this route.

[odd ember]

yeah that's why I'm saying don't just create actors or actor components

[fiery glen]

as someone who has made a system that can run 40k bullets per frame I would say just go with the actor bullets for now

[faint pasture]

That's the opposite. An actor can do whatever you want, whereas a data driven approach needs the entire system to support a new feature. Both have tradoffs.

[fiery glen]

you can replace stuff like that later as the bullet actor logic will generally be pretty isolated

[odd ember]

you need a system for this regardless

or you'll run into the issue of technical debt

unless you got 5 abilities and that's all you end up adding

but judging from their specs, they seem to want more than that

[faint pasture]

Naw, just TryStartAbility and EndAbility. It'll work for damn near everything.

[icy dragon]

Any particular existing RPG you're trying to reverse engineer the ability system from?

[dreamy ice]

Not really, just something that popped into my head and i thought it'd be neat to implement.

[icy dragon]

Get the idea working first. Elegancy comes third, or fourth.

[faint pasture]

Sometimes never lmao

[odd ember]

if I can give you one piece of advice: think of how you want the abilities to execute and resolve first.

[icy dragon]

I swear you'd running in circle trying to come up with the most elegantly built system without seeing the idea in action at all.

[dreamy ice]

probably right

[icy dragon]

Which is one of the reason people say BP is good for prototyping.

[odd ember]

I don't understand what's wrong about using some time to think about how to structure a system that is complex

if you put into code the first thing you think of all you do is setting yourself up for fail later

[icy dragon]

The problem is if you don't have a working prototype, you could lost direction of what actually need to improve from the idea.

[odd ember]

there's enough people giving terrible advice on youtube, let's not also make this another

[dreamy ice]

I also dont want to spend time on a system that doesn't work correctly

[icy dragon]

something that popped into my head
thought it'd be neat to implement

That's enough clue on getting the prototype work first, before going further.

I know changes can happen at anytime, but minimising major changes happening in the middle of the road can save your head and time.

[odd ember]

most likely it'll be a prototype that will get expanded upon without further thought to the structure

I've seen it happen too many times

but w/e, I have no stake in this

[icy dragon]

Ignore the structure, it's the matter if it makes sense in the gameplay or not.

[odd ember]

that's bullshit, of course it'll make sense for the gameplay

[dreamy ice]

i mean i wouldnt build a skyscraper with wood if i knew it was going to be a skyscraper.

[odd ember]

the internet is full of such structures

[icy dragon]

Not always the case lmao.
I had several tested systems scrapped myself, because it sounded cool on paper, but ended up not mixing well with the gameplay context.

[faint pasture]

OK here's the main decision to make about your system structure. There's pretty much 2 paradigms.

Object Oriented

Fireball is a subclass of BaseAbility, with methods StartAbility and EndAbility and various control variables (AimDirection, AimPoint, Etc.)
On StartAbility -> Spawn Projectile FireballProjectile at AttachedCharacter.SpellSpawnLocation heading in AimDirection

Data Driven

Fireball is an instance of structure AbilityStruct, with data fields IsProjectile, ProjectileClass, ManaCost, etc.
MyAbilityComponent inspects Fireball, applies mana cost, if IsProjectile, spawns ProjectileClass

[odd ember]

that proves... nothing?

[dreamy ice]

So for instance if my player took any damage then i want to create an explosion around them, would i need to check for this on the players anydamage event or is there another way to access that information while in an attached blueprint component

[icy dragon]

If you say so

[odd ember]

it'll making sense for gameplay because it is the gameplay

[faint pasture]

AbilityActor binds ActivateAbility to owners EventAnyDamage dispatcher

OR

AbilityComponent is bound to EventAnyDamageDispatcher and triggers any of its data-only Abilities if they are set to trigger on AnyDamage

[dreamy ice]

Alright, also I like your explanation. Very helpful.

[rough cedar]

So I tried to make a fresh character bp and it does pull up the jump function fine. So something happened to this one. But I put like months of work into making this character bp and cannot rebuild it from scratch just to get jump to work again. If anyone has a suggestion as to how to get it working again or to hard code that would be very helpful.

[dreamy ice]

is it an actual character that inherits from the character class?

[rough cedar]

yes

[odd ember]

you could try migrating to a new project

[faint pasture]

Try just calling Jump on the CMC. I think it's a CMC thing, and Character just has a wrapper for it.

[odd ember]

since pretty much every other option has been exhausted

[faint pasture]

You can remake it in like 20 minutes, just copy paste the nodes in and make the variables/events when prompted.

and by all means BACK UP YOUR PROJECT

[odd ember]

I'd personally pick the migration route as it is cleaner and doesn't factor in human error

[rough cedar]

i tried to drag off of the CMC and this is how the node appears

[dreamy ice]

whaaaa

[faint pasture]

It's fuqqed, just remake. It'll be fast. You using hot reload or any other black magic?

Try close project and delete intermediate and saved first

[rough cedar]

@faint pasture the only reason i'm trying to hold back from it is because my character has all this stuff each with their own specific variables

[dreamy ice]

👀

[rough cedar]

yeah this character does A LOT of stuff

[faint pasture]

oh shi lol

[icy dragon]

Migrate the stuff to a new project.

[faint pasture]

yeah try close project and delete intermediate and saved

migrate is good idea too

[odd ember]

migration is really clean

and easy

[faint pasture]

You DO have backups right?

[rough cedar]

I do have a backup

but its pretty far behind these updates

[odd ember]

I mean I've only suggested migrate like 5 times already

christ

[faint pasture]

First try duplicate and see if the duplicate works

then just replace references

[rough cedar]

ok ill migrate

[icy dragon]

Been done that everytime I fucked up the assets or Git settings

[faint pasture]

I've never had a problem and I've been upgrading the same project since 4.4

[rough cedar]

i dont even know if it was an upgrade prblem tbh

it could be user error

idk when it stopped working

[icy dragon]

Or more likely cosmological error.

[rough cedar]

i was working on a lot of other aspects for months so jump wasnt on my mind

[odd ember]

does it matter?

[rough cedar]

yeah, now im doing jump stuff haha

[odd ember]

I mean does it matter when it happened

[rough cedar]

nah

[odd ember]

I'd focus on getting it back up to speed

[rough cedar]

yeah

[bright harbor]

quick question, is there any way to get a variable out of a parent character class from a child?

[faint pasture]

Yes you automagically already have it

[icy dragon]

Just get it per usual

[faint pasture]

theres a button to show inherited variables in the variable panel

[icy dragon]

Or right click / add node menu.

[bright harbor]

omg... i just checked and y'all are right, thank you so much, i feel stupid

[rough cedar]

so if i just straight up migrate this BP to a new project it should clean up that jump function?

[faint pasture]

You could have done it 5 times by now

[rough cedar]

haha ok

[icy dragon]

It should fix itself. Like 99% chance.

[faint pasture]

In case you didnt see the button

[rough cedar]

trying now

[icy dragon]

1% chance of error would be astronomical error screwing up the electricity in your computer preventing Jump node to work properly.

[odd ember]

assuming that you haven't made any changes to CMC yourself in the code, yeah

in either case, even if you have, you'll know

[faint pasture]

Try delete the intermediate and saved first though, I've had that fix stuff

[odd ember]

those are just compiled cpp files

[rough cedar]

can i migrate to the same project?

[odd ember]

shouldnt have any bearing on BP

[odd ember]

that wouldn't make sense

[rough cedar]

yeah youre right

this is what it looks like after migration

do i have to remake this whole bp again?

[odd ember]

try creating a new jump node

[faint pasture]

What's the warning?

[rough cedar]

"call unknown function jump"

[faint pasture]

Can you export that character and post it here? I gotta see this

[odd ember]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/character-jump-node-error-after-upgrading-to-4-25/147719/13

look at the last post

maybe some recourse

[faint pasture]

Try that

[odd ember]

that's literally what I posted

wtf

[faint pasture]

I know, i was pointing out the approach that probably is quickest and easiest

[rough cedar]

ok just tried this

same result

[faint pasture]

You can either make a new empty character bp to reparent it to or try the archvis character

[faint pasture]

What did you reparent it to?

[rough cedar]

BP_BaseCharacter first, then to Character

[faint pasture]

And BP_BaseCharacter is a new post 4.25 class with a working jump?

