blueprint

[brazen merlin]

they exist, they are tools, but the have their places - it depends

[gentle urchin]

There's only hit result under cursor.. wouldnt think it accumulates

[paper galleon]

And I'll pick a trace because I like micro optimizations

[odd ember]

well maybe it's particularly expensive for where you are

I can't tell

you have to look into that yourself

[brazen merlin]

that's why i chose trace initially for my melee attacks, but the collider served better and my anim state notify graph is waaaaay cleaner now

[gentle urchin]

Surely. Checking here first can make sense if it's something common tho. Before wasting any time on it

[odd ember]

nope, the opposite

[brazen merlin]

also no noticeable frame difference

[odd ember]

don't waste people's time by seeing if your case is unique to you

which 90% of the time it is

especially when it comes to performance

[gentle urchin]

Hurts even more when you're right lol

AMD chill was on.

as Conrad said, breathing

[austere dome]

is there a way to only call finished on Play and not reverse?

or have Finished check if it's from a play or a reverse?

[brazen merlin]

yes, use the Direction output and call a switch/select for it

[austere dome]

ty!

yep that worked.

[celest oar]

when i try to cast a string to float its rounding down the number, is it suposed to be that way?

for example when it casts it goes from 18.45 to 18.00

any way to keep the original number? this is a bit odd ive never encountered this

[gentle urchin]

Multiply string value by amount of accuracy, convert to float and divide on the same amount? Sounds pretty bad tho. 100 for 2 decimal places

Or parse the string and do it that way..

Still alot of nodes

[brazen merlin]

is there a checkbox for the convert?

[celest oar]

i thought about parsing the string but my issue is why the heck is it doing that

its just a regular convert node

[brazen merlin]

i dont really do string to float or string any number, but there's a numeric optoin

[gentle urchin]

Sounds odd that it does it. Is the decimal noted correctly? , vs .?

[brazen merlin]

i think im thinking of the tolerance for floats with vector conversions...

[celest oar]

i ended up replacing the comma for a dot with a replace node and it worked fine

[gentle urchin]

😅 devils in the detail

[celest oar]

indeed

conversions dont like commas that much i guess

[brazen merlin]

american vs. european convention?

[celest oar]

i have no idea

i didnt even know we had a convention for that hahah

[brazen merlin]

i thought european contries tend use comma the way america uses periods, specifically regarding number values, like dollar.cents

[short anvil]

Hi. If anyone remembers Dark Project (Thief) 1 + 2 there the interactable objects always were a bit brighter when they where highlighted. I want to recreate the effect, but I don't know what's the easiest or at least any way to do that. I could get the static mesh, get its materials, do something with it and reverse that, when the player is not aiming at the object anymore, but that seems quite complicated. I also saw that there are material functions and material layer blends etc. but I don't know if that's the right approach. Can someone guide me to a source of inspiration?

[brazen merlin]

yes, they would have this sort of glow that would happen on a regular interval

back then, id imagine something along the lines of a panner, masked by fresnel

[short anvil]

german here: yes, we use comma for decimal periods and dots for thousand separators. For example 1.399,99€

[brazen merlin]

the texture it pans would mostly be dark, with a simple white beam across it

[brazen merlin]

trip!

[short anvil]

Also a great source of bugs, because most programming languages assume english/american conventions 😉

[brazen merlin]

tell that to the korean and chinese, its awesome to see code in native language, but yes, for the most part, it seems coding languages are "english" derived

[celest oar]

do a raycast and if the object is of the "interactable type" do the material thing

[brazen merlin]

i thot the material animated regardless

[celest oar]

i never played thief so i dunno

just trying to help lol

[brazen merlin]

oh shit, no ur right, going up to a picture, it will glow that sort of dealio

[short anvil]

That's it, how do I do the material thing? I already got the raycast and know when I hit items in the world. I just need the material to appear a bit brighter than usual and to return to its original brightness, when it's not highlighted anymore

[celest oar]

i have no idea man, i dont deal with materials often but im 100% sure theres a node that can change material proprieties on the fly

cause ive done it before

[brazen merlin]

it would be a frensel so it doesn't look flat, plug that into a lerp, have a param for the lerp, that is what you control in blueprint to turn off and on

[celest oar]

if u want brightness in the material u can just add a var in the mateiral and multiplye it by the emissive or specular or difuse

[brazen merlin]

could also use staticbool param, but lerps are the og way

plug that all into emissive ideally

[maiden wadi]

Trace, save reference, do material thing. Trace, hit nothing, set old reference material to normal, ditch reference.

[short anvil]

Okay, I'll go read the docs on materials a bit, I don't even know how to set vars on materials. I also thought I could deal with the material non destructive, because it will be overwritten the next time I do a blender export, but if that's the way I'll figure something out 👍

[brazen merlin]

this would be bp, the material wont get tossed*, its just references

[brazen merlin]

in my mind, i would have a master material so this logic doesn't need to be repeated, then setup your instances for the objects which can be stolen (have this effect)

you'd also need to work with making dynamic material instances, which seems to be a running trend these last few days

[short anvil]

k, still I need to dive in a bit into how unreal materials work. So far the blender exporter did all the work.^^

[brazen merlin]

shame as that logic doesn't really retain from blender to unreal

[maiden wadi]

Tosses?

[brazen merlin]

sounded like itmuckel thought he would lose his material assets

[short anvil]

Well blender also has some node system for creating materials, so it's not dead knowledge

[brazen merlin]

tossed, fixed it, i do that a lot with -ed words

[maiden wadi]

Oh. 😄

[short anvil]

Yeah, the thing is I thought I need to edit the material in my "importedFbx" folder and the next time I import my assets it will be reset to whatever it was before. I'll figure something out^^

[brazen merlin]

i will always turn off import material/textures and just manage that myself, it's never, in all my years, been helpful

not for unreal, not for unity, nothin

[odd ember]

isn't this the blueprint channel?

[brazen merlin]

the initial topic regards setting a param on a material to achieve a specific effect, technically bp

[short anvil]

yes, but because this involves logic and how to dynamically alter materials I thought content creation -> graphics was the wrong place to ask

[gusty shuttle]

Speaking about logic, I have a typical issue most people have and for the life of me I can't solve it haha. I'm in UMG if anyone is interested in lending a hand haha

[short anvil]

I got it working, but can I do this without duplication? I already messed up the first time, because I misspelled the parameter name in the copy 🙈

This is how it looks 🎉

[odd ember]

genuinly this seems like a #graphics question. like BP can help you wrap these but BP is not concerned with the graphics of the material

[static charm]

you can use the bool to select a value instead, and that value plugs into one node

[short anvil]

Let me rephrase: If Branch is true I want the value to be 0.2, else it should be 0.0, but SetScalar... should be called anyway

[short anvil]

Exactly, that's what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how

[static charm]

search for node Select Float

[short anvil]

yes, perfect, that also got rid of the branch. Thank you!

[static charm]

yup, although for future reference, when using the different Select nodes, everything connected to Select will be computed.

this is not an issue for you now, but down the road, Branch can be more performant, even though it's less organized.

(for example if you had complex math connected to the Select node)

[short anvil]

Okay, but in this case in the previous version did exactly the same thing happened anyway, so there is no difference here?

[static charm]

no difference here correct

[short anvil]

For example when the else-case involved doing nothing and I'd fake that case by sending a zero value in a complex math function then it would be far more performant to use branch. That's what you mean, right?

[static charm]

yup

[odd ember]

it'd be far more performant to set the float directly, no branch

[short anvil]

here yes, but in the hypothetical case that the 0 value had no real effect

[odd ember]

generally it doesn't make sense to gate off HLSL for the fastest performance

[static charm]

not sure what you mean, i was just typing to warn/describe the pitfall of using a Select node when connected to heavy math or functions.

[gentle urchin]

Swap the input to float

Remove the branch

[static charm]

he's already done with it lol

[gentle urchin]

Adjust the float during function call :p

[odd ember]

yep

[short anvil]

The caller shouldn't worry about what the actual value is, that's why it's bool

looks like this now

[gentle urchin]

Or branch -> set local float -> plug into set scalar

No doubt this works fine tho^^

[short anvil]

yeah, but then I'd have to introduce a variable 😩 😉

[gentle urchin]

Local scope so no biggie 😅

I agree with the caller not having to worry about the value tho! Now you can do adjustments and keep the calling exactly the same

[sonic crow]

i am trying to spawn an object infront of my character

[sonic crow]

what do i need to change or fix?

