blueprint

[gentle urchin]

Anims are also often pretty bad from my short experience

Or maybe i just suck at using them

[maiden wadi]

I admit, the few programming assets I've looked at on the marketplace were very badly done.

[faint pasture]

Yeah I looked at a few and they were super tightly coupled spaghetti messes so that kind of turned me off of the whole idea. And I would never use one in production, just get it to reverse engineer it and use what you need

[gentle urchin]

Even art ones often end up disappointing me tbh. Then again i have yet to pay for any of it so i guess it serves me right

[maiden wadi]

Organization and extensibility were non existent in them at least, and that's not a good thing.

Art assets are fine, but they have their own set of extra work. I really dislike that a lot of the foliage comes defaulted with textures like you're going to take a photorealistic render of it at 10k resolution. They're not at all optimized for game use in a lot of cases. Too much movie rendering crap.

Kind of like the 8k texture resolutions on a six inch tall flower.. Really?

[gentle urchin]

😂

Its gonna cover exactly 8 pixels on the screen

Gotta have them 8k textures

[raw orbit]

anyone got a sample or a good idea of how to load soft assets in an array? since the array just keeps firing it doesnt really load everything so im trying to figure out some alternatives

[maiden wadi]

You mean that the array is an array of soft object references?

SoftObject references are just a way to release memory. You only really use them with heavy visual assets like meshes, textures, sounds, particles, etc. To use them, in most cases, you can use them in an Async manner. UMG makes this easy with textures via things like SetBrushFromSoftTexture. For meshes you have to roll this yourself for meshes, or materials, but it's not that hard. It's mostly just making a simple callback for it that resolves the softpointer to a hard one that you use to set the mesh/material with. When you switch to another mesh you do the same thing, which relieves the hard pointer of the old mesh, and garbage collection sweeps it away. On the other hand if you want them loaded up ready to use, you could resolve them into an array of hard pointers.

[honest ice]

Problem with that is this is for a school assignement and just having any market place or starter content in the content browser makes me lose points:/

[maiden wadi]

Unfortunately tech professors don't usually care. You're supposed to follow their exact book and their exact guidelines so that you can pass their exact tests so that they get more funding. Your learning experience is secondary. At least in the States.

[tawdry surge]

Well they are trying to teach you to follow specific directions. Most tech companies have a standard set of practices they want you to follow

[willow phoenix]

yes. camera manager set max yaw

[maiden wadi]

This is true. But every company has different standards. Even every group in large companies have different standards. Learning how to learn is a lot more important than following strict standards that only 20% use. If you're told that "This is the only way" and you go join a company with that frame of mind, then you're going to be very stuck if you aren't aware of how to reteach yourself to new methods that your employers prefer.

[tidal rose]

Hello! So I'm a TOTAL noob here and I'm working on an independent project of my own and I have just hit a wall.

I've followed a couple tutorials on YT about programming doors to open after a certain amount of collectibles have been acquired. I am struggling to get it to work right however...

When I start the game the door is at the position it should be AFTER all collectibles have been acquired. I can't seem to get it to start closed and then move to open. I've tweaked the coding a bit to no avail and I'm just lost on what I'm doing wrong. Any help would be appreciated! Screen shots coming...

Door blueprint

Collectible blueprint

Door starts here...

But should start here...

[gentle urchin]

Wouldnt it be easier to do a timeline with relative location/rotation?

Also the door

Should be triggered from something else than beginplay

Alongnwith total colectibles being 0, i guess it would instantly move

Your gameinstance could for exMple have a delegate each time collectibles change

Which every intetested actor would bind to

Every door or area or whatever that is going to react to it at some point

[tidal rose]

@gentle urchin I believe I tried using "target collectibles left" and that didn't work either...I could certainly try it again.

Thought about changing the trigger to something else as well just not sure what if not beginplay

I could program it to open upon collision but I was hoping to just have that door drop once all collectibles are picked up

[zealous moth]

I have a vector origin from my character and I'd like to use that save vector as a point to define a local rotation for another component. What's the "get rotator from vector" approach?

[gentle urchin]

I bet you have plenty of doors reacting to collectibles, and if so, a delegate could make sense :)

[coarse forge]

happy friday.. how do you represent a uobject in bp. to clarify i have a uobject as a struct representative in cpp that i need to expose to my bp

[gentle urchin]

Find look at rotation

[gentle urchin]

More of a c++ question really. Uproperty, with bpreadwrite, doesnt that get you there?

Not solid in c++ yet sadly

[zealous moth]

it can't be because the vector origin is the same and normalized

[coarse forge]

hmm maybe. Let me change my FText objects to the true object and see whats up

thx

[tidal rose]

I have another door reacting to a lever pull but this is the only door attached to a collectible. Not sure what a delegate is...I can google it though 😅

Also, you mentioned timline with relative location/rotation, I understand the relative location/rotation part, but not sure what you mean by timeline? If there are any other tutorials or documents on this action out there that you know of that might help this situation that would be awesome!

[gentle urchin]

From another component you said

[zealous moth]

yep

directional vector derived from velocity and normalized

[gentle urchin]

If another component has the same transform as your origin, your rotation is everywhere/nowhere

[zealous moth]

hm lemme draw it

[gentle urchin]

Maybe i misunderstood you,

But it seems your question is not in line with your setup 😅

If you use sphere components location and origin location (not normalized?), youd grt the proper rotation

[zealous moth]

lemme show it like this

[gentle urchin]

Otherwise you can make rotation from xvector, but didnt sound like what you wanted initially

[zealous moth]

red and green are forward and right

orange is my velocity vector

I have a component aligned with the forward in pink

i need it rotated to what the orange is

I tried to make a rotator from X but that failed

[gentle urchin]

Velocity into make rot from x ?

Hmm..

[gentle urchin]

If its only one door thats gonna react to it then delegate dont make so much sense :p

[gentle urchin]

Rot from xy?

[zealous moth]

How? I have only 1 vector

[gentle urchin]

Let me boot my pc.. tossing ideas here 😅

[tidal rose]

I gotcha. Appreciate your feedback. What would you suggest changing the trigger to other than beginplay? That would be the next thing I would try.

[gentle urchin]

You need some event to trigger the door to open when the amount of collectibles required has been picked up

[zealous moth]

nope, won't work

here's a setup

Get a character, add a sphere component and add an arrow component to the sphere

rotate the sphere according to the velocity of the character

and the arrow should follow

[gentle urchin]

Doing it with an arrow,

Works 100%

added sphere,

works 100%

[zealous moth]

i'm missing something

[gentle urchin]

guess its hard to see the actual velocity in this case, but it is correct according to my input

[zealous moth]

hm i use this to get my vector

what did you parent the sphere to?

the capsule?

[gentle urchin]

Capsule

Ye

[zealous moth]

k

[gentle urchin]

Makerotfromx doesnt like normalized vector i think

[zealous moth]

yeah if not normalized works better

but sometimes doesn't work at all

[high ocean]

Is anyone in the mood to assist me in a longer thing? I just can't figure it out, and it's too complicated to try and explain here, it's a skill behaving weird (but it's based on a fairly convoluted/generalized skills system) - so I would probably have to stream/explain first. Or should I try it here? Anyone in the mood? 😛

[snow harness]

Tiny thing, does anyone know if I can force "stat unit" to launch every time the editor opens?