[rough cedar]

oh idk

i didnt see one in the list named BP Character

so i selected BP_BaseCharacter

[faint pasture]

What class are you working in that's busted?

[odd ember]

BP_Character is a class you should make

that inherits from Character

[faint pasture]

I'm thinking it's already the class he's working in lol

[odd ember]

so BP_Character2

or whatever

doesn't matter

[rough cedar]

ok ill make a new one

[faint pasture]

Show this on your busted BP

[faint pasture]

K just make a throwaway BP character, reparent your busted class to it, compile, and reparent back

[rough cedar]

on it

[faint pasture]

check that jump node works on the throwaway and after reparenting, and make sure to make new jump nodes and delete your existing ones

[rough cedar]

ok this is on BP_Character2

works there

[odd ember]

success

now parent it back

[rough cedar]

but not here

i deleted the old nodes before making that new jump

[odd ember]

see if you can create a jump wrapper

create a function called NewJump, and put jump in that

and see if you can call that from your previous class

[rough cedar]

so create newjump in the bp_character2?

or in my busted bp

[odd ember]

the former

[odd ember]

yep, see if that works on your busted character

have you ever used cpp in this project btw?

[rough cedar]

no

[odd ember]

what's the error?

[rough cedar]

just saying it must have a connection

to target

[odd ember]

try to validate data in the main editor by going to file > validate data

[rough cedar]

ok gonna take a few mins

[faint pasture]

@rough cedarWhat happens if you duplicate the busted BP

[worn plaza]

Is it possible for the Spectator class to access the gamemode? Trying to cast to the gamemode while a spectator returns a failed cast.

[rough cedar]

Same issue

[zealous moth]

@rough cedar add a self input just for fun

Some nodes need an explicit self not implicit

[rough cedar]

ok one sec its almost done validating my project

@odd ember looks like the validation failed

most of this stuff is plugins i was testing

[odd ember]

I don't think there's an issue

[rough cedar]

Any idea of how to fix the jump thing?

i know youve already done so much, i really appreciate it!

[unreal quail]

is there any way to call the parent implementation of a custom event?

[rough cedar]

let me check

[unreal quail]

nvm I found it

[rough cedar]

wont let me connect a reference to self to this

[zealous moth]

Nice... means it is not a character

Or doesnt inherit from character class

[rough cedar]

i can use all the fuctionality of the Character movement component in it. just not jump.

[zealous moth]

I would say restart project from scratch with 3p template and see if you have that issue. If you do your class is bugged

[rough cedar]

its just way too far along for that. are you saying migrate the whole project or just start over?

[zealous moth]

Well my reasoning is that your base character class isnt good

So try it in a fresh project

[rough cedar]

if i migrate my stuff to a new project, would that in any way also corrupt the new one?

[zealous moth]

Dont migrate just test

[rough cedar]

oh than ive already tested this

yes it works fine in a new project

[zealous moth]

What is the error?

I see error bu no log

Went back a few posts

Ah nvm the target

.... and just to confirm the input is in the character, not in the controller.
If you attach get player character does it work? @rough cedar

[rough cedar]

yes input is in the character. checking get player character now.

[zealous moth]

Worst case reparent and reparent to character class

[faint pasture]

Already tried I'm pretty sure

[round moth]

hey so for my main menu, i followed a tutorial that had it be that it makes a new level for the menu. how do i save the place and camera angle of the player when they go back to the game

[round moth]

im not sure if that answers my question o3o

[worthy frost]

@dawn gazelle you seemed to have spammed the channel. Not sure what happened but it was a bunch of repeated lines. Just letting you know.

[dark crow]

You could use a SaveGame

For the Location and Rotation or directly Transform

[trim matrix]

Save game is an option, the other option is saving the location value withing the game instance. The game instance persists between all levels and can be used to store any data that needs to be held between them.

[round moth]

ok

how do i do that

know of a video i can watch?

[fading raptor]

can someone help me out real quick, Im trying to summon a character blueprint in place of my current blueprint, and vise versa via the flipflop. However, for some reason it does not destroy the summoned actor when i want to revert back to the original character

The blue section works fine

The yellow is where the problem is, specifically the red

[tawdry mural]

you destroying this bp

code will not execute if actor is destroyed

[fading raptor]

But i spawn the actor before destroying it

[timber knoll]

Hoe does that even work

You can’t destroy self and try execute code after

Destroy self = all logic is also lost

[fading raptor]

the top section?

[timber knoll]

Yes that just won’t work

Either encapsulate it so you only destroy a portion

[fading raptor]

The top section works fine though, because i destroy my current actor and spawn a new one in its place

[tawdry mural]

do second section in other BP

combat werewolf

[fading raptor]

ahhh

[timber knoll]

But it will never change to other flipflop

Since it won’t know where to start

[fading raptor]

yeah i need to figure out how to let the two bp's communicate

[tawdry mural]

and put destroy actor after all the code

[timber knoll]

You are working with player controller there

Why not have it handle the spawning and destroying?

[fading raptor]

Because player controller always confuses me

[timber knoll]

Also before the second bit

[gentle urchin]

You could just spawn both at the start, and hide/unpossess as needed

[timber knoll]

Check if the reference is valid

[fading raptor]

oh my god you're right

[gentle urchin]

Makes sense doing it from pc tho

[fading raptor]

I was stuck because if i hid it it would still function

man its too late at night

I got it to work, putting the top half in 1 bp and the other in the other bp

only problem is i have to press 2 different keys

[timber knoll]

Yeah that’s where PC or hiding unhiding will help

[fading raptor]

yeah im trying that method rn

[lyric flare]

hey there! 🙂 can somebody give me a hint how to disable physics for a character movement?
if I deactivate the movement component, I can not re-activate it properly (activate is not doing anything, he can never move again)

[thorn ermine]

The standard character movement component relies on physics to work, if you don't want that, write your own movement component.
If you disable physics on the component, it will stop working as it uses customized code in c++ to perform its functions, not just simple physics forces.

[lyric flare]

I don't need the movement to work during that time

the character is riding in a vehicle meanwhile

[gentle urchin]

Setting custom time dilation to 0 would negate physics, wouldnt it?

[eternal reef]

Cant you achieve that with switching Movement Modes?

[gentle urchin]

Or that probably

[thorn ermine]

Can I recommend something in stead?
Just use a skeletal mesh as a placeholder actor, so "sit" in the vehicle, and not just put your entire character there, with its code and tick functionality running. 🙂

[eternal reef]

Oh are you referring to posessing? If so, you might be able to answer a question of mine...
Do you perhaps know on how to "copy and paste" one cameras view to another one (specifically when posessing another actor)
I am stuck with the issue that the input rotation gets messed up when I just use the transform of camera 1 and apply it to camera 2
Basically when someone switches from Actor 1 to Actor 2 the same camera view is kept like a "seamless transition"

[gentle urchin]

not sure about the copy paste thing, but set view target with blend makes it seamlessly travel

So It would be Set View Target With blend (target = NewPawn, time = 4 sec) -> Delay (4 sec) -> Possess new pawn

[eternal reef]

Yeah that works if I want it to move to the "base camera position" but it does not consider the current location / rotation of Camera 1 so to say

[gentle urchin]

Got an example of the issue, or the effect you want to achieve?

[eternal reef]

I can give you a quick sketch, one sec

Hope it is understandable, more or less the player should not notice that the actors are actually swapped

I got everything running except for the camera view which is currently set to the Base Camera Position of Actor 2 instead of the previous camera view which I would like to keep

If I just take the rotation and location of Camera 1, Camera 2 thinks this is its "Base Rotation and Location" which messes up the Input depending on the rotation Camera 1 had before the transition

[gentle urchin]

Ahh

I see

[eternal reef]

Like if the camera view is above the character before the switch, moving the mouse up suddenly rotates the camera to the left and so on

[gentle urchin]

Is it on a springarm?

[eternal reef]

Yes
Both Actors have the identical Springarms / Camera settings

[gentle urchin]

So when ur setting camera location/rotation

Are you doing it on the camera

Or the spring arm

[eternal reef]

Camera, as the springarm did not show any changes in its rotation / location while moving the camera around the actor

[gentle urchin]

Thats the isie

Issue

Do both

[eternal reef]

Ill give it a try, need to quickly open up the project

[gentle urchin]

I would guess spring arm only update socket location when x condition are met. Camera moving is not one of them

[eternal reef]

Still the same issue unfortunately

As far as I see it the Yaw Rotation of the Camera causes the issue

[gentle urchin]

are the actors placed in the same exact spot?