[gentle urchin]

Get actor loc + (get actor forward * distance(float))

[odd ember]

just to be clear it's not the distance node

forward vect * float is a distance

[sonic crow]

thanks a million it is working! 🙂

[pale blade]

UE Editor keeps on crashing regularly when I try to save, why?
Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address

[odd ember]

sounds like a corrupt asset maybe, unless it's something editor related

[pale blade]

I don't know if it's related but I've been working with structs a lot more
And I change the structs around and edit the BPs that use the struct, then save, then it crashes

[brazen merlin]

sounds like structs, try a Resave All from the specific folder it is in and see if it goes away, then do a full resave all and fix up redirectors

[pale blade]

I'll try the fix up redirectors, hopefully it won't keep crashing again

[brazen merlin]

resave all is important, moreso than redirects in this case

[sonic crow]

This is a tricky one, i have been messing with it for days, I am trying to change my navigation to a keyboard and or a gamepad whilst still keeping the constraints of my grid, ideally i would like to limit movement to 4 direction (north, south, east, west). The current setup works perfectly for a cursor and mouse, but i would like to limit it to a d-pad or (A,S,D,W)

[odd ember]

select node based on the orientation of the player character

or I'm not sure you can do just one node for that

which is a bit of a pain in the ass

can you show where the camera is in relation to the player character?

[sonic crow]

here it is in action

[odd ember]

sexy

is the camera ever rotating?

I think you'll need a constraint but check with #legacy-physics

[upbeat moss]

k thx, im going to ask that there again

[sonic crow]

currently not but I do want to create some camera effects like camera zooming in and out so that it is not boring

[odd ember]

okay but specifically rotation

[sonic crow]

yes no need for rotation

[odd ember]

get the camera's forward vector and the character's forward vector, do a dot product on them

actually let me draw up what I think will work

@sonic crow use this when you add direction

the top one for forward/backward

bottom for left/right

[gentle urchin]

This worked for 8 directions

[odd ember]

ah fk the bottom one should be 1/-1 on Y

[sonic crow]

ty will read and try it now

[dusk cave]

I need help getting my AI to change roles from being "It" to not It and vice versa within the same blueprint. How would I do that?

[ivory adder]

how do I change an animation in blueprint

I read that you can use anim instense class but i sont have a class

[odd ember]

you really want someone else to decide who is "it"

[dusk cave]

This is how I decide who is It first

[brazen merlin]

I assume this is standard tag rules. The actor needs to know if IT because that would transfer it to the non-IT. So if IT is true, and the hit occurs, IT is false since the other hit is now IT

[ivory adder]

???

[odd ember]

this is... not a great way of doing it. have the game mode know of all the AI in the game, and decide who is "it" from among them

[brazen merlin]

that would be better in the game mode than on tick

[odd ember]

on begin play, you can have the AI each register themselves to the gamemode as "players"

[ivory adder]

What do you mean?

[odd ember]

once a player threshold has been reached, you can pick a random "player" to be "it"

[brazen merlin]

ah, so two things are being asked, you are addressing the latter. I agree, a separate actor needs to determine which AI should be it. What I said relates to once in play, transferring the ITness to another

[odd ember]

I'm addressing both

[ivory adder]

Ok and? What do I do to get the animation to play?

huh

what

[odd ember]

in your event hit logic, you can call on the game mode to say that an AI has been registered as "it" on hit. the game mode then ensures nobody else is "it"

[ivory adder]

i dont know what to put in the class input

[brazen merlin]

ah, there it is

[odd ember]

an animBP

[dusk cave]

@odd ember could u show me how I'd could go about it

[odd ember]

I just told you

[ivory adder]

what class input

[brazen merlin]

sounds like you don't really know about anim bps, a tutorial perhaps?

[ivory adder]

im lost

[gentle urchin]

Wouldnt only (it) be able to hit anyways? So no reason to check ?

If hit -> transfer it

[ivory adder]

i just want to switch my player model and have the animation switch too

[brazen merlin]

that's where i was thinking, but thats on paper and not in practice where, lets say multiple actors hit at the same time, now two are it, that's not right

[brazen merlin]

plenty of those kinds of tutorials

[gentle urchin]

Depending on how hit is done, id simply just let it hit just one. First hit gets it

[ivory adder]

I cnat find anything

[brazen merlin]

yes, but as EFoolType puts it, this always ensures 1 without extra edge cases

[odd ember]

I wouldn't do this outside of a manager class, and game mode fits perfectly as exactly such

[ivory adder]

not what i need

[gentle urchin]

True, external tracker is beneficial in either case

[odd ember]

almost as if you get what you give

[glass stump]

is it possible to have independent enemy units that are able to make a formation? if so, can anyone set me on the path of how to do this? thanks.

[odd ember]

sounds like something an AI director would handle potentially

[glass stump]

Ah, thank you! :)

[sonic crow]

@odd ember I tried your approach but I dropped the ball, should I be doing this in top down controller or top down character and i also noticed by my relative input location the character movement creates a new target and does not take infor from the character itself

[odd ember]

I did say the one at the bottom should be Y, not X

but also, if you're doing this from keyboard and mouse

you should be using InputAxis

not MoveTo

you're not actually getting a location from those values, you're getting a direction

[dusk cave]

@odd ember I have the level select a random actor and I put it inside a actor variable. How do I get a reference to that variable from another blueprint?

[odd ember]

did you miss the part where I mentioned it should be in the game mode?

[dusk cave]

yea I have that in the game mode sorry I meant gamemode not level

[odd ember]

you can always use GetGameMode and cast to your specific gamemode

so on beginplay for your AI actors you want to GetGameMode > CastTo<YourGameMode> > RegisterAIAsPlayer(self)

[sonic crow]

i made the correction, however I am not sure what I am missing I am currently guessing because you cant use input axis at the end where I had moveTo, and it seems i need to have a branch for both input axis right and input axis forward to work, weird how difficult this is compared to a normal controller setup. I am pretty sure I am doing things very wrong and probably starting to make guesses with nodes in the wrong direction

[dusk cave]

Is RegisterAIAsPlayer(Self) a node?

[odd ember]

you're really overthinking this. the end of that select node should be plugged into AddMovementInput as the direction. that is literally all you need to do

no gating, no conversion nothing else

[odd ember]

it's the function you need to make on the game mode

[odd ember]

and of course plug in the scale value from the AxisValue

also you're using the forward vector with the MoveRight input

you need to use forward with forward and right with right

[dusk cave]

By registering the AI as Player, do u mean putting them into an Array called Players?

[odd ember]

something like that

but wrap it in a function

so that if you need to do more than just adding them to an array, you can just change the function

for instance, you might want to bind an event per registered AI to call when they get tagged

[dusk cave]

This is my Gamemode Bp

[odd ember]

arrays have a Random function

but also, the array should be an array variable internally

[sonic crow]

I appreciate the help, did what you said, still not working wondering if i missed something

[odd ember]

RegisterAIAsPlayer is not for the gamemode, it's for use in the AI blueprint

[odd ember]

I told you not to gate it

none of this needs to happen on tick

[odd ember]

also make sure you use GetControlledPawn not GetPlayerCharacter

[dusk cave]

like this?

[sonic crow]

@odd ember Thank you I got the movement started, appreciated it

[odd ember]

no. bad.

[odd ember]

this is correct, if it's inside the AI actor

[dusk cave]

yea it is

[odd ember]

you need a parameter for the RegisterAIAsPlayer

[odd ember]

as in, you pass to pass in the AI you want to send along

then inside the function, you're not having random things happen, you're adding an AI to an array

you're not doing anything else with the array inside that function

[odd ember]

you added a return value

you need a parameter

apparently they are called inputs in BP

for whatever reason

anyway you need one of those

[dusk cave]

so was this correct or no?