[gentle urchin]

Remove it from your other logic for the testing to verify if the problem is the setup or the rest of the code/caching :p put it first on event tick and go directly from velocity

[high ocean]

@snow harness

if you check them there, they'll be saved in the config (in project save folder)

else, you could try a shortcut with arguments (but I never did it myself)

[gentle urchin]

Well somehow you must inform the door that you've collected enough items. Perhaps the system could be tag-based, where things react to a specific gameplay tag. This would require a few steps (and probably easiest abstracted to a compoment for reusability)

[snow harness]

Didn't even know about that dropdown after all these years, I've got a document of useful commands I've been references. Lol. Thank you very much.

[high ocean]

Sure np, happens to me too - I just check random official tuts/courses from epic. There you see all kinds of gems like this one 😄

[winged sentinel]

I’ve never seen that either

[gentle urchin]

All these hidden gems huh

Didnt know they saved tho

[winged sentinel]

Ikr

Cuz I’m tryna figure out what’s killing my FPS

My gpu is fine

[gentle urchin]

If anything you can just add a consolecommand to beginplay, or a hotkey

Stat uobjects helped me a ton

When its cpu shiet

[winged sentinel]

I’ll keep it in mind

Ik it’s prolly some old blueprint that’s running on tick or something lol

[gentle urchin]

Then again i had it easy with empty level, a bunch of ai, and seeing which functions cosr the most

[winged sentinel]

Ah so that’ll so show u cost of functions

I’ll have to do that because I think it’s my ai causing it as well

[tidal rose]

I see, I thought I already had that set up, target collectibles-->branch-->move component to...but something is definitely not right, I'm missing a piece somewhere. I'll mess with it some more and see what I can figure out. Thanks!

[gentle urchin]

What im seeing is some journal pages with some hardcoded input adding widget and destroying self (?), and a door that checks only at beginplay if collectibles is within required amount

[winged sentinel]

Absolutely amazing thank you

[gentle urchin]

This is after the c++transtition, so the cost is now a fraction of what it was..

[winged sentinel]

Ah I see, even if nativisation isn’t on?

I can’t remember if nativizing is on my default

[gentle urchin]

Nativization is getting tossed and has a ton of issues so never bothered with it

[zealous moth]

what was your minimal value?

[high ocean]

I think this is causing problems for me (see pic). So, here it is: that array contains actors. I'm grabbing one, calling a function on it which should remove something from an array inside of the actor. Since this is a copy, will the array update or not? The description suggests it won't.

[gentle urchin]

It wasnt mine , so i dont really know. I had none, seemed fine

[tidal rose]

The journal pages are the collectibles, the collectible actor is programmed to cast to the screen how many have been picked up, and once they are picked up they disappear (the actor is destroyed)

I think what you said before might be the issue...at the start of play it's checking the number of collectibles, it should be checking how many are "left" to pick up, not how many I "have", but "target collectibles left" is what I thought would fix that. But I guess I need another event to trigger in the sequence to check the collectible amount again during play?

[gentle urchin]

You need either the collectible, or the collectible 'manager' (gameinstance in your case it seems like) to somehow broadcast or inform the door about when enough items is picked up

If you go the event dispatcher route you can make a dispatcher in your game instance

"CollectedPage", with an input integer for the amount

Then in your door on beginplay you cast to your gameinstance then you "bind to collectedpage" in the game instance

Then you create a new custom event from the red pin there

Which will have an integer.

This is the event where you wanna check the amount

Then in the game instance whenever a collectible is picked up, you want to "call CollectedPage "

[gentle urchin]

The array you remove from, is inside the actor you called the function on?

[high ocean]

yes

[gentle urchin]

Then the array in question has nothing to update

The refs are still there, still valid, and nothing changed

[high ocean]

but If i get the value of the array inside it which got modified, will it return the "state" it was in when the ref was taken, or will it update the info according to "current" value?

[gentle urchin]

As long as the modified array is modified properly, yes

It doesnt hold on to/copy any state of the object

The array elemt is purely a pointer

To the actual object

[coarse forge]

if you are using event tick and delta time.. what is a good way to reset it during tick?

[gentle urchin]

Reset what

[coarse forge]

sorry.. i should post images

on the right.. its flooring to get the index of the virtical component 1 text item pos.. but when it gets to the second set.. the index / floor doesn't go back down

I have groupings of story text that display on screen.. then eventually the image swaps and the next set of text shows

so somewhere in here.. should i be resetting story counter to 0?

[gentle urchin]

Its hard to say whats going on, but surely thats not a great way to set it up ;-/

Consider using timers instead

Should keep things cleaner, simpler and more organizable

Or timeline for that matter

So you can handle your opacity

[coarse forge]

the bigger issue.. which is sorta why this direction. I have a number of images, and for each image I have a number of lines of text

and after the end of text, i need to go to the next image

and so on.. then load a level

i know the image number.. not the text number

[gentle urchin]

Right

Typical indie story telling

Image + some text, new image + some text

[coarse forge]

i was hoping so! seriously like.. no tutorials but i feel like this is pretty common

if i setup and group in arrays all my stuff.. will timeline allow me to loop that stuff right?

[gentle urchin]

Either you can serialize a bunch of widgets,

Or use widget switchers , timelines and some clever logic for when the text is endimg

Id go for the last version ofcourse

[coarse forge]

i know when the text is ending in this case

The is valid is false when there isn't any more text

[gentle urchin]

A struct containing the image + the text lines

Or something along thise lines atleast

The widget would handle it all

If you wanted sound effectd to it, that could also be handled there

[coarse forge]

i see

so one widget with text and the one image

[gentle urchin]

One widget that can generically read an array of the struct containing the image(s) and the text that follows the image

[north marten]

Could someone help me with something? I'm trying to change the color of a attached weapon after picking it up using the same way I am changing colors for my characters armor. But I don't know what to use on the object wildcard for a "cast to weapon_BP". I'm at work right now so I don't have screenshots of my blueprints but if someone has a idea on how to make that work

[high ocean]

Ok, I'm going crazy here:

I just don't freakin' understand how does something get removed, then ... not get removed.... HOW?! 😭

[gentle urchin]

End effect != remove effect?

[high ocean]

@gentle urchin

Left that out not to kill people with too much info 😐

Spent 4+ hrs on this, going frame by frame, and it just seems the remove effect doesn't get called... Used print strings, did all of it. I just don't understand... It's meant to replace a buff... If it exists, remove it. It works fine for all skills except this one which links two units together. If unit 1 casts the link on unit 2 and then unit 2 on unit 1, unit 2 is left with two buffs. It should remove it before applying...

[vague tide]

anyone know how to fix this multiplayer problem all of the actors look at mouse cursor

[gentle urchin]

Only checking buffs for the effect to remove? Using a select on debuffs.. what type is removed ? Buffed i suppose. Also pro tip; in a function where you have a single condition for exiting (break) you can just do what you wanna do after the branch and go directly into a return node. This exits the loop early :)

[tidal rose]

Whew! Alrighty, I will take all this and see what I can build here. I'll be back in here with updates. Thank you so much for your help!

[high ocean]

@gentle urchinHeh, u won't believe it, but (it either bugged or not sure), but I thought I know that too until i spent some time debugging my AI only to find that the branch fired "true" regardless unless I've connected another return node with an explicit false value (the bool was passed by ref, so no default values to set it to true). After that, for some functions I just throw in another node with an explicit false node.

[gentle urchin]

This is true, the outputs are saved so you need another negative exit aswell on loop completed. But that also means that if you completed the entire loop, you're sure you didnt find what you looked for, and thus can just exit negative anyways

Looks alot cleaner than breaks imo^^

[high ocean]

Now, back to this, the remove event works as intended, had 40+ skills with this buff system in a previous game and this is the only skill that breaks on circular casts. The select is based on effect type which is stated in the data table for that particular skill effect. Jeez, sometimes I just wanna drop this and freaking learn GAS and be done with this crap.