[eternal reef]

After he moves down the transition is done, here I am moving my mouse up and down

[gentle urchin]

Oh fancy!

[eternal reef]

😅 The material is a little too much atm but I hope this helps to clarify the issue..

[atomic salmon]

If you have a Spring Arm that is the component in charge of the camera movement. Unless you have specific needs you should not act on the camera itself.

If you want to have the same view on two different actors it should be enough to copy the Relative Rotation of the Spring Arm from one to the other.

[eternal reef]

How am I able to do that, neither the World Transform nor Relative Tranform of the spring arm changes when I move the camera

[atomic salmon]

That sounds strange because changing the Relative Rotation of the Spring Arm is what you need to do to pivot the camera around your actor.

Typically Yaw on Mouse X and Pitch on Mouse Y

Maybe you can show some of your code if you didn't do already.

Oh wait, if you move the camera directly the Spring Arm is not going to follow.

Again, you should act on the Spring Arm, not on the Camera parented to it.

[eternal reef]

Well the Camera itself doesnt really have any code by itself, do I need to adjust anything that the spring arm changes its (relative) position?
I use the basic third person template setup for the camera, except for a few tweaks in the settings
And the camera switch is just a simple Set View Target with Blend and a posess

[atomic salmon]

@eternal reefSetRelativeRotation on the Spring Arm.

[raw orchid]

• Moving thousands of items on conveyor belt -
  Currently I calculate every item individually which of course kills the game pretty quickly. At around 2000 Items my fps dropped to 30 already.
  I read the Factorio devblog (https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-176) and they had smart ideas to drastically improve it. In theory that makes all sense but in practise I just have no clue how I could tackle something similar in blueprint. So If anyone is willing to explain to me how I can drastically reduce the calculation amount I'd gladly appreciate that!

[eternal reef]

@atomic salmon

[atomic salmon]

@eternal reefis that what you wanted?

[eternal reef]

No it was meant that my relative rotation does not change when I move the mouse, so I dont get the value I need from the relative rotation of the springarm

[gentle urchin]

it is weird indeed

we need another step

Something about the control rotation

[atomic salmon]

Very likely because the capsule is rotating not the spring arm

[eternal reef]

Let me check

[atomic salmon]

The spring arm is not going to rotate by itself, you need to write some code for it. But it can rotate if its parent rotates.

[eternal reef]

Hm... the capsule neither changes its rotation unfortunately

[atomic salmon]

If it rotates because its parent rotates, then its relative rotation stays the same as you can imagine.

[eternal reef]

Seems like the only thing that moves is the camera by its own

[atomic salmon]

You said you start from the third person Character? Then the player control rotates.

[eternal reef]

Yeah I mean the general setup, but I did some changes to the settings so that the camera can move freely around the pawn without him rotating

[atomic salmon]

In that case you need to tweak the Character to not follow the controller‘s rotation and handle that manually. Anyway you should already have two input axis LookUp and LookRight which are used to control the relative rotation of the spring arm.

[gentle urchin]

Im surprised that the spring arm doesnt change loc rot, but never really studied how it works

seems only the socket changes location

which we're not able to set directly

Socket being "SpringEndPoint"

[atomic salmon]

Because when you derive from Character with a Character Movement Component it looks at the rotation of the player controller.

You can unlink it though.

For this use case I would even think of not using a Character and revert to a Pawn.

[eternal reef]

I will try and see whether I am able to figure it out with the SpringArm
Otherwise I will just stick to the solution that the camera transition goes to the base position of Actor 2
Not really worth the effort just for a little camera tweak...
But thank you both for your help lets see if I can figure this out

[gentle urchin]

Found it!

Save control rot , apply it after possess

springarm;

Camera;

[eternal reef]

No way it really works! Thank you so much

[gentle urchin]

You may have a good reason for swapping the entire pawn, but usually i'd just switch the mesh 😛

[eternal reef]

Yeah first time doing that... but I wanted to swap between a normal character and a pure physics character

Anyway thank you so much, didnt believe I would ever get rid of this annoying issue 😄

[gentle urchin]

npnp^^

[atomic salmon]

@raw orchidare the items on your belt moving kinematically or simulating physics? Did you profile your game to see where the bottlenecks are?

[raw orchid]

Im currently using a spline to help me move items along. So I calculate the start offset of the item which is its distance on the spline = world location.
I then increase this offset each tick to get the new location the item is supposed to be and set its new location.
Im using ISM to represent items.

So each tick im reading a data structure to get the right mesh type and instance number and its offset. increase offset, get world location with this distance, set location of ISM, update data structure.

Doing this with 2000 items per tick is just too much. And since they all move with the same speed same distance to each other.. its uneccessary to calculate each item.. I just dont know how to handle otherwise..

[atomic salmon]

@raw orchidok then you are moving the items kinematically and have optimized using ISM's. You need to understand what is impacting performances. Are you CPU bound or GPU bound? Initially I would just do a stat unit to chck

Later I would run the CPU profiles or GPU profiler depending on what you see in stat unit.

[gentle urchin]

Moving the parent that they're attatched to sound way cheaper, yet with ISM it's not that simple

You'd need to swap around ism's to different converyor belts etc

50k ISM's tanking FPS from 120 to 20

[raw orchid]

this was the result yesterday with around 1500 items.
gpu went up only by 4 ms, but game ms (cpu I assume) got up by 17ms

[atomic salmon]

So you seem to be CPU bound

[raw orchid]

yes, which makes sense.
The main topic is, they all move the same, so I could theoretically only calculate one and move all others with it.. until the first items gets blocked on the belt.
But I dont know how to tackle this ..

[atomic salmon]

Try doing a stat game

@gentle urchinare you moving the whole ISM component or instance by instance?

[gentle urchin]

the entire actor

I just wanted to test it out, comparing it to moving every single instance

[atomic salmon]

I would expect it still has to loop through the instances and update the world location of each one

[gentle urchin]

Internally? Probably

[atomic salmon]

Yes internally

But it should be more efficient than doing it with a BP loop

[raw orchid]

not sure what to look out for, never had this window open, (but thanks for that already, new commands always welcome) this is the result of quick test with 600 items.

[raw orchid]

yes I thought of something like that. butlooks like you got a huge fps dropp as well mh 😦

[gentle urchin]

For sure. HISM could also help, simplifying the mesh at some distance

[atomic salmon]

can you show the same for 2000 items?

A lot of impact comes from your BP code

I just want to check how it scales up

[gentle urchin]

Instance vs actor

5000 instances

[atomic salmon]

@gentle urchinI would expect HISM to help mostly on the GPU side, but they may potentially add overhead on the CPU side and in this case he is CPU bound, so not sure.

[raw orchid]

2k items

[gentle urchin]

easily testable with more advanced mesh i imagine

[atomic salmon]

scales almost linearly

is Blueprint nativization still available?

[raw orchid]

jeah there is no way around than to reduce the calculation amount drastically

[gentle urchin]

How about using Niagara for it? Could that work ?

[atomic salmon]

I was thinking the same

[raw orchid]

jeah I was thinking about it too..
but since I have close to 0 experience there except of building some fireballs I am scared and clueless if I could handle further tasks with that. Like calculating distance to its front neighbour etc..

[atomic salmon]

@raw orchidI would do a test with BP Nativization turned on and on an exe build. Just to understand how bad it is.

Or maybe is not that bad with nativization.

The other task is to profile the CPU and see where you are spending most time inside your BP's. Maybe there is an easy optimization to do.

[raw orbit]

can I ask how do you get statistics like that in your ue4

id want to see some of my projects performance metrics too 😄

[atomic salmon]

@raw orbitthere are stat commands

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/TestingAndOptimization/PerformanceAndProfiling/StatCommands/

[raw orchid]

open your console with ^ then you have a couple of commands available

[raw orbit]

ooh

[atomic salmon]

more than a couple 😉

[raw orchid]

here are some of my last used ones

[raw orchid]

a handfull :p

[raw orchid]

first time I hear about that but I will try it out!

but I believe you can't make gold out of shit

[atomic salmon]

This is often an overlooked aspect but the engine has plenty of profiling and performance optimization tools. This is the latest: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/TestingAndOptimization/PerformanceAndProfiling/UnrealInsights/

[atomic salmon]

that's a general rule of life.