I just need to add an input parameter?

[odd ember]

also try and keep each function to do exactly what it is called. If you're registering an AI, you're not doing random things, you're not doing anything else but registering an AI

[odd ember]

please

[bronze elk]

Hi guys am learning how to use blue prints. Question lets say I have an OptionsMenu button and I click it, how do I give it a delay before it goes to the options screen?

[dusk cave]

oh ok

[odd ember]

there's a delay node

[dusk cave]

theres a node called delay

@odd ember can u explain the steps again? I'm getting confused. So on my gamemode, I make a function to put actors in a array. I will call that function into my AI Bp. In my AI BP, I will have another function that will take a actor from the other function and I will make it my It player?

[odd ember]

at the beginning of the game, each AI registers themselves to the game mode. the game mode keeps an array of all the AIs in the game. whenever "it" changes ownership, the AI who got touched by "it" needs to call and tell the game mode that it has been touched by "it". the game mode then decides what to do with that information

does that make sense?

[dusk cave]

yea i think i got it

[bronze elk]

is there a way to export like a prototype of a UI menu? so people can try it out

[odd ember]

additionally, in another function, at the beginning of the game, once enough players have been registered, a random player can be chosen to be "it" out of the array of players that the game mode has

[odd ember]

package the game. see: #packaging

[sonic crow]

how do you change hit result under cursor by channel to my character movement, what do I connect to break hit result

[odd ember]

that sentence doesn't make sense. what are you trying to do

[sonic crow]

apologies, I am still using the topdown default template in ue4, thanks to you i managed to create movement with (ASDW), before I did this I added a procedural grid that forced my character to always step in the center of the square boxes by using the (Get Hit Result Under Cursor by Channel) I want this effect but with (ASDW)

[odd ember]

ok first

these are two different ways of controlling inputs

so you have to think in two different ways about them

you can't conflate one way of doing things with the other

each needs its own solution

how are you setting up the procedural grid?

[sonic crow]

I used geometry method that is extremely light weight

[odd ember]

okay

how are you finding the middle of the node from the mouse click?

[sonic crow]

in short, i spawn the procedural grid, when using the mouse you click on the tile you want and it moves to that tile, to get it perfectly in the middle you need to make your collision box extremely thin

[odd ember]

so since the input you get from keyboard is not tied to a location, you cannot use the same method easily

it might require some rework to make it happen, unless the grid itself has a way to get this

like GetSurroundingTiles

or something

[sonic crow]

i think i can get surrounding tiles if so how would i go about it

[odd ember]

you might have to do something like LocationToTile(ActorLocation)

and get tiles around it

once you have the tiles you can use SetSelectedTile based on movement input

so if you have an array of surrounding tiles, it'll look something like this

array values:
[
0, 1, 2,
3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8
]

it's not a given it'll be exactly that, but it will be something like that

so knowing that, you can e.g. use SetSelectedTile to be 1 for forward, 5 for right etc.

[sonic crow]

thanks i will give it go,

[dusk cave]

@odd ember does ur method work if I am using one AI Behavior tree?

how do I tell that random AI to use the It role?

[odd ember]

it'll work regardless of whether you have behavior trees

it'll work regardless of anything, it's not tied to anything

which is how code should work

[dusk cave]

ok well lemme show u what i hve now

So this is inside my AI BP. This registers the AI into the Array.

This is how they are added into the array.

[odd ember]

yep

correct

[dusk cave]

The level calls random

gamemode i mean

heres the function

[odd ember]

yep looks fine

[dusk cave]

ok cool

[odd ember]

one thing to keep in mind

you might want to be polling for players to trickle in

you don't when or how many AI will register how quickly

[dusk cave]

well im just dragging the AI into the level

[odd ember]

right but the registering happens at game time

not at editor time

[dusk cave]

ok so what do u mean by polling

[odd ember]

so what I would consider doing is

create a delegate called OnPlayerRegistered on the gamemode

[winged sentinel]

@odd ember I beleive you helped me with some ideas the other day i had one more question, I have some sort of system where my character will get the nearest marker and "attach" (linetrace) to it. I am able to get the distance to each one which is great. My question is tho, how to i calculate percentage of the level complete, its a bit difficult to figure out

[bronze elk]

how come when i play my game it has a different screen size from design editor?

[winged sentinel]

sorry didnt mean to interupt

[dusk cave]

its ok

[odd ember]

polling as a general concept means that an entity is sitting and waiting until something else has happened. so for instance, when doing multiplayer games, when you join a server, if it has just started, you'll be placed in a "waiting room" until more players arrive. the server is "polling" until a number of players are ready. in your case, you can do it a little bit different, which is better

[odd ember]

I would ask in #umg

[odd ember]

if you do this in game mode, and call that delegate in your RegisterAIAsPlayer function

then on beginplay, Bind the delegate to an event or function of your choice. you can then set a threshold for when you want to set the game to start running

it is at this point you will want to use your random function

otherwise if you random too quickly you might just pick the first AI to be "it", always

[dusk cave]

okay ill try to figure that out

[odd ember]

just to be clear, the threshold would be a value of how many players you would want registered before the game begins

it's up to you to decide what value that should be

you can compare the threshold with Players.Length

[dusk cave]

do I need to code to do this?

I've never used delegates

[odd ember]

nope, event dispatchers are available

it's just another variable type in blueprint

[odd ember]

percentage of level completion would be something like CurrentNode / LastNode

[dusk cave]

like this?

[odd ember]

I use the terms delegate an event dispatcher interchangeably

[odd ember]

no, you need to actually create a variable

an event dispatcher variable

[dusk cave]

oh ok

[odd ember]

you really want to call it something more relevant to what you're doing

e.g. PlayerRegistered

[dusk cave]

ok i did

[slate hound]

I have an axis input on Gamepad Left Y-Axis that a player controller is using named MenuUpDown
I have another axis input on Gamepad Left Y-Axis that a pawn is using named ForwardBackward
One controls the menu when the menu is visible and the other controls the pawn when the menu isn't visible
The problem being the ForwardBackward input is not receiving any axis value unless I remove the MenuUpDown from the player controller
How do I make this work?

[dusk cave]

would it make more sense to put it at the end then

[slate hound]

the Consume Input and Override parent binding are both disabled on the player controller inputs

[odd ember]

sure, you would normally

[winged sentinel]

I see

[odd ember]

there's a node called SetInputModeGameAndUI

[winged sentinel]

Ill do some more math stuff and ill lyk if i get it

[slate hound]

This is for VR, the UI is a 3D Widget

[odd ember]

you'll be better of asking in #virtual-reality

[slate hound]

the widget works though it's the forward/backward that isn't working

[dusk cave]

ok done. but i still dont understand how id tell the random actor to be it. It was easier for me to do use a bool inside of my Bp AI and reference my blackboard key.

[slate hound]

There's just something I don't understand about Inputs

[dusk cave]

I only have one AI Bp btw

[odd ember]

now that you have this setup, you can create a function in your AI called BecomeIt, which you can call from the game mode on the AI you want to become "it". you can have the exact same functionality there that you used the bool for in the AI

[dusk cave]

ok just showing u my becomeit

[odd ember]

that's on the AI yes?

[dusk cave]

yea

[odd ember]

now, since you have all the AIs referenced in the game mode, from the random pin, you can call BecomeIt

[dusk cave]

yep i did

[odd ember]

that's it

[dusk cave]

does it need a parameter

[odd ember]

if you create a boolean parameter, you can use it to set who is "it", but also who is not it. you should ensure that nobody else is "it". so what I would do is: get the random AI that you have picked for "it", save it into a variable, then use a ForEachLoop to loop over the array of players and use BecomeIt(false) on each one. on the loop's completion, set BecomeIt(true) on the AI you saved out in the beginning

[dusk cave]

Is my gamemode set up right? It didn't work

[odd ember]

@dusk cave did you do this?

[dusk cave]

not yet will go for it

the loop is attached to my gamemodes begin play?

[odd ember]

it's inside your random function

your random function hasn't delivered

until it does this

[dusk cave]

okay and what did u mean by using BecomeIt true and false? I make a bool parameter for Become it then call BecomeIt inside the Random function?