[high ocean]

Wait, then I misunderstood you. Let me read that again [Loading...] Oh, so... Inside the loop itself throw in a return node? 😮

[gentle urchin]

And ofc you dont have a debuff named linked, right?

[gentle urchin]

Yes, after the branch succeeds, you can simply call the end effect (we found it and want to end it) and then just return

[high ocean]

Was affraid that would just loop further into other things outside the function. That's GOOD to know! It would be much easier to make helper functions! 😄

[high ocean]

No, I don't 😅 And I've checked that part of the code, it does get removed, checked the bool & array elements.

[gentle urchin]

Also your end effect and remive effect couød've returned values too, couldnt they? Be functions so youd get the true result and not just the search result

Id also suggest splitting the function

Find

And Remove

[high ocean]

What you saw there returns this:

where "remove" from the sencond?! 😐

[gentle urchin]

Find could be pure, and remove would not be

[high ocean]

If you think that might clean things up, then ofc I could

[gentle urchin]

Keeps the logic clearer if nothing else

Doing to much in a single function sort of defeats half the purpose of making it a function in the first place

[high ocean]

fair enough 😅

[gentle urchin]

The print strings

Should i read it from top to bot ?

[high ocean]

top

[gentle urchin]

They dont mske alot of sense to me really

[high ocean]

yea, that's why I asked earlier if anyone was up for a stream since it's farily convoluted:
Unit 1 casts Link
Adds effect on unit 2
Adds effect on unit 1
______________ so far so good.
Unit 2 casts Link
Removes effect from unit 2
Adds effect to Unit 2
***Should remove effect from unit 1 <----This is somehow skipped. The code is that with the sequence (remove from target, remove from caster, Apply)
Adds effect to unit 1.
Now, unit 1 has 2 buffs, out of which, one is invalid (leftover)

Worse case, i'll just drop "link" skills altogether and be done with it jeez!

But then I don't get to struggle and learn so 🤦‍♂️ 😕 no good!

[coarse forge]

maybe im overthinking this

and i should just make a hud widget for each story scene and use the damn timeline

[gentle urchin]

One generic widget with a timeline handling any inputed array of image/texts

[coarse forge]

yup

i only need.. 3 scenes so im splitting that now

maybe ill make it generic later

[gentle urchin]

Yeah id say thats fine

[high ocean]

@gentle urchinFInally got it. I'm an imbecile and since the system ALWAYS acts on it's parent (the ability is a component and fx are actors with ref to the caster), it called remove on the caster only. Thanks for ur time man 🙂 apparently it helped 😛

[gentle urchin]

Some rubberducking tends to help 🤣 sounds interesting if the master remove doesnt work but oh well 😅 i dont know your setup 😂

Gj in any case!

[tired sparrow]

hey, I'm having a problem trying to add health boost zones to my game

[high ocean]

Well, it definitely helped 😄

[tired sparrow]

In the blueprint you need to reference the firstpersoncharacter but I can't find it anywhere on the world outliner

[gentle urchin]

Health boost zone like... collision volumes?

[high ocean]

@gentle urchinThe master remove does work but whe I made the system I made it assume that the parent of the buff is the ONLY parent. Didn't think I'll want to make "shared/replicated" effects. Anyway. I'll just accomodate this posibility now I guess 😄 Would've been nicer if I haven't forgotten about this "assumption" but there it is 😅

[tired sparrow]

yeah, I added like a green sphere with a collision sphere around it

wait i'll take screenshots

[gentle urchin]

Well you figured it out so thats all that matters^^

[tired sparrow]

so this is the ball

[high ocean]

There, ducktaped, works like a charm 😂 . Jeesus how simple stuff can waste a day... Thanks again man! 🙂

[tired sparrow]

teacher said to create something like this in the world blueprint

[gentle urchin]

Almost. But not controller

Youd want the incoming actor :)

[tired sparrow]

i don't understand much of this rn haha

[gentle urchin]

You'd probably want to cast or atleast compare to the player pawn* if only the player is affected

[tired sparrow]

this is what he told us to do in the firstpersoncharacter blueprint

[tired sparrow]

that would replace the get player controller?

[gentle urchin]

Yes

[tired sparrow]

oh ok

like this?

[zealous fog]

On the event node

You have a pin "overlapped actor"

You want to use that for the damaged actor

[gentle urchin]

^

[tired sparrow]

connect it to event insitgator instead?

[zealous fog]

Yes

[gentle urchin]

No 😅

What

[tired sparrow]

damn

[zealous fog]

Huh

The event node

[tired sparrow]

sorry I'm so confused

[gentle urchin]

The red node, the event overlapprd

Has two inputs

Overlapped actor

And other actor

[zealous fog]

And remove the player pawn

[gentle urchin]

Overlapped actor is whatever actor walked into the sphere

[tired sparrow]

ok i'll try to redo what you said an send a ss

[gentle urchin]

If you want this to affect anyone then you can just plug it directly in

[zealous fog]

You should probably check if it is the player though

And if the actor is valid

[gentle urchin]

If only the player shall benefit, then you must compare the overlapped actor with the 'get player paen'

[zealous fog]

I thibk

[gentle urchin]

Actor must be valid for overlapping

[tired sparrow]

it's only to affect the player

[zealous fog]

Good to know

[tired sparrow]

like this?

[gentle urchin]

Yes

[zealous fog]

Yes

[gentle urchin]

Now it works for anyone who overlaps

[tired sparrow]

tysm i'll go test it and come back

[lyric relic]

Question, I have a Data table of items where row name is the item id, and want to be able to have a variable in my BP that can let me set item id from a dropdown like an enum in the editor, is there a clean way to do that? creating a separate enum will cause duplicate data and will force me to maintain both row name column and enum to be the same at all times.

[tired sparrow]

welp, I have bad news. It didn't work

[gentle urchin]

Do the player have theevent any damage

[tired sparrow]

yeah

[zealous fog]

Its a bit of spaghetti code (no offense that's how everyone starts)

[tired sparrow]

yeah sorry about that

[zealous fog]

Give me 5 mins I'll remake it a bit better for you

[tired sparrow]

ty

[gentle urchin]

If pawn is not overlapping the collision setting might be wrong,

Or generate overlapping event isnt checked in the sphere

[tired sparrow]

oh collision setting might be it

it's set to nocollision

[gentle urchin]

😅

[tired sparrow]

damn

what should it be set as?

[gentle urchin]

It should atleast overlap pawn

With query and physics collision

And generate overlap

[zealous fog]

Did it work now

[tired sparrow]

welp I tried to change it as you said but still no luck

i'll send a ss of the settings

[gentle urchin]

Whats the bool down there

Another generate overlap event?

[tired sparrow]

i,m sorry where can I see the bool?

[gentle urchin]

On the ss you sent

Third from bottom

[tired sparrow]

i hadn't checked the box when i took the ss but now it's checked

[zealous fog]

btw this is how I would clean up the code a bit

[tired sparrow]

tnx a lot

so that would be for when your hp hits 0 right?

[zealous fog]

Yes, and the clamop is to prvent it going above 100 or 0

clamo

clamp

So you dont need the 2nd branch

[tired sparrow]

oooh nice i'll change it

[willow phoenix]

you are printing your old health value only

oh im late

if you use deans version, don't forget to set your health back to 100

[gentle urchin]

Health is health, its correct, albeit not a clean way of doing it

[willow phoenix]

i guess you do this as a respawn

[tired sparrow]

so just add a set health 100 at the end?