You need to understand where the problem is, then you can think of solving it. Otherwise it is like shooting in the dark.

[raw orchid]

I strongly believe the main problem in focus is the individual calculation of each item instead of seeing it as a whole

in the devblog they talk about "increasing the segment offset of the connected belts(as long as no item is getting blocked) instead of touching the items"

but no idea how to translate that.
I have a few ideas to improve the calculations, but I guess in the end it wont matter that much..

[atomic salmon]

First you need to pin-point the problem. Make sure you are not acting on something and then that is not the cause of the issue.

Didn't have the time to read through the article you posted but that doesn't seem to be UE, isn't it?

[raw orchid]

nono not at all. But I thought I still can recycle some of their ideas.

[hybrid hound]

Im making a multiplayer ball rolling game. ive made all the movement without using physics so i just need it to look like its rolling, any ideas?

[magic summit]

Hello, is it possible to cast to parent class and have it executed further in all children classes ? similar how begin play works?

[maiden wadi]

Not quite sure what you're after?

[magic summit]

I think I figured it out, but I have one master usable item (class) and I will have lots of child usable items so I want to only cast to master and then call event that gets activated in any child class

[gentle urchin]

Yes

You can override any event in a master class in a child class

Just create it in the master (and do whatever logic that applies to every child actor,

and either extent it in the child actors (with add call to parent function), or simply override it completely

[raw orchid]

@magic summit And in case you dont know about "Interfaces" yet, this is also a very nice way to make casting a lot more easier and flexible.
I overlooked it for far too long and now I use it all the time 🙂

[odd ember]

in this case an interface wouldn't make a difference, as it is within the same hierarchy

interfaces only make sense if you have different class hierarchies that need to have similar calls made to them

[magic summit]

I solved it just by adding same event in master class and I added it in child class and it works

[gentle urchin]

I tend to just dodge interfaces completely, and instead bend over backwards to make a singular hierarchy for my needs. Doesnt always serve me very well, but often it works out just fine. Not sure why i dont use interfaces really. They're really handy.

[earnest tangle]

I used to do that hierarchy thing and it just became a gigantic mess in the end

ever since I tend to avoid it as much as possible :P

[gentle urchin]

xD well i've noticed that some times

[earnest tangle]

I started my project more with interfaces for a few functions, but it later became evident that for example all my items would implement a bunch of interfaces in largely the same way

it was a fairly easy refactor to allow my items use a simple hierarchy where the base class implemented those interfaces I had

so you can certainly use both methods quite easily at least when starting with interfaces, it's probably harder to go into the other direction

[gentle urchin]

Yepp very true

[undone wyvern]

Hi all, I'm at university right now, and our lecturer is struggling trying to figure out how to open and close a door in blueprint can someone help... this has been going on for 3 hours... please help.

[gentle urchin]

Lerp relative location of the door mesh

0 to 90

Door Rot output goes from 0 to 1 over desired time

use that as an alpha

or 90 to -90, if thats what you're going for

DoorclosedAngle and DoorOpenedAngle

[undone wyvern]

yeah that seems about right, gonna try it out... lol my lecturer just asked if anyone has any ideas...

did i understand this correctly? @gentle urchin

[gentle urchin]

no

dont use select float

use a lerp.

ah

right

the lerp directly into set relative location

[undone wyvern]

yup, that did it, but now we have another bug

the door now swings open and ignores the main collision

[gentle urchin]

the main collision?

Oh

the side of the collision?

the way you wanna go through the door?

[gentle urchin]

Right

[undone wyvern]

yeah thats the idea, sorry for not explaining that

the door is supposed to open when we get near it, then close when we get further away, and open again in the opposite direction when we near it from the inside

[gentle urchin]

simplest solution is to use 2 collision volumes sort of

or you can compare their relative direction (velocity) and clamp to nearest

[undone wyvern]

no way, someone suggested that ages ago but our lecturer decided to shrug that off.

[gentle urchin]

pretty unessesary to do the velocity part imo but

you can use the dot for the same thing

but instead of a select node

check it at overlap

before the delay

so the lerp goes from 0 to 90,

[trim matrix]

I made an ai, it has a blue print and behavior tree and blackboard and ai controller and tasks and such. datatable with its own stats ,all works fine. but how can i use what made to create a different enemy, change the model and statstable and behavior tree. i cant just copy what i did into a new folder, any ideas?

[gentle urchin]

90 being 90 * direction, which is either 1 or -1 🙂

Direction = dot product of player vs door etc, same as you have already

[undone wyvern]

perfect thank you! @gentle urchin

@gentle urchin we solved it

thanks for your help

[fallen glade]

I'm having a bit of a problem understanding how to connect blueprint automatically.

In this example I have an overseer blueprint (1) that automatically detects the blueprints to pair itself to (2) and set's itself as a variable in them.

It's all fine and dandy but if I restart the level the connection disappears? What's going on?

[odd ember]

why is the overseer attempting to detect things? each thing the overseer is supposed to oversee should register itself to the overseer

[dim robin]

i have an actor, i placed this actor multiple times in the level. when clicked i would like the actor to translate to a target position. at the moment if i click again on the same actor it will go back to it's original place, but if i click another actor from the same class it will translate to the target position. i would like to be able when i click the second actor to send the first clicked actor to it's original position, but i'm struggling to find a logic to track which instanced actor is clicked.. can you help me out?
this is the blueprint of the clickable actor if this can help

[odd ember]

don't use get actor of class

[raw orchid]

ah yes I did it again. I couldnt package my game due to plugin errors. google told me I probably had to add c++ to my project. Now I can not start my project anymore. Half a year or so I did the same thing but forgot how to repair it 😆
Can I completely remove c++ from my project again? I would like to make a copy of my project before messing around again 👀

[odd ember]

probably best to ask in #packaging

[odd ember]

get actor of class returns actors in random order, so you are never given a deterministic answer

[earnest tangle]

it's probably not in random order, but rather in creation-time order or something like that... but yeah you should not assume the order it gives you things is consistent

[odd ember]

nothing is true random, but arbitrary

[earnest tangle]

lol yeah

[mental raven]

so im trying to get a sprint and crouch working, i have it so that when i stop sprinting a line trace is drawn from my feet to where my head should be if im standing and if there is something in the way it will automatically put me into crouch. The line trace is colliding with my gun in my hand forcing me to constantly crouch but i cant seem to add it to the array of actors to ignore in the linetrace. Does anyone know what im doing wrong?

[odd ember]

but also creation time order would be arbitrary enough to be random

[earnest tangle]

:D

I guess it depends, I suspect it may actually be somewhat predictable but it's best to not treat it so

[odd ember]

it isn't

[earnest tangle]

eg. actors are stored in level in a certain order, and they get created in that order

oh it's not? interesting

[odd ember]

that's one of the big issues with loading assets

[earnest tangle]

ah yeah you might be right, I guess if assets don't load in a predictable order and it requires that to happen first then yeah

[odd ember]

you're left with race conditions if you have actors depending on other actors

[dim robin]

what should i do then?

[odd ember]

find better ways of communicating between actors. I don't know your setup so I can't give you a perfect solution

from what I'm seeing you might need a manager class

but it's hard to say

[dim robin]

i don't know other ways rather than "get actor of class" or level blueprint to communicate with actors in the level

[odd ember]

if a managing actor spawns another actor, then the manager actor knows the other actor

that's one way

[dim robin]

that's true

[rare hemlock]

Hey guys. I'm using the rotate root bone node to keep my character locked in place while the capsule rotates. This works perfectly fine locally, however, the simulated proxy twitches for other clients (see video). I've tried solving this by enabling Interp Result on the rotate root bone node which fixes the simulated proxy twitch but the twitch happens locally, instead, when the root yaw offset reaches -180/180 and there's some sliding too.

What have y'all done to remedy this issue?

Here's my node

[hoary knoll]

How can I give an actor an arbitrary variable states, for example, how can I make a tile mesh actor have an "empty" or "filled" state or a switch being "on" or "off" that I can just change between?

[feral ice]

How do i get the width of a any mesh?

[gentle urchin]

Bounds

[feral ice]

i did it here but how do i keep going from here

'

[gentle urchin]

For what

[feral ice]

the pivot point in this mesh is not in the center of gravity of the box

[feral ice]

I dont understand how do get the length. Right now i have two coordinates what should i do with them

[gentle urchin]

I think bounds is halfsize, so multiply by 2 to get full length

[feral ice]

should i get the difference and then multiply with 2

?