[odd ember]

correct

[slate hound]

I just moved the logic to the player controller instead of in the pawn 🤷

[dusk cave]

not sure if im doing this right

[odd ember]

you shouldn't have a return mid loop

at least not in this case

[dusk cave]

so only have it attached to become it true or take it out?

[odd ember]

I don't know why your array isn't already specialized to be AI only

[winged sentinel]

anyone know how i can make it so that my bullets keep hitting even when im close to my enemy? Do i have to push the gun back or come up with a method to do so?

[odd ember]

instead of casting constantly. you dont even use the variable you set in the beginning. you need that

[brazen merlin]

the spawn point of the bullet is probably at the end of the gun, so yeah, it's spawning after the fact

[winged sentinel]

ya i think ur right, i just tested shrinking capule on enemy and it hit just fine up close

[dusk cave]

The "is It"?

[odd ember]

yes

[dusk cave]

how do I use it? The variable is holding the random actor

i have to cast to the ai bp

[odd ember]

how have you used variables so far?

[dusk cave]

i know how to use it but i don't know understand what u want me to do with it.

[odd ember]

I told you

[odd ember]

.

[dusk cave]

like this?

[odd ember]

yeah but now your loop isn't functional

[dusk cave]

okay i attached the target to the As BP My AI

[odd ember]

did you do the polling event we spoke about?

[dusk cave]

if u mean create the event dispatcher, i did

[odd ember]

did you bind the dispatcher to an event or function?

[dusk cave]

no what do i bind the dispatcher to

[odd ember]

... an event or function

[dusk cave]

I'm lost. I don't understand how to use it.

[odd ember]

when you drag it out

do you get the bind option?

[dusk cave]

yes

[odd ember]

so you have your bind node

[dusk cave]

i binded it to event beginplay

but i dont know what target to set it to

[odd ember]

show me what you did

[dusk cave]

oh forget the last two nodes

i deleted those

[odd ember]

so you obviously don't want to bind it to beginplay, which is why it's complaining

you want to bind it to a new event

you can use the CreateEvent node

to hook into

[sonic crow]

MY solution does not feel right or work properly with a controller, i am trying to limit my character to moveing only in four directions, i dont want diagonal movement how do i do it?

[odd ember]

show me how StartPlay() looks

[dusk cave]

i just chose it. i didnt know what to put in there

[odd ember]

so consider what it is that you're doing

you're binding an event to whenever a new player is registered

so that event gets called every time a new player registers

this makes it your polling method

now you can consider how many players you want registered before you want to start the game

[dusk cave]

do i keep call player registerd in the function

im getting an error that says infinite loop

[odd ember]

...yes

that's because you've still bound it to your begin play function

create a new function

and pick it from the list of options in the CreateEvent node

that way you won't have an infinite loop

[sonic crow]

apologies here is a closer snap shot, this technically works but not well enough on a controller/gamepad

[unreal quail]

what's the best way to have a for each loop with a delay?

I can think of a few ways but I don't know which is best (or works)

[odd ember]

you set the MoveRight AxisValue to 0 whenever you use MoveForward and vice versa

[odd ember]

you don't delay loops

[unreal quail]

let me reiterate my question then

how do I iterate through an array with a delay in between each iteration

[odd ember]

a timer, perhaps

[odd ember]

so in that function, you can setup a branch that checks the player array's length against an Integer value of your choice called Threshold

on the true end of that branch, use the SetRandomPlayerAsTheIt function

instead of on begin play

[sonic crow]

that sounds like the perfect solution, how do i go about setting that up, do i need agate?

[odd ember]

you never need a gate

get gates out of your head

[odd ember]

it's not a perfect solution, it's the easiest, hackiest one. on both input events, figure out if MoveForward > MoveRight if yes, use allow it to proceed to your MoveForward logic on your MoveForward event, and the equivalent for your MoveRight event

[dusk cave]

@odd ember i need to take a break and switch to a different project. can u help me again tomorrow?

[odd ember]

can't guarantee anything. but you're almost there.

if you do what I said you'll have a fully functioning setup

[dusk cave]

ok hang on

[sonic crow]

whats the name if the blueprint that will do this if/else statement, just another branch?

[odd ember]

it's a branch. but you're not doing anything on false in either case. just use the true branch

[unreal quail]

what was that neat way of doing formatted text in blueprint again? I'm trying to do a printf without it being too much of a hassle

[odd ember]

invert the condition for MoveRight

[unreal quail]

I can't find it anymore

[odd ember]

buildstring?

[unreal quail]

nvm I found it

it's FormatText

buildstring would also work

[sonic crow]

cool i think it is setup correctly, it does work but I would like to try that approach to reset an axis "you set the MoveRight AxisValue to 0 whenever you use MoveForward and vice versa" how does one do this as the controller movement would be silky smooth instead of glitchy

[odd ember]

the logic I gave you is exactly that

you're basically not executing one while the other is active

if you instead want to get rid of the branch, you can use a Select Float node instead

and set it to the same

[dusk cave]

like this?

[sonic crow]

thank you, not sure why you doing this but really appreciate you being here

[odd ember]

yes. make sure that's the function you've bound to the PlayerRegistered delegate

[odd ember]

remove the random from beginplay

you just need the binding

[dusk cave]

ok

[odd ember]

the random is already being done under the correct conditions in Poll()

[dusk cave]

right

[odd ember]

I assume you've set Threshold to be more than 0?

[dusk cave]

yea

i set it to 2 since I have 2 AI actors in the level atm

[odd ember]

that's it then

[dusk cave]

ok so one actor did become it but i got an error with this

[odd ember]

what's the error

[dusk cave]

accessed none trying to read k2node_dynamiccast_AsBP_My_AI

the node thats selected in the picture

[odd ember]

your don't use the loop at all

you need to use the loop for the BecomeIt(false)

[dawn gazelle]

It's bad to cross node execution paths for references. Your cast node hasn't been executed until the loop is finished, but you're trying to get a value from it in your loop.

[odd ember]

so you need another cast node

[dusk cave]

@odd ember but u told me that i didnt need to cast constantly

[odd ember]

I said that if you changed the array type to be of your AI type you wouldn't need to cast constantly

[dusk cave]

players is an array tho

[odd ember]

yes, but even an array is an array of types

[odd ember]

you can have arrays of floats, vectors, actors, objects etc.

[dusk cave]

yea players is an array of objects

actors

[odd ember]

so you could change that to be an array of your AI class type

then you wouldn't need to cast

but for now

just remove the execution path in the loop body

that goes into the second cast node

from BecomeIt(false)

the body of the loop is separate from when it completes

[odd ember]

now you're not executing the loop body

the end of the loop body, cut that execution

you're already execution the rest on completion

[dusk cave]

oh ok

u mean the execution node at the become it false?

rn both of my players are set to being "It"

hang ong

like this right?

ok so i have one player as It and one as not It

[odd ember]

no

[dusk cave]

oh

[odd ember]

cut the wire from the loop body

the loop body keeps looping

[dusk cave]

so dont attach it to anything?

[odd ember]

correct

[dusk cave]

ok just making sure

yes?

both of my players are It

[sonic crow]

how does one move objects that are placed in the world without physics, to a specific increment distance from character facing (like a push effect)

[odd ember]

this should be correct. only whichever player you picked should be it. what is your threshold value set to? because if it's set to 1, this is what would happen

[dusk cave]

2

are u sure i dont need the becomeit false to be attached to anything?

[odd ember]

yes

the loop body is different from its completion

[dusk cave]

oh ok

[odd ember]

you can do this with trigger boxes or Event Hit. you don't have to involve simulated physics for those, just collision

[sonic crow]

ty i will research this

[dusk cave]

@odd ember what could cause both players to be it

[odd ember]

the random function being called twice

are they both it consistently?

[dusk cave]

yes

we didnt set it up so they'd wont be it

i mean the tagging

[odd ember]

ah

[dusk cave]

only when the game starts

[odd ember]

I forgot about the tags

in your BecomeIt() function, make sure you update the tags correctly

[dusk cave]

no i didnt mean that tag i mean like tagging a player in the game

@odd ember I need to work on another assignment with someone in unity. if u can help me tomorrow, that'd be great or i'll try to figure it out.