[willow phoenix]

well, you did this in your first setup

not sure what you want to do

[zealous fog]

HE did it only if health was above 100

So I assumed he wanted to clamp the health

[willow phoenix]

and after he set the position

[zealous fog]

Oh yeah

[willow phoenix]

could be that he just had some noodles laying around and tied them together

😄

[zealous fog]

If you wanna add print strings to it, I would do something like this

[tired sparrow]

that would be to show how much health you have?

[zealous fog]

If I have multiple print strings ill use append to differentiatie between the values

It would show your health before damage is applied, and show your new health after the damage is applied

[tired sparrow]

would this be useful if there's going to be a hud that shows the character health?

[willow phoenix]

its always useful to print some values because otherwise you have no chance of fixing stuff if something breaks or goes wrong and you don'T have a clue whats goin on

[tired sparrow]

ah makes sense, i'll it then

[zealous fog]

It could be maybe, but for the HUD setup I use, I have a function within the HUD widget that will get the player health

[willow phoenix]

if you do not want the text on your screen, just set the print string to log only

[tired sparrow]

alright thanks

so uncheck print to screen?

[zealous fog]

Depends on if you want it to print to screen

Btw I have a question about widget functions

I have this setup

But when is this function called? It seems to update as soon as player health changes

[gentle urchin]

It runs on something like tick

[zealous fog]

But I am not manually calling it

[gentle urchin]

You're better off having it event driven

[zealous fog]

Makes sense, guess the course didnt wanna go too deep into HUD management hehe

[gentle urchin]

^^ bindings are easy, fsst to setup, and doednt give major performance hit right away

But for long term hud its a bad idea

[zealous fog]

So on event any damage in my player character I make an event happen in this blueprint? Or do I

[gentle urchin]

Yes.

[zealous fog]

Alright Ill try that out

and this should be empty then, or should it have the function I will call on that event?

[honest ice]

I'm having some trouble with blueprints and them not doing stuff that I want and at this point there's too much for a message, It's probably very simple but I just don't know where to start:/ so was wondering if anybody would be willing to help me in vc?

[gentle urchin]

What i'd do is either;

• make a callable function in the widget which the playerbp must call whenever health changes

Or

• create a event delegate in the player pawn which when the widget id created is bound up to said delegate. Then youd call the delegate every time hp changes
  @zealous fog

[tired sparrow]

Sorry to interrupt with another question. Just that for the sphere that adds health earlier, I think it doesn't work because there's nothing related to the first person character in the world outliner

[gentle urchin]

The benefit of the delegate is that you can have several actors listen to this event if you wanted(like an enemy that attacked you can be notified when your hp is below 10% so they can do some execute special anim on you)

[zealous fog]

Does your character spawn on the PlayerStart?

Wont be in the world outliner then

[zealous fog]

Delegate is event dispatcher?

[tired sparrow]

oh yeah, it spawns there

it's just like a little flag

[gentle urchin]

Yes

[zealous fog]

Thanks a bunch

Ok Ill send you some of my setup when I was trying a similar exercise biono

on thirdperson character

oh

Your collision trigger has a collision box right?

or sphere or whatever

on the collsionbox

[tired sparrow]

thanks Dean I'll plug in those settings

[midnight wedge]

Does anyone know how to use EQS? Im having a bit of trouble with it

[zealous fog]

Biono, otherwise here in an Unreal Developer who is pretty much doing what you are doing right now (you will have to adjust it a little bit to fit your, what I assume, is your homework assignment 😆 )

https://youtu.be/EM_HYqQdToE?t=1284

Although its probably just a little bit above your level, it really is still the basics and if you pay attention and watch it a few times Im sure you will understand

Its what I did when I started out

this whole video is gold if you wanna know about how blueprints communicate

If the timestamp doesnt work its 21:24

[tired sparrow]

thanks so much! yeah it does seem to be very close to what i'm trying to do

i'll follow along to try and recreate a bit what he did

[zealous fog]

Watch out though he is in the actor blueprint while you are making it in the level blueprint

So you cant just copy it exactly

But its useful for you to understand what you're doing exactly haha

[tired sparrow]

oh alright

so what if I did it in the actor blueprint instead of level one, could it work?

[zealous fog]

Yes but I thought your teacher said it had to be in the level blueprint

[tired sparrow]

oh, well that's how he did it in the tutorial he made, but we can do it however we want

[zealous fog]

Doing it either way isn't wrong I think

The tricky part about blueprints is that you have a million tools for the same thing

And you gotta decide what the best tool is

[brazen merlin]

Level bp is generally not preferred

[tired sparrow]

game is due in a week so I think i'll just do it in the actor blueprint instead to save time

[zealous fog]

If you do it I the actor BP it means you can spawn it in other levels

[brazen merlin]

Bsps are cool 😎

[zealous fog]

And it works

As someone who is used to blender

Bsps suck fight me

[tired sparrow]

oh then i'll definitely pick actor blueprint

[zealous fog]

But its great for fast prototyping

[tired sparrow]

it's a two level game so it needs to work on both

[zealous fog]

It's just clunky as hell

Follow that tutorial

I sent

And you will make it work

[tired sparrow]

yep I'll save the vid

[zealous fog]

You can do it

[tired sparrow]

fr you've been so helpful

[brazen merlin]

You shoudlnt model with bsp (unless your cool 😎)

[zealous fog]

We are all learning here

No I know its just clunky even for its intended use

Or I just am not cool enough its possible🤔

[brazen merlin]

Perhaps both 😇

[zealous fog]

I was wondering, there ever any reason not to use nativization when finishing a game

I'm reading up about it and it seems like it just makes everything faster?

[brazen merlin]

I use bsp to design the collision of the level

I stick to increments of 100 sometimes 50

In seeing repetition i can design the mesh kit

Bsp can be exported as a mesh if needed

[zealous fog]

So you export your bsp into your modeling software and then flesh out the level?

[brazen merlin]

Sometimes but not always

If i made a bsp pillar i note the dimensions and make one in the 3d software

Unusually, its common for platfromer games to load large chunks of areas

Having the entire level collision as reference can guide the final design

Im a fan of modularity, but some studios will load a single mesh environment

[zealous fog]

Hmmm this is a little bit beyond where I am now I think, I havent really found a true workflow for my own full games

[brazen merlin]

For example the entire interior space of a building

[zealous fog]

So far I've been following courses and getting a grasp on how everything interacts

But thats an interesting method I'll note it down

[swift cave]

rate it

[brazen merlin]

Looks like #work-in-progress

[swift cave]

its a work in progress yes

or are you telling me to use that channel lol

[zealous fog]

He means the channel hehe

[swift cave]

lol💀

bro i didnt know ok

i thought i was in general

its not that serious lol

[brazen merlin]

this is going on your peeerrrrmmanaant reccoooord (echoes record record record)

[swift cave]

lmaoo

[dusky harbor]

hey people,

Could someone from you help me.
How can i take the component (decal in my case) from the blueprint and use it in another blueprint. I tried with get and cast to the blueprint, but no result

[brazen merlin]

wayttd?

[dusky harbor]

i am trying to make puddles and rocks on the floor and interact with them. When the player step over the puddle, receive scores. When step over the stone , he loses scores.