[gentle urchin]

Huh

Isnt it origin and extent ?

[feral ice]

this is what i mean. Origin is (0, 0) extent is (5, 5). Then multiply with 2 to get the full length of the diagonal

[raw orchid]

If I disable a plugin and it then always crashes on starting the project.. there is probably some code somewhere still trying to use the plugin content mh?

[feral ice]

where ever you put the origin i can get the diff and then multiply with 2 to get the full length

[gentle urchin]

Just dont see why youd need the diff^^

Extent will always be halfsize, wont it ?

Maybe im wrong.. rip

[feral ice]

fuck this im not going down this path... Im just changing the pivot point in blender i dont have time for all this math haha

[gentle urchin]

😂

Is this still for the spawning stuff?

@feral ice

[feral ice]

YEAH

haha

@gentle urchin

[gentle urchin]

did you try the material grass output node?

[feral ice]

i could not find it

[feral ice]

is this a landscape

@gentle urchin

[gentle urchin]

facinating

It only works on landscape it seem

[feral ice]

yeah thats the problem i faced haha

[gentle urchin]

guess you already figured this out 😛

[feral ice]

thanks for trying

but yeah the same happened to me but now im spawning grass from line trace haha

the good thing is i can decide the distance between each grass mesh and decide how many i want

[gentle urchin]

yeah true

altho may look very staticly placed

unless you have alot of random variation to it

[feral ice]

i have a random node that fix this

something like this

[gentle urchin]

Ah

If you do it across a few frames you should atleast get less of a framespike^^

[feral ice]

is there a way of adding a complex collision

?

this is the realcomplex

can i copy the collision from one to another?

[fiery glen]

Use complex as simple

Should be one of the collision drop-down menus in the properties

[tight pumice]

hey, just want to confirm, when i spawn actor his full begin play will fire and then nodes after spawn ?

spawn > do full begin play > then print doSomething

[maiden wadi]

@feral ice If you want simpler, better performing collision that is closer to the mesh's frame, it's usually best to import it with the mesh.

[raw orchid]

pretty sure thats the case yes. you can see for yourself if you add some print strings on your spawned actor @tight pumice

[tight pumice]

yes i am always wondering if its not like some lucky sequence of time due to high speed or something 😄

i was testing it, and yes ... this works this way ... spawn > begin play > nodes after spawn

[maiden wadi]

@tight pumice This might work in singleplayer, but it really shouldn't be relied on. If you need things to happen after an actor's beginplay after it's spawned, then put a delegate in that actor. Call that delegate after whatever you want to do in it's beginplay, and bind that delegate to a function where you spawn it.

Which might not work in that regard if that's the case of operations. Hmm.

[feral ice]

ok so i need to redo it in blender

?

[maiden wadi]

If you want it to perform better. Using complex collision data can be pretty slow if you're using objects with a lot of polys. Most collision doesn't need to be more than 10-20% of the original mesh's poly count.

But this is a moot point without a lot of objects in scene in most cases.

Most likely camera manager code. Put a 0.1 second delay in the beginplay of the death camera.

[buoyant stratus]

Is there a channel for help with materials, or is this the channel I should use? @maiden wadi

[maiden wadi]

Destroy on pawn calls set view target in camera manager, it doesn't like having a new view target set in the same frame as depossession for some reason.

[buoyant stratus]

Never mind, I think I should use #graphics instead

[maiden wadi]

@buoyant stratus For actual material effects, #graphics is probably better. For applying your materials to gameplay code, probably here.

[buoyant stratus]

it's a bit of both, but when I'm at that part I will probably ask here

[spare vessel]

I am wanting to get all meshes with the same material applied. is there a node for this?

[maiden wadi]

@spare vesselIn the editor, or in an actor at runtime, or?

[spare vessel]

@maiden wadi yeah want to click a key and it get all meshes that have a specific material applied

[maiden wadi]

I'm going to assume that means at runtime. I suppose you could iterate over all actors, get their components, check if any are a static mesh component get their materials, and == their materials against the one you want to know about. If so, add to return array, return that array at the end of the loop.

Would be a mildly costly function, but on keypress shouldn't be too terrible.

[spare vessel]

Nice one thank you

[south merlin]

Where should Save game and load game live? I mean I understand having the player save, but load can't exist in the player. Is there a top level BluePrint for that?

[fluid compass]

hey im having issue setting my VR headset to the the head of the UE4 mannequin ive set a scene component as a child and then binded it to the head socket, then the camera is then a child of the scene component but now when I test im well above the manequin like im standing on top of its head. Is there any blueprint to reset the headsets location?

[fallen glade]

Is there a reason why? what's the difference?

[odd ember]

it eliminates your issues?

[fallen glade]

yeah but why? I'm trying to understand what I'm doing wrong @odd ember I appreciate you trying to help me

[odd ember]

it has to do with how you couple things and it would take me too long to explain in detail

[fallen glade]

do you have any keywords for me to seach on the topic?

[odd ember]

because you have to understand system architecture

low coupling in system architecture

[fallen glade]

thanks lovely!

[odd ember]

director system architecture

[south merlin]

I'm going to need to make a custom gameinstance right? That's what I think looking at the docs.

[gentle urchin]

Self registration makes alot more sense in many ways anyhow! otherwise the "overseer" would have to get all actors of class every time a new relevant entity is spawned etc. Now they just handle themself and inform the overseer about their existence

[gentle urchin]

GameInstance is fine for load/save name yes

[south merlin]

cool. Thanks

[tall imp]

how can i add a option for unlimited FPS in my settings? Is 0 FPS equal to unlimited or what else would i have to do?

[somber locust]

0 should be un-limited in many cases,
pretty sure any FPS settings work this way

[odd ember]

that's not correct

0 is 0

[odd ember]

you don't want unlimited fps

[fallen glade]

why not?

[odd ember]

logic updates per frame

unlimited frames means you have no control

everything runs haywire

[fallen glade]

it's an option in games though isn't it? I'm sure i've seen it

[odd ember]

I've seen it in exactly 1 game

[fallen glade]

maybe

[odd ember]

and it showed exactly why you shouldn't have it

[fallen glade]

what game was it? might check it out too see the problemo 🙂

[odd ember]

GTA2

no framerate means that game speed is set to whatever your CPU can run

[fallen glade]

oh I thiink I have it i'll see next weekend

[odd ember]

which on modern cpus is several thousand times what is available

so your game runs too fast for you to even play it

[odd ember]

also stop asking why, and use google instead. it's OK to ask questions and be inquisitive, but asking why after every statement is something kids do to kill their parents

[maiden wadi]

Haha. Reminds me of Skyrim every time someone brings up uncapping framerates. Flying shit when entering a room.

[trim matrix]

i am trying to print when my character reaches the clicked point (simple move to) but i never get the print

[gentle urchin]

===

should be nearly equal, with tolerance

[odd ember]

======

[maiden wadi]

What is that node? O.o

[odd ember]

exactly equal

[gentle urchin]

😅

[maiden wadi]

Ah. Explains why I've never considered using it. 😄

[odd ember]

it's good for special 0,0,0 vector cases

[trim matrix]

hmm

got it by setting a 100 tolerance

[gentle urchin]

Tolerance should be a around the same as acceptance radius

[trim matrix]

how can i make it do it onlyce once?

it keeps printing till i change the location

ah ok

[odd ember]

living in your head rent free ayoo

[hybrid ether]

I'm trying to create plane game with sphere world but how should I add rotating input because this works but when player are middle of planet it wont work anymore.

[chrome fractal]

simulate physics skeletal mesh not working

[hybrid ether]

It was bad video to show problem

pressing A+W whole video

it rotate correctly in north but middle it doest do anythin and south reverse

[maiden wadi]

@hybrid ether If that is an actual sphere this is something you should consider writing your own movement component for. I've done it. I have a project where actors are a subclass of actor and are PlanetaryActors. These register with their planet, and when their planet rotates, it also moves all of it's sub actors. Some of these have their own movement component. They're moved by the rotation of the planet, but as well they move on their own around the planet. I do this with quite a bit of sphere projection math. Actor's world space up is always the direction of the actor-planet locations. Their yaw is derived from direction finding functions based on planetary north and planetary east.