[odd ember]

no promises and don't tag me. but just post in here and there'll be other people who can help you out as well if I'm not here

[dusk cave]

ok

thanks for the help i really appreciate it

so to end off

lets say I get it working right

what would be the next steps for me to get the tag working

[odd ember]

I think the tag is the issue you're seeing. under the hood, there is probably just one "it". in your AI's BecomeIt() function, you need to ensure that your boolean parameter propagates the tags correctly

[dusk cave]

which tag are u referring to

the Actor tag or tagging in the game

[odd ember]

I was referring to the actor tag. but if you're referring to the tagging it's pretty easy

you'll need a few extra functions but they're basic

[round shale]

is there a way to make pawnsensing able to sense through geometry?

[dusk cave]

But we didnt use tags in BecomeIt. We used a bool. You mean the blackboard key?

[lime pelican]

If I want to make an actor always spawn on the surface, do I line trace and set location or is there an easier way?

[brazen merlin]

on the surface is a bit vague. the Spawn Actor node has some options, such as adjust location always spawn

[lime pelican]

I want to spawn a box damage volume actor on the character's feet and get actor location is not near the feet

I see a getactorfeetlocation but I'm not sure if its exposed to blueprint

[brazen merlin]

yes, the actor location of a character is at the center of it's capsule. You can still do it this way and then subtract CapsuleHalfHeight from the Z

[lime pelican]

thanks!

[storm vigil]

Hi. I am starting to make use of timers to some logic of my game that was previously using TICK. May I ask if the delta seconds on the tick and get world delta seconds are the same? I need the get world delta seconds to smooth out some floats. Thank you

[worthy frost]

.01 timer?

might aswell do it on tick..

[storm vigil]

sorry. the update inaccuracy is supposed to be 0.1

[worthy frost]

.1 is fine

but the .01 is pretty much tick

if things need to be done on tick, do it on tick 😛

[storm vigil]

I see. Thank you. I was using 0.01 on the weapon block trace as the transition was not smooth with 0.1 so I used the 0.01. Please correct me if I am wrong, I moved from tick since it is dependent on the fps? Though I have not yet noticed it, if the fps is low it will also reflect the smoothness?

[worthy frost]

i do weapon block trace on tick, (granted C++ tick), but still on tick

well you cant smooth things on a timer

if you need smooth you need tick

or do some kinda interp between timer calls.

[storm vigil]

I see. Thank you for the info. That is why animBPs and timelines are probably on tick 😄

[worthy frost]

i optimize by turning off tick on the weapons when not needed

ie when weapon is unqueipped or its back at resting spread/recoil.

turn them on when weapon fires

[storm vigil]

Both of these functions/events are in a separate BP for firearm. So these only fire when I equip a weapon or should I manually set or override it in the blueprint?
Currently the tick actor on the details panel of this BP is set to start with tick enabled, 0 time tick interval and allow tick before begin play is disabled.

[brazen merlin]

would there be any problem if one were to set a variable (delta seconds) with tick, and then use that variable on timers?

1D blendspace you mean sprint via holding a key down?

this kind of input has Pressed and Released outputs, so when the pressed happens they sprint, and once the release happens it stops

you would be changing the MaxWalkSpeed

try searching for sprinting, good stuff on it

haha, yeah, gl

alright... thanks

[timber knoll]

Do keep the overshooting in mind

If your player lags he could overshoot your timer quite a bit, so you might want to do something in that case

[brazen merlin]

but the timer is based on delta seconds, it's tied to tick

[timber knoll]

Yes exactly

Usually overshooting isn’t an issue, just keep in mind it can happen that’s all 🙂

[brazen merlin]

so like... whats a situation, what happens?

[timber knoll]

For example if you were to make a stopwatch or something using event tick

[brazen merlin]

mm i see

[timber knoll]

If you dropped to let’s say 10FPS

Thats 100ms/tick

[worthy frost]

i compensate for that in my weapon firing

by getting the slack between timer calls

and adjusting the next timer based on that

[faint pasture]

What would the point if that be?

[fiery glen]

you can just delay 0 to delay one frame if that's what you actually want

[devout crow]

Guys,I made a simple combo system with montage,but the combos really stiffness between each attack.How can I fix that?

[blissful widget]

Blend better, offset animation starting points to remove neutral -> charge up keyframes

@devout crow But if you want more specific help, maybe show us what you mean by it looking stiff?

[manic knot]

Is it possible to get a Float value 0-1 from where a player in standing in a Volumetric Cloud?

[blissful widget]

... what? Like a normalised position within the cloud?

[manic knot]

@blissful widget like the clouds density where the player is within the cloud

[devout crow]

Sorry for my poor english,I am meaning that the attack animation convergence is not smooth.

[blissful widget]

Those animations look super fast to me, and it looks like the blend times are set to 0 too. The second attack is kinda stiff looking in general, but might be better if slowed down a little.

[trim pollen]

can someone dumb this down for me or link to a concise ELI5

[manic knot]

I will be using it to drive variations in multiplayer "environmental variables" such as wind, temperature. Im hoping to find a way to able to have warmer and colder areas within an area based on a particles or perhaps a Perlin Noise or a Field or something

[blissful widget]

The dumbed down version is right in the screenshot 🤷

[trim pollen]

is everything in "world outliner" one of these classes?

why does a blueprint have to be in a parent class at all?

[devout crow]

I used montage to build this combo system,So where should I set the blend times?😢

[blissful widget]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Montage/MontagePlaywithBlendIn/

[devout crow]

That's helpful,thank u

[tight schooner]

@trim pollen C++ base classes with BP child classes how UE works. From what I've read, the reverse isn't possible. BP is a layer that goes over C++, but C++ cannot see BP variables, functions and events, so inheritance only flows from C++ to BP

[trim pollen]

I see

[blissful widget]

All good mate, good luck!

[thorn ermine]

UIntProperty* IntProperty = FindFieldChecked<UIntProperty>(BlueprintClass, TEXT("VarName"));
int32 VarValue = IntProperty->GetPropertyValue_InContainer(BlueprintInstance);

You can use reflection to find BP variables in c++ that was not exposed. Only works for instance variables, not sure about scope etc. But it is possible.

[dapper bramble]

I seem to have trouble getting the location of an "actor component".
Any ideas how that could work? (Blueprint)

[tight schooner]

Can you put the component on the node graph?

[dapper bramble]

Yes

[tight schooner]

Drag out the data wire and Get World Location

[dapper bramble]

Does not exist

That's what baffles me a bit

[tight schooner]

Oh, it must not be a scene component

[dapper bramble]

It's not

[tight schooner]

Actor components have no physical presence. Scene components do (they have a "transform")

[dapper bramble]

Aha!

So I need to convert them then, thanks.

[tight schooner]

Yeah

[dapper bramble]

But can a scene component then have a trigger for example?

[tight schooner]

I never played with triggers. Is that a component?

Components can't have components unfortunately

[dapper bramble]

Hmm that's not good for what I had in mind

I just wanted an actor with multiple components, for which I can get their locations (and they should be triggers or contain triggers)

I really love Unreal, but sometimes I miss a simple way of making a prefab like in Unity

[tight schooner]

Yeah it can make structuring things complicated. You can attach actors to actors though as an alternative.

[dapper bramble]

Yeah I guess, but in my case it's 27 components and I wanted to declutter my world outliner a bit

Oooh I made a mistake. Those are actually scene components

Only in the blueprint where I work with that actor (and its components) I have set the components to a actorcomponent variable, and then it stopped behaving as intended. All good!

[digital palm]

Hey, I'm trying to create a replicated keypad for a door. But I have an issue for sending the number pressed by the client. As you can see in the first picture, the server is pressing 5, so on 5 is display on the keypad. But, the client have pressed 6, the print who say wich number is pressed is correct, but the information is not send to the keypad BP. In the third picture, I'm in my base character class, I'm printing wich number is pressed, and I'm sending this number to a function inside my keypad BP. In the last screenshot, inside the keypad BP,I have a custom event replicated on server, who call a custom event replicated multicast, who are setting the text. Any idea?