This is a little part. I know , that maybe it has to be done with one blueprint. But i am asking if is possible to do it with two blueprints, as they interact each other

[brazen merlin]

alright, still not sure

[umbral ginkgo]

Whenever I add an actor into the player capsule, it propels the player at speeds that you'd expect in msfs 2020. Why

I have no clue how else one would describe this

huh

on my screen its full length

[brazen merlin]

it loaded

[umbral ginkgo]

oh ok\

[brazen merlin]

yeah, weird

spawning an actor in another messes with physics

disable physics of the box

[umbral ginkgo]

k

I have turned off everything related to physics and it still bugs out

[brazen merlin]

shit, sorry, i wasnt thinking, turn off the collider of the box

[umbral ginkgo]

k that makes sense

[north marten]

If I want to use a umg to change the color parameters on an attached object that the player can pick up, how should the casting go for that to work? I have the info working on the parameters of my players armor dynamic materials but the same way won't work when I try for the weapon

[brazen merlin]

try #umg im not sure what your asking

[umbral ginkgo]

Im disapointed I didn't think of that sooner

thx

[north marten]

Just changing colors on an attached object, using anything. I have a widget that pressing a button on it changes the color parameters to random numbers for a random color. But it won't work for the weapon my character is holding

[brazen merlin]

np

[brazen merlin]

so you are changing the color of the held weapon using a widget?

[north marten]

Yeah, trying to atleast. It works for the player's material but I can't seem to find the right way to cast for the weapons material to be changed

[brazen merlin]

how is the weapon setup? is it already hooked up or are you spawning and attaching?

[north marten]

The weapon is spawned on the ground and the player picks it up

[brazen merlin]

so you need to have a variable set of the weapon that is held

[north marten]

Okay, I have a variable for "equipped weapon" that makes it so they can only hold one weapon at a time

It comes off the weapon BP I believe (I'm at work so I don't have my pc right now)

When I've tried casting from the widget button to the weapon, the object wildcard keeps asking for target no matter what I put in

[brazen merlin]

so it sounds like you can access equipped weapon, which sounds like a child class (weapon bp)

[north marten]

Yeah it is, but when I put that on the wildcard, it also asks for target again with the weapon ref

[brazen merlin]

hmmm

not sure of your setup - assuming you are getting reference to the character, then getting the equipped weapon?

[north marten]

Should I cast to player bp and get the equipped weapon ref from there? I thought I had tried that

[brazen merlin]

its attached to the character, but if you have a reference to it already then as long as it always exists you should just be able to get it

if i were to do this, i would get the player character and then use get child

again, maybe you have the reference already though

[north marten]

Okay I'll try that when I get home and see if it gets me any closer lol

[brazen merlin]

child actors get a bit tricky

they are not quite treated the same as working with an attached component or actor

though again, i dunno if it is a child actor

an attached actor is not a child actor

[north marten]

I even thought of trying to create the dynamic material inside the weapon base

And going for that but it did the same saying anything put into wildcard "doesn't inherent"

[brazen merlin]

well setup of dynamic material can also be erroneous, seems to be hard to flawlessly setup that ive seen

[north marten]

Yeah the player's mesh material went pretty well it's just this damn part that's driving me insane

[brazen merlin]

honestly dont know where this wildcard request is coming from

would need to see how the attach graph looks

[north marten]

The button that shows on the HUD when I overlap an item for "changing the color" then I have three buttons. One for change armor color (cast to playerbp, then to the dynamic material on the skeletal mesh of the player and changes colors) second button is for changing weapon colors (I've tried casting to the weapon actor itself) nothing worked

[umbral ginkgo]

this is a quick question but is there a way to add notes to a blueprint

[north marten]

Third button is just to exit the menu

[brazen merlin]

two ways, yes

[umbral ginkgo]

By note I dont mean comment

[brazen merlin]

you can add a note to a specific node

[umbral ginkgo]

Ok, how do I do that?

oh let me guess

right click

[brazen merlin]

maybe

it appears as a little ... bubble near the top left of the node selected

[umbral ginkgo]

oh that was easy

[brazen merlin]

i dont follow, the explanation also doesnt communicate the setup, but i figure if you have the player with color change then its something specific around the area of the weapon

therefore the weapon bp, the attachment graph, and the widget logic

[north marten]

I can't give any pictures right now so I guess I'm still just SoL on it then

[brazen merlin]

yes, that is what i am saying 🙂

[north marten]

The explanation was literally every node that went into something, how it was connected, and what it was for

[zealous fog]

It's called visual scripting for a reason 😉

[tawdry surge]

Well even "code" you'd have to show your work. Generally rundown usually won't cut it regardless

[sonic crescent]

Hi! Any idea why i'am unable to destroy components and descendants?

[tawdry surge]

Were they inherited

[umbral ginkgo]

Hey I have a bug where I can't delete an old folder

how do I fix it?

[brazen merlin]

Fix redirectors, then check it out in windows file explorer

[umbral ginkgo]

thx

[sly forge]

Does saving a map of objects(both are objects key and value) to slot dont work?

[brazen merlin]

The docs claim maps are immutable

[sly forge]

they said the value cannot be modified when its created, but im modifying it all the time

Maybe they mean maps cannot be set?

I made a simple map of integers, and it did save

[brazen merlin]

Yeah its a bit confuaing but i think it matters as to what the map is made if

[tawdry surge]

Where did you see maps are immutable?

[brazen merlin]

The docs

Went over this same confusion yesterday

[sly forge]

They said the values are immutable

Its maybe as you said, immutable depending on type

[brazen merlin]

Its vaguely put as well

"Created maps are immutable"

I would assume to not use them more than just to store and reference

[tawdry surge]

The values and names of the keys are immutable once you add them, but you can add or remove key/value pairs

[sly forge]

But doesnt that mean they can be modified?

[tawdry surge]

Yes, you'll have to remove and re-add if you want to change a value

[sly forge]

Using integers you dont have to remove the key or value first, you just use the key u want to modify and apply a new value

prob with other types too

I'll try your way with my object map now, removing first then adding again

What do you think, do i have to clear it or remove the keys?

[tawdry surge]

If it's just the key that's immutable then idk why it's giving you an issue

[sly forge]

My first try was trying to set the map with another map

[tawdry surge]

They have a remove node.
So I'd use that and then add the key back with the new value

[sly forge]

But why do they have this if it doesnt work? 😂

[tawdry surge]

What is that supposed to be setting

[sly forge]

I tested when a new objects map, it does work

maybe i have a problem in one of my functions

[dawn gazelle]

I think the point is that you can't modify the keys once they're set in the map.
For example, let's say you had a map of integer keys to object values, and you had a key in there of 0. You have no means of modifying the 0 to anything else. You can add the same object to key 1, but key 0 will still remain in the map until you remove it. Additionally, you can reset what 0 maps to.

[sly forge]

That sets a map inside a game slot with a new map

[sly forge]

yea a key cannot be changed because there isnt a node for it, but values can

but what im trying to do is set the map with another map

[dawn gazelle]

Which you absolutely can do.

[sly forge]

yea i can

i might have another function reseting it again after i set it, i'll take a deep look

[bright harbor]

so i have a character, with multiple child classes, in the parent class, i have a UI being spawned and promoted to a variable, then in the child classes i have it setting a variable in the UI which it uses to bind a progress bars percent, but when i do it, it doesn't update the progress bar

[brazen merlin]

alright..

[bright harbor]

nvm i think i fixed it

[stray moat]

Hello I need help using two timer by function for my health show damage amount and my mana damage amount

[full wind]

hello has anyone worked with bitwise enums,i wanna have it so i could set the flags on the bitwise,how's the best way to do it

so for example i have a jump

i wanna have 3 states of it

first jump,second jump,boost

how would i change the flags of it but not having to input the stuff manually

[full wind]

why are you doing lerp there

lerp 0.5 averages out the values

[stray moat]

followed a toturial

[full wind]

you ok with joining the feedback vc?

having a timer of 0.5 seems slow for updaing values

for now i'll ignore the lerp

try it out with just dividing the cur/max value

if you want it smooth

decrease the timer loop duriation

and have a finterp

in the finterp

@stray moat

i don't have a max hp/mana so i just divided by 100

the interp speed is basically how much is the maximum value it will substract every time the timer ticks

you can also bind values

you can click create binding

and do the math in the binding

there are a few ways to do this stuff

i recommend you to check epic tutorials in https://learn.unrealengine.com/

[maiden wadi]

Usually best just to use a widget's tick function for things like that.