[hybrid ether]

@maiden wadiThanks that sounds good idea

but I'm new about movement logics and when I'm playing this with mouse it works great. Is there any "easy" solution to make that mouse rotating system to be A + D keys

[maiden wadi]

Depends on what you're doing on mouse that you're not doing on AD keys.

[onyx frigate]

Hello ... got a question about Data asset, if you have some time

i've looked at the ActionRPG way of loading assets and tried to do the same

but for some reason, it doesn't work as intended ...

I saw a difference in the BP watched values:

this is the action RPG items

and mine:

Do you know why I have a default in front ? I just validated that the GetObjectFromPrimaryAsset also return null when I try to use it on my entries ...

[hybrid ether]

Thanks I feel stupid. I was "AddActorLocalRotation" with mouse and now I made it with A + D keys and it works

[maiden wadi]

It happens. 😄

[spark steppe]

is an actor the correct way to implement an UDP server?

it somehow feels weird 😄

[maiden wadi]

A what?

[spark steppe]

an udp network server/client

currently im using the UDP component on an actor, wonder if there's another way

[heavy ibex]

Is there any reason why running "Set Owner No See" in realtime on a character would simply .. not work? If I create a new project and use this, it works just fine, the character mesh vanishes. However when I run it in my project, it does nothing. I can even print the value of bOwnerNoSee after and it remains false. I can't seem to wrap my head around why the value isn't being set.

[maiden wadi]

Not a clue there. I don't mess with much that isn't default UE4 networking.

@heavy ibexWhat is the actor in question?

[heavy ibex]

My character

[maiden wadi]

How are you testing the print? Also is this singleplayer?

[heavy ibex]

It's multiplayer but I'm testing currently on the listen server so it should have full auth. Testing the print with a print node after setting, grabbing the value of OwnerNoSee on the mesh

[maiden wadi]

There's no reason that wouldn't set. The function only runs one check. If NewOwnerNoSee does not equal the current OwnerNoSee, then set it. That's just to protect the render state from being marked dirty from calling that too often.

[heavy ibex]

Well, I just figured out one goofy thing - I didn't actually check New Owner No See in my project (screenshot was from the new project for testing). So it does actually vanish after a delay in my project .. but somehow isn't being set later.

Ugh, this is one of those things where every time I try to debug it I get different results. Now I'm seeing the value is being set .. but it's still not actually hiding the mesh.

LogBlueprintUserMessages: [BP_CoopCharacter_C_0] Server: New Value: true```

This is being executed on the character itself

I'm wondering if this is just something muddled by PIE running under a single process

Ok, I've confirmed this is working fine in standalone. Just a wonky PIE thing.

[unreal quail]

is this comic sans?

😆

[slender idol]

hey, any way to make point lights not cast shadows for meshes in their respective blueprint?

Meaning I got a brazier with a point light in it and I don't want the brazier to cast shadows from that point light, but I want it to cast shadows from other point lights. (the point light is part of the same bp)

[brazen merlin]

you would change it on the specific bp actor in your level, not the browser

[faint pasture]

@hybrid etherAre you moving the planet or the airplane?

I've had good luck doing both, you'll want to move the airplane if you want to use physics

[arctic junco]

How to fix overlap events. I have a problem, when character enters the block, on overlap event is working but when it leave old block and entered new block, end overlap event is only working but. Images shows in what sequence the events work.

[faint pasture]

are those 3 actors or 1?

[arctic junco]

3

[faint pasture]

If you seperate the 3 a little bit so they are not touching each other, does it work?

all 3 are the same BP class right?

[arctic junco]

yes

[arctic junco]

no its not working

I think this is due to the transition of the character from the old block to the new one

[faint pasture]

Are you checking begin overlap inside the character or the block?

[arctic junco]

from character

and i tried to bind overlap events

[faint pasture]

@arctic juncoThis works on my end, show your BP

Triggers overlap begin and end on all these boxes

[earnest tangle]

if you're checking the overlaps in the character the problem is most likely in that logic

separate actors will definitely trigger their overlaps on their own even if the actor is already overlapping with something else

[arctic junco]

ok my task is this: I need to add a character to the array var, but when it enters in the "wrong blocks", it must be removed from the array.

[odd ember]

oh no, not the wrong blocks!

trigger box is probably the easiest way

ah you're doing that already

[earnest tangle]

You need to keep track which ones it's currently overlapping with

so for example if it's overlapping with the right one, then put it in the array, if it then starts overlapping with the wrong one, you need to check if you're still overlapping with the right one

also when you stop overlapping with something you need to update the state

[odd ember]

or just kill players when they step on the wrong ones

no mercy

[earnest tangle]

lol

[odd ember]

player doesn't follow your design? send them to hell

https://tenor.com/view/easter-funny-shrek-funny-face-gif-20535573

[brazen merlin]

line trace to the tile sounds better, no overlap, just check which actor the tile is based on

[earnest tangle]

Yeah if it's easy enough to detect by linetracing down then it seems like a decent option

[odd ember]

I wouldn't want a random linetrace from the player if this is just for one section of the game

[brazen merlin]

but you are checking if they overlap on the player?

[earnest tangle]

I suppose it depends on how integral part of overall gameplay the behavior is

[odd ember]

you are checking if they overlap on the tile surely

[brazen merlin]

i dont see a difference then, the overlap check will be occuring, same as the line trace.

[odd ember]

the line trace would have to be ran constantly, from the player, no matter where in the game they are

the collision approach only applies to where tiles are

[brazen merlin]

well hey, if you're doing other collision checks on overlap with the play then it makes sense. Correct me if im wrong, but collision checks run in the bg, just as a line trace would

[odd ember]

you can disable collision tiles separately

or stream them out of the level

and you don't commit any code atrocities while doing so

it's just bad design to have something like this on the player indefinitely

[brazen merlin]

fair enough

[faint pasture]

I'm checking in character and it's working fine

@arctic juncoShow your setup

[dense knoll]

I'm trying to find get a Ai character to buy a combo meal from another ai, then the player has to put them all on the tray. I have the ai walk up to the counter so far, but have no idea of what blueprint nodes i need to do at this point. I made a enum with #'s 1-8 not sure how to access it and break it down to require the burger, fries, and drink to be put on the tray, and complete the order. This is my 1st game, and i have no programing exp, but i really want to learn unreal.

[odd ember]

just make it go "uhhhh... " indefinitely

nah real talk you'll need a behavior tree

[odd ember]

and perhaps a talent node

[wet wren]

whats wrong with this? i made a slide door which opens when you press f and closes also with f but nothing happens this was working with event beginplay but not when i added the flip flop and f key

[odd ember]

why 4 timelines

[dawn gazelle]

You should use 1 timeline per component that needs to move.
You also cannot place input controls on actors unless you've enabled input from a specific player controller, or your player controller is possessing it.

[odd ember]

why delays at the end

[odd ember]

you can use more in case of e.g. double doors

[wet wren]

oh i see thx

[mint mica]

hey , is there a function that allows you to get the individual bytes from a 32bit integer and put them into separate byte variables ,

[odd ember]

no but you can write that yourself

[dawn gazelle]

And if you're not C++ savvy, there is a free plugin on the marketplace "LE Extended Standard Library" which has nodes that let you manipulate values back and forth between byte and byte arrays.

[mint mica]

beautiful 😛 thanks , i was prepared to go and knock something up in C++ i just wanted to avoid replicating a builting function

[wet wren]

i made a new input and did this its still not working any ideas?

oh and theres 2 timelines because 2 doors

top ones open the doors
buttom ones close the doors

[atomic salmon]

Press your button while playing but with that blueprint open, it will show you what executes and what doesn’t

[wet wren]

nothing is executing

the inputaction is transparent when im playing

im sure im doing something about input wrong

[atomic salmon]

Where is that code? Inside what?

[odd ember]

it takes 3 seconds of delay to execute

[wet wren]

doesnt work even after many seconds

[atomic salmon]

Actors do not receive player’s input unless you tell them to

[wet wren]

oh how can i do that?

[atomic salmon]

Look under Details, search for input

[wet wren]

alright

[atomic salmon]

Did you find it?