[maiden wadi]

@digital palm Two major issues here. First is that you should be replicating the values entered, not multicasting them. Likely in an array of integers.

The second, is that you're trying to send a server RPC through the Keypad. This won't work because the server owns the keypad. Clients cannot network through objects they do not own. Objects they own start as their controller, possession sets the ownership of their possessed pawns as well. You can add more yourself by setting the Owner variable of an object on the server. However that isn't what you need to do here.

Instead, you should have an interface in the keypad. Your key press can get the keypad reference locally, and then send that and the desired number through an RPC in the controller. On the other side of the controller, you can call the interface function on the keypad on the server. That would update the array of integers, and replicate the new state back to the clients.

[raw orchid]

Hi guys! Is there a command to see the average fps (total/game/cpu) of the last seconds?

[digital palm]

So by controller you mean player controller?

[maiden wadi]

Yep

[digital palm]

Ok so I have to move these functions from my base character to the player controller

And I can create a array of integers inside the player controller

[maiden wadi]

No. The integers were for the keypad. They're the keypad's state.

[digital palm]

Oh I see why you talked about a array. I’m just sending a single number because inside my keypad I use the build string function

[maiden wadi]

Either way. But the gist is that you're probably going to have more things to interact with. So if you make basic functions like this with generic rpcs that just take actor level pointers, it makes it much easier to send stuff from client to server to do interaction stuff. General code flow in a nutshell should be...

Handle Client Input
(Line traces? Overlaps? Whatever you use to detect what the player is interacting with)
Get Controller
Call Server RPC With Interacted Object And Other Data Neceesary
Now you're on the server version of that player's controller.
Used passed actor pointer to call interface function on interactable.
Now you're on the server version of the interactible
(Maybe do checks here like distance to avoid cheating if needed)
Server sets new state on interacted object.
Server updates own visual stuff.
Replication system comes along and sends replicated value to clients.
Client runs that property's OnRep, sets up it's own new visual state.

The reason for this is because it's abstract. Now you can reuse this same networking logic on not just the keypad, but doors, alarms, picking stuff up, elevator switches, etc.

[odd ember]

we didn't, but we can. you are free to add whatever logic you need for that function

[quasi frost]

Is there a way to do a replicated do once?

[maiden wadi]

Er. You mean like to replicate a value only once?

[quasi frost]

Yeah I mean I know I could do it via custom events, but I was wondering if there was something that already existed for this. like the already existing do once node.

[maiden wadi]

Kind of. At least you could with the new push model but not in blueprint. Usually that is done via replcating as InitialOnly, and setting it from server after that as a multicast.

[harsh orbit]

Hi guys, does anyone know what is good practice here? I am using a livelinked joint in maya to control ue4 camera FOV (for animating). On event tick I tried updating the FOV(img2) but its a little laggy/jolty, so as an experiment I tried doing (img3) instead the timeline graph is just a straight line 1:1 value-time ratio, I'm not even using the value though I'm just performing an action on its update and its smoother despite timelines updating from even tick too (as far as I'm aware?) - Is there a better method I should be using?

[spark steppe]

you could use finterp if it's not smooth enough

[quasi frost]

Is there a special way to replicate movement or do I just do it the same way as everything else? For example I am using a "Launch Character" node but it isn't replicating by default. Do I just throw a server/multicast custom event on it or is there a better way to do it?

[harsh orbit]

@spark steppe will finterp work on live animated skel mesh ? I will take a look tho thanks

[flint warren]

noob question - is there a way to make the input array for the for-loop be selected based on where the flow came from?

[sharp rapids]

Probably a Select node

or 'Pick A' node

[flint warren]

"Pick A" doesn't seem to exist for me; I don't think Select is what I need

[sharp rapids]

Select on a bool?

Use the same bool you're using for the branch

[dawn gazelle]

Promote the resolutions to a variable, set it on both paths, then reference the path in the loop.

[flint warren]

oh, yes, that might work in this particular instance. But I'm interested in a more general solution

@dawn gazelle I was just about to ask if this would work:

I'm not feeling super confident about when the "Get" node gets called

is there a way to do it without a local variable? (not that there's a problem with using it)

[lofty smelt]

hello there

im having a little trouble with my game

i made a new level and imported an fbx file of a house

and now my firstpersoncharacter doesnt get recognised

when i simulate it shows a static camera actor and i cant move or whatever

its just stuck in one place

anyone who can help?

[worthy carbon]

I want to create an inventory like fortnite where you can press 1 to use the first weapon and when you press 2 you can use your second weapon, how can i create this?

[spark steppe]

what do you mean by that?

[lofty smelt]

i have a firstperson gamemode

but instead of me spawning as my first person character

[spark steppe]

if you can't move when spawning in the house it's probably because unreal created a collision box which capsules the whole house

[lofty smelt]

i spawn as a static cameraactor

[spark steppe]

unless the house is made of several mesh's and not one big mesh

[lofty smelt]

its several

but i spawn as a cameraactor

it also doesnt turn yellow like the rest

idk what that means tbh

[spark steppe]

maybe it couldn't spawn a character. you still have the player spawn thing in the outliner?

[lofty smelt]

i do have a player spawn

but my player doesnt spawn

[spark steppe]

is it within the house?

[lofty smelt]

yup

[spark steppe]

move it outside and check if it still wont spawn

[lofty smelt]

it does spawn

oh yea now it also shows up as yellow

[spark steppe]

well most likely your house still has some part which covers the spawn area

so you have to open each mesh and check the collisions

[lofty smelt]

i moved it around the whole house

JESUS

that's a lot

i didnt make it tbh

[spark steppe]

well, it's most likely something that covers the area, so maybe 2 opposing walls or ceiling/floor

[lofty smelt]

anyone got a good source to find free 3d models?

[spark steppe]

unreal marketplace has some free stuff

[lofty smelt]

im looking for a low poly interior

like a haunted thingy or smth

basement

anything

also how do i check the collisions of the things

and perhaps edit them

[spark steppe]

in unreals mesh editor, you have to check show collision for it to show up

[lofty smelt]

how do i use the mesh editor 😅

[spark steppe]

watch a tutorial, i cant recommend one

but there are plenty on youtube

[stoic narwhal]

Any ideas why my thumbnails arent updating? They have meshes inside of them. I've made sure 'real time thumbnails' is checked in my content browser view mode

[lofty smelt]

i'm finding like a ton of videos

my unreal engine doesnt have the mesh editor?

idk i cant find it in my plugin list

[green eagle]

Just like pro tip to anyone new to BP.. learn the way UE integrates DataTables with Structs to .CSV and use EXCEL magic to change the game!
So mad I didn't pay enough mind to this stuff sooner.. roommate was always like "why don't you use DTs and Spreadsheets" and I was always like "idk htf to do that with bp and im being a baby about looking into it or going back to coding"

LIKE BRO!?

[stoic narwhal]

Your mesh editor is when you double click on the mesh in your content browser and it opens a window with the mesh in a test scene

[lofty smelt]

i have like a whole house

[green eagle]

there isn't anything to retopo in ue or do topo well if at all if thats your goal

[lofty smelt]

of separate meshes

[stoic narwhal]

Yup! DataTables are a great way to set up actors on a construction script too, if you weren't aware 😄

[lofty smelt]

do i have to check all of them 1 by 1?

[stoic narwhal]

No idea, posting screenshots helps explain your issue.
You can auto generate collisions on import, might be easier to just do that if you've got lots of meshes

[green eagle]

oh dude like.. I feel as giddy and excited this weekend as I did the first time I learned how and what UVs were and what PBR can do to fake dynamics in a scene(it involved making a music themed game) like its such a game changer for me to finally know how to apply some OOE skills that I havent used in too long!

[green eagle]

The mesh editor will let you create collisions that are either "max" or "min" with a generator tool that does convex but isn't great with complex geometry. You can set collisions in most 3p software and reimport which is probably best practice(I used Houdini which makes it really easy but no idea about blender) the other option, assuming you made the asset, is to import the asset as individual objects and create simplified/convex collisions individually than set them back together and turn them into a single asset in UE

[flint warren]

so... I think I already know the answer, but worth a shot - is there an enum-based ComboBox?