[full wind]

tick in ui is fine yeah

[opaque river]

I am working on trying to do a kind of jank parallax based upon player movement, but one issue is atm I just have an actor which tries to follow the player and updates some material params based upon that movement to create the parallax effect, but the actor following player movement is both delayed and a bit jittery when movement stops what would be the best method to solve the actors movement?

I tried making a timeline to smooth it a bit but it still doesnt pass the eye test in particular when falling as the momentum builds then stops abruptly

ideally I would want its movement fixed to camera location but its just a vertical slice of the level and the camera is simply a component of the player pawn

[full wind]

bobby can you show the thing

i'm confused a bit

you want the stuff in the background

to move in paralax

but the way you are making it follow your character makes it ubrupt

[opaque river]

atm it just looks at the player movement and matches but obviously its delayed

[full wind]

wow

you don't put a timeline in tick

and not like that

even when you do

you just need a vinterp

to interpolate the 2 locations

[maiden wadi]

Also. Please use variables. Expecting nodes from another execution path to save variables is not a good idea. You'll end up with trouble with that later.

[opaque river]

i axe the timeline, np i was throwing stuff at the wall trying to get it working

[full wind]

authaer

adding extra variables for clean up is not the best way to do it as you still end up waisting resources for making it more readable

in his case he should do it so the variable is accessable if need be

but i don't recommend to do that

epic needs to have named reroutes in bp's too

[opaque river]

this doesnt need to be a scalable solution tbh

[full wind]

it's practices not your specific case

[maiden wadi]

Kay. Next time someone comes in here asking why their variable doesn't work from another execution line, I'll tag you.

[full wind]

it's on begin play

in this case it's fine

it's for practices not use cases

or being correct

[maiden wadi]

Using returned pointers from another execution path is never fine. It's really bad practice.

[full wind]

ok

i know and aware of it

[maiden wadi]

Doesn't matter if it's working in this case. I made a point that he 'should' consider changing that if he keeps this blueprint.

[opaque river]

basically your saying that my event begin play line should just feed into a variable and then call that variable in the event tick?

[full wind]

you should have it as a variable

i mean the dynamic material

[opaque river]

yeah thats fine its like a couple clicks

[full wind]

because you should have it being defined

[maiden wadi]

Does this moving actor have collision? I can't see why this would jitter unless it's fighting collision with something.

[full wind]

he doesn't have a sweep on the set actor location

and guessing it's a static mesh component

so it odesn't have extra movement

or is it a character

[opaque river]

when you fall you gather momentum and then come to an abrupt stop, so my assumption is to break out my z and X movement and put the interp speed to below 1 for the Z

its connected to a player pawn

[maiden wadi]

Wait. The ultimate intention is to slow a fall?

[opaque river]

the ultimate goal is this the material on the background changes its orientation based upon the player position giving the effect of parallax movement to a static background

the only issue is while side to side movement works fine

vertical has more abrupt movement that the background isnt perfectly in sync with

meaning the player stops then a fraction later the background does

its very hard to see on side to side but the momentum build on falling makes for a noticeable delay

[maiden wadi]

Odd. There shouldn't be that huge of a difference between your game and render thread.

[stray moat]

will I be able to use use it for both mana and health with out the issue with the the timer by event

[full wind]

you can do both updates in one timer

i.e. update health and mana in one timer

[sonic crow]

where can i find this node?

[full wind]

right click a set varaible node

[sonic crow]

i have never seen this get before does blueprints still have it or has it been renamed?

[full wind]

hm did they remove it in five

oh a get

i'm dumb

right click a get node

and you can convert to validation node

" validated get"

[sonic crow]

there are 100's of get nodes is it just called get like the get array?

[sonic crow]

ty appreciated

[full wind]

you need to have that variable

np

[stray moat]

sorry to bother you again but I will I include both the health and mana function

[full wind]

just do it in the same function

[stray moat]

both of them

[full wind]

if it's the same time for updating

you don't need 2

[maiden wadi]

Random fun fact, Validated gets have a 14%ish performance increase over the traditional IsValid node. which is still completely insignificant considering it requires hundreds of thousands of them in a single frame to cause a performance issue.

[full wind]

the tutorial doesn't seem to be that great if hemade it tlike that

[stray moat]

how would I add the mana in this function then

[maiden wadi]

Venci is saying to use one timer. Make a red custom event on it and call both functions at the same time.

[full wind]

i mean merge both ffunctions

he can also just call the update mana in the health one

too

not recomending that though

[stray moat]

did it like this works now thank you for the help

[sonic crow]

perhaps someone can tell me what i am doing wrong with applying the fog of war (works perfectly until i attach it to the character

i assume i am attaching it wrong but not sure why

it initializes but does not seem to update it

[calm schooner]

I've got a blueprint that has no static meshes by default, but is designed to Add Static Mesh Component a large number of times, and move each static mesh component around. Right now the Bounds size appears to be zero, causing the meshes to pop in and out of visibility all at once whenever the Blueprint's origin is out of view.

I can post the whole node setup if it's helpful. There's a lot of moving parts figuring out which meshes to load and where, but the part that actually adds and moves the meshes is fairly simple:

How do I get the Blueprint's bounds size to expand to contain all the meshes that are spawned?

((Possibly related, sometimes the blueprint/static-meshes flicker, even when the camera is standing still, but only if the blueprint is unselected

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/quj_19mn/

This should work for previewing the whole node structure, but most of it is just parsing a file-type into an array of mesh names, locations, and rotations.

[queen urchin]

Hi guys. Can I get an Overlap location somehow?

Cause Im not sure that "hit" is what I want. So I want to know if its possible to get Overlap location?

[calm schooner]

One of these?

[queen urchin]

Nah, that will just create new overlap things. Im talking about this. Sad thing is that NONE of those locations are good for overlaps

Seems like only a hits have a "locations"

But is there any workaround?

[sonic crow]

Ty :), unfortunately I am not sure this will help, i will attach screenshot of my nodes

.

The changes seem to work when I test it in edit mode but when i add it to the character, it only initializes it but does not update it every frame and every movemtn even though it is set to do so

[calm schooner]

Sorry, what I wrote wasn't in repsonse to your problem, but a problem of my own :b

[sonic crow]

I thought I would share everything. If anyone knows why the fog of war is not updating your help would be appreciated

[icy dragon]

Is there a reason not to use post process fog for the whole fog of war?

Using looks like a mesh seem not to be a particularly good idea to me. Is it used to manipulate AI's Environment Query?

[icy dragon]

Usually static mesh components bounds depends on the mesh itself, unless it's specifically said to use parent bounds

[calm schooner]

That's how I understood it, but I have Bouns view on here.

Here I have bounds view turned on, and have manually placed a single static-mesh inside the blueprint, the rest are generated by the AddStaticMeshComponent. You can see the manually placed brick in the middle has bounds, the rest of the bricks do not.

What. The fuck

Solved it.

[icy dragon]

lol, how?

[calm schooner]

IDK if this is supposed to be enabled by default, but I've never heard it let alone touched it. It's an option on the AddStaticMeshComponent node. It was enabled by default.

Now to sort out an entirely different problem XD

Thanks!

[icy dragon]

I knew it 😂

[calm schooner]

Problem two is a bit more. . verbose.