[wet wren]

i did not 😅

[atomic salmon]

Auto Receive Input

[wet wren]

how?

sorry im very noob in blueprinting

[atomic salmon]

Inside your BP_SlideDoor, if you click on its name above the hierarchy, you will find Auto Receive Input in the Details panel on the right

[wet wren]

oh alright

[atomic salmon]

When you have time I would suggest you take one of the free introductory courses on learn.unrealengine.com

[wet wren]

yeah i still need to learn and not do stuff on my own, also tysm for the help

[atomic salmon]

Found the Auto Receive Input?

Set it to Player 0

[wet wren]

i did still not working

i guess i will just try to find a tutorial

[atomic salmon]

Do you have the same input event somewhere else in your code?

[wet wren]

i dont

[atomic salmon]

Ok then let’s force that actor to receive the input like this

[wet wren]

it worked

[atomic salmon]

Ah ok

[wet wren]

thank you so much

[atomic salmon]

Now you know that regular actor don’t receive input unless you tell them to do so

Only actors possessed by the player do receive input by default

[wet wren]

ohh

[dusk cave]

Why does this not work but when I use Event Overlap, it does?

[faint pasture]

Because hits and overlaps are different things

you either hit or overlap

[dusk cave]

I know but what would I be missing to make hit work? I'm trying to prevent my player from going through the barrier.

[faint pasture]

Set your collision settings right

read the collision documentation

[dusk cave]

I have simulation generates hit checked on everything and my player has a box collision

[faint pasture]

Check collision settings. Read the documentation to see hwo to set it up

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/Physics/Collision/Overview/

[earnest hollow]

Hey everyone, i have a ai perception sys that gives a list of actors when it detects them, but it does not seem to "update?" that list. Which in turn results an ai not getting the next available target. Is there a way to sort of store the list of currently visible targets and continually sort through them? i have tried ForEachLoop with the same results as OnTargetPerceptionUpdated

[dreamy ice]

Are you constantly checking? If so I'd run it on tick or a timer.

[odd ember]

probably better to ask in the #gameplay-ai channel

people there would know

[earnest hollow]

Yeah, it's just seems ded rn

[odd ember]

cant expect answers around the clock

[earnest hollow]

Tried that too, with mostly same result

[odd ember]

anyway you'll have better luck there than here

[earnest hollow]

Yeah, wont hurt if i try both

Here's logic if it helps

[odd ember]

I wrote my own perception system so I can't help you

but you can always use breakpoints to see where it falls apart

[earnest hollow]

What's that

I mostly poke with printstring

[dreamy ice]

that image is too low res for me to be able to tell

[odd ember]

it's like a red dot you can put on nodes so when they execute in real time, the game pauses and that node comes up

and you can follow the execution step by step

all the pros use it

best thing since sliced bread

[earnest hollow]

My b

[dreamy ice]

still super low res copy all your nodes and paste em on this site and link me https://blueprintue.com/

[brazen merlin]

its fine if you view original

[dreamy ice]

weird its super blurry for me

oh there it goes

[odd ember]

anyway using breakpoints will 99% of the time lead you to the issue

[manic vessel]

Hi guys , Its me again!. I have been reading a dev blog and Im trying to understand how they did this ( Player hand displacement along the stab direction is interpreted as force ) this is using physics constraints.

[odd ember]

the 1% is if your code doesn't execute

[earnest hollow]

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/smmsah-a/

[odd ember]

sounds like something you should talk about to the people in #legacy-physics

[manic vessel]

I asked But they on radio silence 😦

[odd ember]

then wait

[earnest hollow]

Sounds real nice

[odd ember]

reposting is frowned upon

this server is made up of volunteers you know

[dreamy ice]

@earnest hollow Are you looping through the entire table of actors and setting the percieved actor as the element everytime you run? I can't see where that changes.

[odd ember]

try it. if you select a node and press F8

you get a free breakpoint

F8 again to remove it

[dreamy ice]

I see a For Each Loop but it doesn't seem in use.

[earnest hollow]

Yeah, tried that same result https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/xnecn0di/

[dreamy ice]

is your problem that the list of actors nearby isn't updating?

[odd ember]

in the first screeshot the loop contains things

anyway

breakpoints will find the issue

[brazen merlin]

I don't really understand the way GetClosestActor works. This Array of UpdateActors at the start is looped to see if the Creep is valid, and if it is, it is set to PercievedActors (which is not an array) then a branch for a stimulus success (that it entered perception not left it) and that winds up with the NearestActor

[earnest hollow]

See how they just stand around after their targets are gone

[brazen merlin]

you should check what the array of UpdateActors is especially after one dies, theoretically it should update because an actor "left" perception, but if not, then they are trying to find an actor that doesn't exist, though I'd imagine you'd get an error for this

[earnest hollow]

It's a function that supposed to go through actors and find closest to Self and set it as var. But because i cant figure out updating it sort of does nothing. In the second link removed it and it didn't change behaviour much

[brazen merlin]

all my suspicion is on what is inside UpdatedActors, to know what is in that at all times. You could print the length of the array or you can watch the variable, but this has to be observed through BP and for one of the Creeps

[junior wind]

Hi, for some reason i cant use BoxTraceByProfile in a blueprint derived from Object. If i try to copy it there it says cant paste. Any idea why?
I tried googling a lot and didnt find any answers.
Does this mean that i have to derive from the Component class to use this functionality?

[odd ember]

you can't trace from an object. they don't exist in world

[junior wind]

But it looks like a static function, strange. So where should i implement logic that does that kind of stuff but is not really a scene object?

[odd ember]

nowhere outside a scene object

how do you imagine tracing something that doesn't exist

[brazen merlin]

it can be an actor and anything below

can it be scene component?

[odd ember]

anything that exists in world generally is fine

i.e., if it has a transform, it's fine

[junior wind]

Well it is actually a "stance" object for a parkour system which has functions like CanEnter, Enter, WantsToExit and various specific variables etc.. It does interact with scene components but is really just an implementation of an interface.

[odd ember]

sounds very strange

not something I recognize as a pattern

[junior wind]

well it would be good as a finite state machine but i dont feel like it is worth implementing it though now it seems like the way to go

[odd ember]

use an actor

whatever you're trying to do sounds like nonsense

traces can only happen inside objects with world

at least in BP

in cpp I'm sure it might provoke something more serious

[junior wind]

I thought it was something like a static raycast function which could be called from anywhere

[odd ember]

every static function requires world context

at least when it pertains to the world

[heavy ibex]

Earlier I was asking about Owner No See and weird behavior I was having with it. Turns out that's working just fine. But I'm doing an Owner No See followed by a Set View Target with Blend. When the view target changes it now seems to ignore the Owner No See. Not sure of a good way to deal with that. Example in a new project (2s delay, set character to Owner No See. 2s delay then Set View Target to a simple actor with a camera.

[junior wind]

im coming from unity where it is like that so thats why im a bit confused

[odd ember]

I would recommend reading up on the documentation

the idea of what you're doing sounds wrong in either case

[junior wind]

anyways thanks a lot! it is clearer now. Im gonna research some design patterns and find a better way to do it

[odd ember]

there's already an animation state machine if you need that

but you'll still need an actor that can trace

[zealous moth]

@junior wind in ue4 you can trace from abstract objects in c++ as long as you define a world object

[odd ember]

I said that already

[zealous moth]

Bold of you to assume i read everything :P

[earnest hollow]

For some reason it works, and not only that but they don't target actors that are not in their vision i have no clue why or how

[tawdry surge]

Hey does anyone know if it's possible to nest sub-levels?
It doesn't seem to let me do it directly in the levels windows, and if I add a sub-level to a level I've assigned to be used as a sub-level, it doesn't load (or at least become visible) regardless of how I try to load it

[supple meadow]

Hey quick question, is there a way to reference a bone, or attach a component to a bone which I can then use in the Event Graph of a character blueprint as opposed to an animation blueprint?

[zealous moth]

@tawdry surge level streaming does that. I recommend watching a tutorial

@supple meadow refer to the skeletal mesh and there should be a get bone by name. You have to spell it right. Another way is to add a socket and get it by socket name

[tawdry surge]

Yeah well it isn't doing it.