(sorry if this is the wrong channel)

searching online has not been successful

[dawn gazelle]

Not that I'm aware of. You could use a map of the index values to an enum tho...

[earnest tangle]

You can also loop all enum values to collect them in an array

And generate the combo value from that

[flint warren]

thanks, thought as much

[odd ember]

another time where FNames could truly shine... but they don't 😭

[lofty smelt]

okay guys

now i need to get my textures done properly

i have like a map with textures

a folder

[odd ember]

wrong channel

[lofty smelt]

but idk which texture belongs to what

[odd ember]

#graphics

[lofty smelt]

oh

mybad

[dusk cave]

hey Efool

so you said to check the BecomeIt() function I made

I didnt have Is It attached to anything before and I think its works now

although the same actor seems to be It. I'm gonna put in more to test.

[sonic crow]

is there a way to substitute "Update cursor Position" with a gamepad and its thumbsticks?

[odd ember]

nope

if you really wanted to, you could see about controlling the cursor with the thumbsticks by using UpdateCursorPosition but I doubt it'd be that easy

[dusk cave]

ok i added a third AI and put the threshold to 3 and the red guy is still always It. We made it choose randomly right? I don't mind if its random or not.

nvr mind. it does pick another actor but not as often.

[odd ember]

random is random. the more AIs you put in the more random it gets

[dusk cave]

oh ok

good thing that was a easy fix. now to do the tagging

so to set that up, I need to reference the actor that got hit and send to the gamemode?

[odd ember]

you already have that

but you have to check if the other AI is "it" first

[dusk cave]

like this?

[odd ember]

so for that you might need another function, this time pure, called IsActorIt

on the game mode

on the game mode as well you might need another function for SetActorIt

I use actor here but you could use Player as well

for the naming

[dusk cave]

couldnt we reuse BecomeIt?

IsActorIt function

wait thats not right

[odd ember]

that's true, we could use BecomeIt

so we need to move some logic

or actually

no

we can't

because BecomeIt is on the AI itself

not on the gamemode

so we need another function

we still need to move some logic

[dusk cave]

so I pass the "hitter" actor in here?

[odd ember]

this is in the game mode yes?

[dusk cave]

yes

[odd ember]

you can just return the value of the bool

you dont need the branch

[dusk cave]

so an empty return node?

[odd ember]

no?

hook the return value up to the value of the bool from the equals node

[haughty nymph]

how to add a muzzle flash

[odd ember]

do you have a muzzle flash asset?

[odd ember]

are you not reading what I am saying?

[odd ember]

.

[dusk cave]

i can't connect the equal node to the return node

[odd ember]

how are you trying to connect it?

[haughty nymph]

yes

[odd ember]

like there is a red pin and a red pin. connecting them should not be an issue

[odd ember]

do you have a firing function?

[dusk cave]

Oh ok i see what u mean

[haughty nymph]

yes

[odd ember]

is your gun a separate actor or component?

[haughty nymph]

actor

[odd ember]

ok cool

so in your gun actor, I'd recommend having a scene component (or socket, if you want to do it on the level of the gun's skeletal mesh) called MuzzlePoint. when you fire, spawn the muzzelflash as a particle system

[odd ember]

correct. now you can make it pure

[dusk cave]

ok i check marked it

[odd ember]

so now in the game mode, you will need a new function called SetPlayerIt or SetActorIt

in the random function from yesterday, cut and paste the loop part

into that new function

in fact, you can select all those nodes, right click on them and select Collapse to function

[dusk cave]

i have an error in our Poll function

[odd ember]

post screenshots

looks right

[odd ember]

so that's not in the poll function

that's inside your random function

so show your random function

generally wait with compiling until we're done with the reshuffling

[odd ember]

it doesn't connect to the return node now

which is probably the issue

anyway

go into your new function

let's set that up first

[dusk cave]

ok i fixed it

[odd ember]

you don't need a return value for that function, but you need a parameter for which actor is supposed to be "it"

[odd ember]

correct

now

inside your SetRandomActorAsIt

use the SetActorIt function

[odd ember]

yep

now with these new functions

go back into your AI

on EventHit

check if the other actor IsActorIt

with a branch

and if true, then set self as SetActorIt on the gamemode

that's it

that's entire logic for the game

now it's debatable if you need some scoring system or whatever, but the gameplay is this

[odd ember]

you dont need the hit result, you can use the pin called Other

otherwise correct

[dusk cave]

awesome it works

gonna have to make changes to my AI behavior

and add in the the stuff I need but I can do that myself I think

[odd ember]

cool

consider the visibility of whoever is "it" as well

maybe you want a special material etc.

[dusk cave]

thanks EFool. really appreciate the help.

[odd ember]

now that you have these functions, you can change stuff like that in the BecomeIt function

[bronze elk]

Efool how long have you been using blueprints?

[odd ember]

blueprints are just code

but I worked with UDK before UE4 and they had a rudimentary version of blueprints called kismet

when UE4 came out I just transferred

[bronze elk]

does Unity have blueprints?

[odd ember]

who knows

I haven't touched unity in almost a decade

[dusk cave]

no unity doesnt have blueprints

u have to code in C#

[odd ember]

anyway a lot of this is not explicitly to do with blueprints, it's just good code practice

[heavy lion]

I cannot for the life of me get a widget blueprint to display on the screen.
I have a game mode, I have a HUD class, in the hud class, I create a widget, add it to the viewport.

Hud class is set inside the gamemode class but nothing displays on screen

[odd ember]

if you go to university and study to become a CS major or a system architect or a software developer you'll learn the same

doesn't matter if it's blueprint, C#, cpp or any other OOP language

[odd ember]

widgets are made for players. so the player controller needs to be involved

[empty pelican]

Hi, may i know how to resize the Editable text box if i make it as a child of a border?

[odd ember]

#umg

[heavy lion]

@odd ember But I have done it this way in another project, its identical

AHH, umg channel is still here. My bad

[dim robin]

i would like all the blueprints using a struct to get updated parameters straight from the "master" struct, is there a way? if i update a struct inside a random actor blueprint using it, it will keep these new parameters and not the ones set on the struct itself (outside the actor bp)

[spark steppe]

a struct is just a data type, it doesn't share values across blueprints

[dim robin]

so should i just use a data table?

[spark steppe]

you may want to store your struct in a global place like game mode, where all can access them

data tables are readonly

[dim robin]

this sounds like a good plan

[cerulean radish]

maybe stupid question, but why there is no for loop (or any kind of for) in widget blueprints?

ue5

[odd ember]

have you considered asking in one of the UE5 channels?

[cerulean radish]

idk if its related to ue5

specifically

[fickle granite]

ue4 does

[brazen merlin]

Ive done for loops inside a widget bp in ue4

[odd ember]

I got loops in UE4 too

[fickle granite]

i checked just now

[fickle granite]

its a ue5 problem

[cerulean radish]

okay, ty

[static charm]

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/1009084/view.html

might be a temp work around at the bottom most post in the link

"copy a For loop node from a plain Actor BP, then paste in the widget BP"

[wraith bay]

is it possible to have 2 people working on the same project online, with blueprints?

[icy dragon]

Do you mean source control?

[wraith bay]

Yes

[icy dragon]

Though not exactly "2+ people working simultaneously in real time"
But for "2+ people to share the same project", then yes, you can use source control for BPs. The changes won't be apparent though, because BP .uasset is binary file, not plain text.

[wraith bay]

What do you mean wont be apparent

[icy dragon]

The change log in your repo for BPs won't be directly readable in the source control interface.

[wraith bay]

Cool, thanks

[sonic crow]

Hi thought I would ask the question in a different way perhaps someone can help, how do I replace "Get Hit Result Under Cursor by Channel" with my Xbox controller where the thumbsticks could act as the motion for the mouse. I know they use different systems but in theory it should still be possible

[sonic crow]

Get hit result under cursor by channel" is a default preset to TopDown view

[trim matrix]

hi can i ask here about animations ? in animations its dead silent

[icy dragon]

Ask in #animation
I'll go there.