Same blueprint, I've got this at the beginning to make sure the construction script only runs when the 'refresh' variable is ticked.

I had to implement this because otherwise every time the blueprint was moved in the editor, it ran the construction script again, which creates the array of meshes to be placed again, which places more meshes again. Moving it around a couple times creates ~3000 meshes to be placed instead of ~200, which is predictably tanking performance.

As it is now it only regenerates that list when I tick the "refresh" box, but as it is that still adds to the mesh array.

I -could- solve the problem by making sure the mesh array is wiped before it's calculated.

BUT

I feel like the CONSTRUCTION script being run any time other than the instant the level is loaded, or the first time the blueprint is placed in the editor, is itself a problem, no?

[blissful widget]

Level load could just be done using begin play right? Not sure what you are trying to do exactly, still

[icy dragon]

I think this is one of those thing where BP is used to procedurally place around object. I did similar thing back when I worked on virtual studio production.

[icy dragon]

Construction script get executed first right before Begin Play, which is basically the moment the actor is spawned. In runtime Construction Script won't be executed again

[calm schooner]

The high-view is there's a Lego Model format called LDR that I'm trying to build an interpreter for for UE4, so that a user can dump a ldr file in a folder, and when the 'game' boots up it reads that file, puts bricks in place, and the user can view/interact with it. Eventually this will lead to building environments where buildings are created using these LDR files, so envrionment artists need to be able to place the blueprints in the world.

[calm schooner]

This is how it should work yes. But my code is entirely within the construction script and is clearly being executed before "Begin Play" exists, every time I place an object, or every frame the object moves while in editor mode. This tanks performance during Play mode too, so I know it's not wiping things and running the script once before the play event.

[sharp rapids]

That is the kind of fact which will make me use the Validated node over the IsValid node even though I know the performance difference is practically negligible but I'll do it anyway because of my never ending need to have the 'perfect' code 🙂

[calm schooner]

It's possible that on compile the actual game execution will run fine - but it's impossible for level-editors to use, shooting up from 200 meshes to 10k just moving a blueprint a few meters to the right.

[zealous fog]

The validated node is also better looking 😏

[icy dragon]

If it's in editor, yeah, that huge amount won't be practical for construction script. The best idea would be to make some kind of custom asset type, akin to Datasmith actors.

[gentle urchin]

Beginplay + editor event?^^

[blissful widget]

You likely don't want to create the blocks then, except for on startup. Record them in a list somewhere, and update their positions in Construction still though.

[gentle urchin]

Editor event for preview/practicality

[blissful widget]

I'm a UE scrub, so there may well be a better way, but how I'd do it would be (root object construction script):

if has_children:
    update_child_locations()
else:
    spawn_children()
    update_child_locations()

[onyx token]

okay-
Quick question

so you know the anim graph right

which is supposed to play the animations

[blissful widget]

#animation ? 😛

[onyx token]

hang on

but i can also play animations in the anim blueprint
and in the character blueprint

And apparently you're supposed to do it in the anim graph

[icy dragon]

That pseudocode might not work if say user update the source LDR file after it placed on map

[onyx token]

oh wait i'm interrupting you guys, nvm

[icy dragon]

#animation for anim BP stuff

[calm schooner]

The problem is that these are user-made lego sets, which means the number of bricks, as well as what kind of bricks being used, will be changing wildly.

[onyx token]

yea it was just a general blueprint question, wasn't specific to animbp

[blissful widget]

One problem at a time though, and this would solve the mad GC thrashing that would happen with spawning thousands of objects for a few you might move

The position updating call can be moved to hook into a more generic location

[calm schooner]

Hmmm okay I don't think this would work, but it suggests an idea to me that should work.

Even though it's not answering the root of my question, which I phrased poorly, which is why is the construction script running in the editor at all after it's initially placed?

[blissful widget]

The root would have a reference to what the set is though, right? Which means you know how many children to expect, and can invalidate and delete them all, should the sets require changing (sorry kids)

[gentle urchin]

In editor procedural arrays get wiped tho iirc

[calm schooner]

These ones sure aren't

[icy dragon]

From what I can remember with Datasmith actors, it generates static mesh actors (maybe modified one), and basically place the entire scene along with it

[blissful widget]

Construction is a weird name, but it's basically On Fucking Anything Changed In Object =>

[icy dragon]

*in editor

[calm schooner]

It's functioning vastly different than any other use of the word 'construction' I've seen in programming then lol.

[icy dragon]

Construction script runs once before BeginPlay in runtime

[sonic crow]

i am following along with this tut https://hippowombat.medium.com/tutorial-line-of-sight-visualizer-for-unreal-engine-f32113b1f6f3

[calm schooner]

I'm having trouble parsing this, give me a second.

[icy dragon]

I thought you're making fog of war, not line of sight? 🤔
At least based on my RTS understanding, fog of war isn't necessarily line of sight

[gentle urchin]

The array probably is (so you cant simply iterate it at the start of construction script to clear out already placed blocks)

[blissful widget]

Yup, FoW is to hide map and resources, LoS is to hide enemy movement. Both turn information into a resource to gain and exploit

[sonic crow]

apologies, I must of used the incorrect term

[blissful widget]

I wouldn't even clear them out, but rather update their positions. Of course, if they are children of a root object they move relative to the root anyways so

[gentle urchin]

Well yeah that'd work too ofc.

If you make them editor events,

[sterile igloo]

How can I reload an instance of a blueprint(actor) in the editor/map?
Sometimes when I edit the viewport of a blueprint that already exists in the level, it won't update its mesh layout until I delete it and add it again. But other times it works just fine. And restarting UE actually doesn't do anything, it still keeps a "corrupt" layout. Same if I click "Play in editor", it's just plain wrong..

[gentle urchin]

You can add/clear before moving tho

[blissful widget]

Jesus this channel is a bloodbath haha

[calm schooner]

Okay so if I understand right you're suggesting I should, in this order:
Parse the LDR file into the array/structure(Called brickArray from here on)
Use brickArray to add staticMeshes into the BP
In the construction script update the staticMesh locations

[gentle urchin]

😂

In editor, this wont be saved :( pretty sure it wont work..

At runtime it will

[icy dragon]

Conscious brains aren't multithreaded 🙂

[calm schooner]

So my first question is where is the parsing and adding of meshes being handled if not in the construction script?

[blissful widget]

With a slight addendum, double check if the bricks are indeed created in case something goes wrong, and to have it prepped in play as well

[calm schooner]

That is indeed a wise safety measure, but for now I'll settle for just getting the bare-bones system working and then work on error handling 😅

[icy dragon]

Any screenshots for reference?

[blissful widget]

Well is the set moving around going to happen at run-time? Or purely by level editors?

[calm schooner]

For now the set is not moving, but in the future there will be moving objects I'd like to be constructed either in-game or via LDR. Trains, vehicles, etc

(NGL threads would be useful here :b

[icy dragon]

Just like games, our brains multithreaded but just for the organs, otherwise conscious minds are mostly single threaded

[gentle urchin]

The difference being runtime or in-editor

[blissful widget]

Damn this sounds like a fun project TBH, Legos good.

For now just build the logic, and add run-time support later on. It'd just be hooking into other events anyway, no big issue

[gentle urchin]

Runtime the suggested method workd flawlessly

[calm schooner]

IF I can get this very basic ldr-importer running, the whole damn project is going to be open source :3

[sonic crow]

could you perhaps help me, point me in the right direction

[icy dragon]

I'm thinking that you spawn static mesh actors instead 🤔

[calm schooner]

Okay! This still leaves me with the question of where LDR-parsing and AddStaticMeshComponent is happening if not in the construction script

[blissful widget]

@ me, but also consider Python scripting the editor for sanity's sake hah

[icy dragon]

I'm going to go The Matrix here, due to the trend.