I'm aware of how to stream levels with or without volumes. I've tried half a dozen ways and it isn't working so I was starting to wonder if it could

[zealous moth]

Maybe in cpp then :/

[supple meadow]

sorry I'm pretty new, which action would that be by name? (I'm trying to set it's world rotation to act as a pivot point for a character)

[zealous moth]

@supple meadow i am not at a computer atm. Try placing the skeletal mesh in your graph and pull out and search for bone

[supple meadow]

ohh I see, so it would be getbonename?

or not

those just return values as opposed to reference it

[supple meadow]

Similarly with sockets, I can get certain values but I cant reference them as a target it seems. Not really sure where to go from here, am I misunderstanding something?

[zealous moth]

Well you searxh for a value by name and it looks for it in the model

[broken sundial]

How does one compare two values of int? Like for x variable between x => and x <=. Quite new to blueprints; perhaps it's a dumb question but, I've tried at least 6 different variations but it doesn't want to work as intended. (My latest concoction ->)

[worthy frost]

@broken sundial http://thegames.dev/snaps/UE4Editor-Win64-DebugGame_JiGS5kQYoE.png ?

[broken sundial]

I forgot about that one entirely, how did I miss that.
Works exactly as intended now. Thank you so much. Saved me a lot of time!

[worthy frost]

regarding your above effort

[drifting condor]

Hey can someone help me with my spline? I have added the collision node but the character will still walk right through.

[worthy frost]

@broken sundial http://thegames.dev/snaps/UE4Editor-Win64-DebugGame_6ZIviSLryO.png this is basically the same as InRange node with the booleans ticked

@drifting condor you mesh has collisions on it? you set the correct collision profile in the mesh asset viewer?

http://thegames.dev/snaps/UE4Editor-Win64-DebugGame_im6p6YCJyR.png it has a green collision like this?

[broken sundial]

Yeah, exactly. In previous attempts due to having more rows of the same code; the > always applied and thus spawned each row simultaneously rather than each single row separately by theme. Thanks!

[brazen merlin]

did you figure this out? You're trying to attach something to a socket/bone in the blueprint right?

[drifting condor]

I made a pipe from cylinders and converted them to a static mesh. The cylinders already had collision so I'm not sure what happened. In the asset viewer it doesn't show unless I toggle complex on.

[dusk cave]

How would I go about making my actor stop moving once it runs into a object?

[drifting condor]

I figured it out. New mesh = New collisions 🤦‍♂️ thank you for pointing that out

[modern musk]

Can anyone help me out with why this is returning the number 2 rather than 3?

[brazen merlin]

one way could be using a line or sphere trace to check in front of the actor and see if there is a blocking hit

[brazen merlin]

I think you need to divide first (as a float) then round it

[modern musk]

Do you mean like set a new float variable prior to rounding?

[brazen merlin]

no extra variable needed

you've got two divider nodes

why can't it be one?

it looks like dividing two integers will always round down

so keeping it a float until the very end gives you a decimal number you can use the Round node on

[modern musk]

Ahhhh I see that works perfect! Thanks so much!

[brazen merlin]

great!

[modern musk]

Also, good call on the just dividing once, I was breaking the radius of a circle down and then segmenting it into 4 quadrants and my brain just immediately went to dividing it by the number I wanted to increment points by and then dividing by the number of quadrants rather than just doing it together.

[brazen merlin]

gotcha, sometimes the formula is better than the optimal, though neither have variables, they're hard coded, so lumping them together is (theoretically) less confusing. If you plan on changing either divider, then keeping them separate may be better

[dusk cave]

I need a better way to increment my pawns velocity each time the ball hits a paddle. This way makes it go too fast even if I put the number at 1.05.

[plush swallow]

is blueprint performance faster when the project is built or is it the same as editor?

[static charm]

use a much lower number to multiply by

Alan, yes ive seen 2x increase for bp

but not always, depends on the code.

if the velocity is set every Tick, that's 60 times a second it's multiplying/increasing the speed.

wait also, why are u multiplying x and y

[dusk cave]

because my pawn is moving on the x and y

[static charm]

yeah but your multiplying x and y and then putting it all back into x

[dusk cave]

oh forgot to fix that but it stil moves really fast

actually 1.05 is okay now

[static charm]

cool now i need help debugging this code, it's missing something

[dusk cave]

um

[dawn gazelle]

Possibly some tomato sauce?

[dusk cave]

lol

[static charm]

although on a serious note, im a bit disappointed. I made all that and it runs really fast, compared to previous versions that take 13 seconds to run in the editor, the above runs in 0.4sec in editor. But in shipped build with nativization on, they both run almost the same, 0.2sec.

[icy dragon]

Anything could be faster in standalone process.

[icy dragon]

Add some black soy sauce and some seasoning, and you got yourself a plate of Indomie Goreng.

[plush swallow]

does built project run as fast as standlone or faster?

[icy dragon]

Both of em lacks the editor overhead, so...

[static charm]

slow to fastest goes, editor, standalone, debug??, development, shipping.

i put ? for debug because it might not be any faster than standalone.

[plush swallow]

hopefully shipping is much faster bc of mobile

[icy dragon]

DebugGame is generally the slowest.

[plush swallow]

problem is i cant even test the BP bottleneck bc my gpu is so bad that even lowest settings gives me 30 fps at most

[icy dragon]

Mobile or desktop doesn't really matter, speed comparison wise.

[plush swallow]

how much is a 4 core cpu at 3 ghz compared to the average mobile cpu?

[icy dragon]

Not much different, surprisingly enough.

In mobile, GPU could be bottlenecking more than CPU would've.

[plush swallow]

my pc intel hd is 300 gflops while an iphone x has 600 gflops so at least i can be sure that the game will run better on an iphone that my computer xD

[icy dragon]

Then bottleneck is in GPU. Game thread speed of handful of BPs can still be fast on modest CPU, except that it ended up waits for the longest frametime other threads took.

[plush swallow]

tho since iphone x is already considered old idk i already know it has 600 gflops which is twice than my computer but the cpu clock is 2.4 which is less than my 3 ghz cpu so idk if that will cause a cpu bottleneck lwith physics or BPs

[icy dragon]

If you don't have physics substepping enabled, then generally BP could cause bottleneck, due to its VM overhead.

Though a handful of them won't always take out much frame time, in a 16ms budget.

[dusk cave]

Okay I'm having a problem. These are my nodes to increment my pawns projectile movement. How would I reset the velocity after it respawns?

[plush swallow]

i do have substepping enabled but i also have an awful lot of spaghetti ticking BPs 😛

tho i see that iphone x has 6 cores instead of 4 but since games are single threaded does that make any difference?

[icy dragon]

Not much, in practice.

[icy dragon]

But then smartphones are bound to power management and how little heat dispersion is, compared to laptops.

[trim pollen]

I'm trying to save/reload the transforms of some dynamically spawned actors. this saves and loads them all in the same place (only one transform is getting saved). I've been trying for awhile and still can't figure it out. (Thanks to @dawn gazelle for helping me with above screenshot).

[rustic sundial]

Help please why is my door opening blueprint not working right?

[gentle urchin]

wth am i even seeing

[rustic sundial]

lol sorry bro wasnt trying to trigger you

[gentle urchin]

not triggered

just stunned

Try a timeline instead

Set relative rotation

timeline float 0 to 1 over 2 seconds (named Alpha)

Then Lerp the Set relative rotation, with Z value of a Lerp 0 to 90

[rustic sundial]

i cant do the set relative location because im not rotating it im moving it down and into the floor

[gentle urchin]

Set relative location then

[rustic sundial]

thats what i did

[gentle urchin]

wait, what?

why cant you?

[rustic sundial]

one sec maybe im stupid

[gentle urchin]

Your words not mine 😛

[rustic sundial]

DUDE

im soooooo stupid

youre so right thank you so much

[gentle urchin]

np

[rustic sundial]

i was changing the TARGET location

not setting a new location

okay nevermind that didnt solve it lmao

youre putting me on the right track though

@gentle urchin

[gentle urchin]

timeline -> Set relative location
Start pos = Actor pos
End pos = Offset required to hide the door (height + some)

[rustic sundial]

i gotta be honest man i started learning blueprints like 4 days ago im not sure what that means comlpetely

lemme send you new screenshot

this is what i did with your advice

[gentle urchin]

No timeline is there 😛

[rustic sundial]

it keeps teleporting my door to some random spot underneath the map nowhere near the spot im trying to teleport it to (directly underneath the door frame under the floor)

[gentle urchin]

not random

[rustic sundial]

well i had a timeline but i thought i removed it because i was trying to isolate the problem

[gentle urchin]

that specific location