[trim matrix]

thanks

[heavy ibex]

I have a floatcurve that I'd like to adjust to be more like the red line, is there any way to accomplish that?

or is additional points the way

actually looks like just 1 more point in the middle did the trick. thanks guys 🤪

[odd ember]

you can also pull out the tangents more generally

[heavy ibex]

I tried that but it wasn't letting me pull them

[odd ember]

maybe that's unique to the curve editor, for e.g splines that's possible

[heavy ibex]

Yeah I remember doing it .. somewhere. But it doesn't seem to work here

[odd ember]

fair enough, but at least you have a solution

[sonic crow]

which channel should i ask this question?

[odd ember]

if you're doing it in blueprints... then, here?

[sonic crow]

i am doing it in blueprints but i am happy to do it in C++ if there is no solution in blueprints

[odd ember]

I don't think it makes a difference necessarily

the gist is that you need to have your mouse cursor be affected by gamepad input direction

[sonic crow]

yes 🙂 by right thumbstick

[odd ember]

so... that should be enough to get you started?

[sonic crow]

i knew this is what I wanted, I was not sure how to do it, is there a resource that could help with this

[faint pasture]

You can straighten the tangents at the 2 points

Don't need a 3rd

[heavy ibex]

Just click and drag, right? Doesn't seem to do anything - they won't drag

[faint pasture]

Can tangents be lengthened in Unreal curves or just rotated? If they can only be rotated you'll need a 3rd point but if they can be lengthened you don't.

[heavy ibex]

It seems just rotated

[odd ember]

we literally just had this conversation if you look up

[odd ember]

don't think there is. I use a rudimentary system like this for my own project but I have certain constraints. but I mean it's something about getting the mouse position, then using the axis value to propagate direction from the location

[faint pasture]

@heavy ibex BTW that looks like a sigmoid function so depending on what you're doing or how precise it has to be, you could just do it mathematically.

[heavy ibex]

No real precision needed, it's being used to drive the movement of a pendulum without physics simulation

[sonic crow]

the perfect solution would be to lock mouse position infront of character (could this be done with a spring arm not sure?), directly x units away from character always (no need to worry about the z axis), then allowing the x and y axis of the left thumbstick to change the direction of the character with the right trigger that moves the character forward in which ever direction it is facing when pressed. And finally limiting the cursor directional input to 90 degree increments so that it can only move in four directions. This allowing the existing tiles to be selected forcing character to always move to center of tile, making the gameplay smooth. Am i over complicating this, is there a better solution?

[faint pasture]

@sonic crow We have a similar system. We don't use Cursor itself at all.

[odd ember]

I have a very hard time figuring out how that would look or feel. I think you're overcomplicating it. I think you should go back to trying to understand what kind of movement you want

and then we can look at the technical implementation separately

[sonic crow]

i try to explain it here briefly but essentially I am looking for the classic bomberman movement (fun to play on a nintendo switch) the grid system forces the character to move to the center of the tiles, iwant the movement limited to four directions. Getting the character to move to the center of each tile without a mouse currently seems impossible so i am looking for a work around

[sonic crow]

How do you do it without a cursor if oyu want to center the movement to each tile

[odd ember]

I don't think you should be looking for workarounds. I gave you a solution to this last night

what didn't work?

[faint pasture]

Round the location before passing it to the character

to your grid interval

[sonic crow]

my movement works fine but it does not limit it to the tile which means you would move your character and you cna stand between tiles

[faint pasture]

you still need to enforce 8 direction movement but that'll get your mouse -> desired location correct

[faint pasture]

You trying to do click to move only or wasd/control stick as well?

[odd ember]

but you do understand that it is using the same system that you would be using for mouse in the end?

the mouse just picks a tile based on world location. the gamepad would pick a tile based on surrounding tiles

regardless, a tile gets picked

[sonic crow]

I am using d-pad directions but it does not work with the click to mouse position) so it does not center the location, altenrtively I can use a mouse but most users would prefer playing it with a controller

[sonic crow]

I did not know how to implement locate surrounding tiles

[odd ember]

but... I told you how to do that

[faint pasture]

Using Dpad, are you successfully enforcing landing on tile center?

using d pad only, can you right now move to a tile edge or center only?

[sonic crow]

I cam move to both center or edge it does not consider the tile system since it was setup with the mouse position

[odd ember]

for the gamepad, you get the world location of the character. that in turn gives you the tile that the character is standing on. then you look for surrounding tiles and put them into an array or a map. then you pick a tile based on the next input

[faint pasture]

Get your movement behaving correctly so you can just pass a MoveDirection (8 options) and move 1 tile over

Once you have that, it's just a problem of mapping stick input to a MoveDirection

and mouse will be handled by Picking a DestinationTile from mouse position, and pathfinding there by MoveDirections

Unless you want your dude running at any diagonal he chooses which I'm assuming is not what you want

[odd ember]

most of the input system was set up yesterday

[odd ember]

this is what I asked you to do yesterday

[odd ember]

.

[maiden wadi]

This sounds.. painful. I don't know why this whole thing isn't just based on simple grid math. Who needs to care about where the tiles are?

[odd ember]

how is grid math any different from this?

[maiden wadi]

It's much simpler to implement. And then the tiles can be anything you want them to be. They can be entirely ripped out and the gameplay still works.

[odd ember]

I mean what is the technical implementation

not what the benefits are

[faint pasture]

There's a million ways to pull this off but the best would be to have a grid representation of disallowed positions (map of integer vector 2d to enums) which you lookup to see if a move is allowed.

just register all the blocked locations in that map at game start and off you go

[sonic crow]

thanks i will give it another go, technically my grid is essentially just made up of vertices built with geometry to make it ultra light weight meaning i could have a billion tiles and the game would run smoothly (although might take a few extra seconds to load)

[maiden wadi]

A vector on the character. This is where the player is moving. A second one is where the player wants to move. Character's movement logic always trues to go towards the first vector. Input changes the second vector, when character reaches the first vector it checks if the second vector is set and if so sets the first to the second and nulls the second out. CharacterMoves again. If you need something even more complicated, it's as simple as putting in an array of vectors and a pretty simple path following system. Input from mouse snaps to grid at a Zless point for input and sets the desired location to that. DPad takes the current target and sets the desired target to whatever current target is + gridsize*direction.

[odd ember]

this seems weirdly... predictive?

also gonna say that while I get that you can separate grid and movement it's not something I'd personally recommend unless the game has to do both

but maybe that's just me

[maiden wadi]

Predictive of what? If you only want four directions, the character needs to move to the next square before another move can be made. This second vector allows players to set input without having to wait for the character to stop.

[odd ember]

ah like that

but that is still predictive behavior

because there is an assumption that players will want to continue to move in that direction

I'm not sure if that affects the system as a whole, however

[maiden wadi]

It's easy to put in a clause that if the new direction is backwards, you can set the current destination immediately.

I'm also under the impression that the character needs to move direct to the center of the grid? I wasn't thinking this was like old Zelda style, but literally like chess movement?

[odd ember]

I think they are trying to make bomberman

so I think the whole movement system is predicated on the fact that the center of the tile is what matters

[gentle urchin]

Bomberman or super bomberman?

[odd ember]

I don't know

I honestly didn't even know there was a difference between them

I haven't played bomberman for at least 20 years

[gentle urchin]

None of the ones i find have locked grid movement

Me neither, so wanted to look it up so there's a clear reference for the intended movement

[faint pasture]

Yeah for a Bomberman like I would not lock movement to cells but just placement of objects, and have dude about the same size as a cell

[gentle urchin]

Even arcade version has free movement.. im confused 😅

It would be weird imo if mouse and gamepad dont play out the same tho

Like mouse can click tile far away, and gamepad can not?

That would need some commit to the move when using gamepad (similar to mouse button click)

[odd ember]

I wonder what happens when the mouse hits a wall tile

[faint pasture]

Mouse movement would be weird imo

[odd ember]

I guess the tile centerpiece style movement makes sense for bomb placement and the like perhaps

but I don't know, maybe the idea is to have tile based movement style bomberman

and call it transformative

😎

[gentle urchin]

Turn based bomberman