Do you want fog of war, or line of sight? Choose your pill

[gentle urchin]

Ldr parsing should happen during engine start somewhere? Unless we now can make assets / data assets in editor / runtime?

[sonic crow]

I would like line of sight 🙂 The red pill

[calm schooner]

I sort of understand what this means (adding extra utility to the editor for level-editors?) - but I'm not sure what would be useful to add right now? I mean the editor needs to be able to select a default LDR for each BP, and probably some other parameters, but I figured that'd just be handled via editor-exposed variables?

[gentle urchin]

I cant imagine importing ldr at runtime in a standalone game..

[calm schooner]

Well, that is what I'm trying to do XD

Not each Step, but during level load, so users can customize the island how they want.

[icy dragon]

Well typically this is solved by ray casting, like old skool Wolfenstein 3D 🤔

For 2D games it would be easier to do so because the raycast don't need to be concerned about another axis

[sonic crow]

done with Line tracing i assume, i kinda got the setup working i just do not know how to add it to my character

[icy dragon]

If it's a horror game and 3D top down, I would've just let light do its thing. 🤔

[sterile igloo]

The left screenshot is in the blueprint viewport of an actor of a "room". It has "doors" on all sides.
The right screenshot is in the level editor. The "top door" is completely misplaced, even though it's correct in the BP-editor/viewport.
To clarify, none of the "doors"(w/arrows) were present on the room when I added the room to the level.
However, after adding all doors to the BP, all doors except the top door are placed correctly in the level. It seems random. Restarting UE doesn't even update it. I can also move it around, and even "play in editor" without it refreshing to correct layout.
But if I delete the instance from the level and add it again, it shows up correctly. So I'm just wondering if it's possible to "hard reload from BP" or something.
There are no properties on the BP that should justify this behaviour, as far as I know..

[icy dragon]

Though shadow casting can be expensive...

[sonic crow]

The idea is to havea top down shooter game but you cant see behind pillars and walls

[sonic crow]

The line tracing already works i am just not sure how to attach the blue print to my character, the video shows it attaches itself but does not update every frame or movement

[icy dragon]

Still though, complete darkness, but one light source emitting from the player

You're basically replicating shadow mapping there (but maybe worse because render target performance)

[sonic crow]

stylistically i would like to controll the lght source outside of the character, i have a few post processing effects that require me to manipulate the light source and i would not want it to come from the character

[icy dragon]

So I had an idea that maybe not so bright.

On Construction Script or whatever your update event, check if the actor has your own static mesh actors (not components) attached to it already. If yes, do nothing. If not, populate your BP with your static mesh actors according to the rules in your LDR file.

It's similar to what Datasmith actors do, containing entire scene in one BP

[icy dragon]

I might brainstorm on this but don't hold your breath.

[calm schooner]

Yeah. I think having a branch near the beginning for adding the static meshes once, and then after that just updating the location would work?

[icy dragon]

That could work, but assuming the extremes, I would regenerate the child static mesh actors in the event of the user changing the LDR file.

[calm schooner]

LDR file changes should only occur between level loading.

[sonic crow]

how do you attach a blueprint to a your character

[icy dragon]

Context: graphical line of sight system

[raw orbit]

is there a guide on what the construction script can handle? id like to know how much 'code' and what 'code' i can put in there since it seems handy to use for... purposes

it seems pretty handy when trying to iterate through data tables but something like this for example doesnt seem to work(works fine when hooked to event begin play though, of course)

[earnest tangle]

It's probably best to treat it as a setup for the actor

Any data that's directly referenced in your actor itself via a variable should be fine to use to do stuff in the construction script

But anything that tries to get data from something that's not the actor, no, because the data might not be available

[raw orbit]

oh okay, or initial set up using data tables and then any additional manip should be done through event begin play? lets say i have a chest and i want randomized loot with randomized stats so i set the base items with the data table but manipulate some of the variables(quality rarity or whatever) through begin play later on?

[earnest tangle]

A data table might work since it's an asset which should probably be accessible during construction time

[vapid grotto]

please, can anyone tell me, japan, china, and Korean developer manage to complete the project with so, little documentation. i tried so many times to complete indie project. failed only because lack of knowledge and documentation on interactive system. similar character interaction assets on the marketplace. how can i achieve the same result before dying can one?

[timber cloak]

not sure if this question is suppose to be here

how do you edit a data curve table? And i cannot find a way to see where the original source too. Unlike the one with simple UStruct in BP

[blissful widget]

What?

Are you asking about language barriers or manpower/ project scope?

Also degrees don't help as much as hard work.

[icy dragon]

Trial and error, my friend

Also a lot of experimentations

I'm on the eastern side of things.

Also I don't have a degree, but I do have modding background, so I learn things from reverse engineering games as well

[cold sinew]

Hello Guys what can i use for Bolts and nut to check if the bolt already exist ?

[spark steppe]

it's getting weirder and weirder every minute

[cold sinew]

i was thinking to make Actor have static mesh ( bolt ) and Box Collision checking if its have nut

[spark steppe]

nvm, you are the bridge guy, right?

[cold sinew]

Yes i'm still working on the foundation and pillars

[trim matrix]

is it possible to move a blueprint actor as an AI without using character as parent class?

[icy dragon]

No. Actors cannot be possessed by controllers. Only Pawn and its derivatives can.

I think you need to disable marquee (or something along that line)

[dusky harbor]

Hey,

Could anybody help me. 🙂
I am trying to scale a mesh with add timeline and box collision. I want to scale the mesh always when i step into the box collision.
Right now it happens once and after that the mesh doesn't scale

ok, i did it with play from the start .. 😄

[trim matrix]

and i can't use two classes for a single blueprint, right? or maybe just implement the movement of the character

[spark steppe]

you can add an character movement component to any actor if im not wrong

[trim matrix]

nope, i couldn't manage to do that 😦

[icy dragon]

It's about controller possessing BP

[wise swan]

how can i grayscale a texture2d?

[icy dragon]

In Material? Just desaturate it once you put it in a Texture Sampler

[wise swan]

im setting that texture to a button, and im dynamically initializing the texture using victory plugin.

[thorn fiber]

So I'm working with a plugin from the marketplace and I always thought if you wanted to Bind an event to an Event Dispatcher from one blueprint to another (or UMG to another UMG) you have to do get the UMG/BP -> Get Bind Event To and then create a new event. However, this plugin seems to just call the event from the other UMG as is? I'm not sure what they did here.

That is from W_CharacterPanel

Then in another UMG that has a CharacterPanel they do

Shouldn't that event have its top right square thingy connected to a Bind node???

[spark steppe]

that's an interface call?!

[thorn fiber]

Yeah I'm seeing they are doing something with the interface there. But I'm not sure what you mean ?

The event node doesn't even have a "Custom Event' Tag on it

so like where did it come from?

[spark steppe]

they may have implemented the interface as event

but don't take my word on that

i'm not sure if you can have an interface method + event dispatcher with the same name

or is the interface implemented on something other than what your top screenshot shows?

[thorn fiber]

There is no interface method with any names from the event, I just don't get what they are doing or rather how

The interface BPI_CharacterPanel is on the W_CharacterPanel WIdget

[spark steppe]

and what is opened on the top screenshot?

[thorn fiber]

That is the CharacterPanel widget

So I'm not alone in this confusion?

[bright harbor]

So i'm working on my game, and i've noticed these 2 things with the movement, when you are walking and change directions, there's a moment of braking before the change of direction happens, it doesn't feel smooth, and then when you jump, by moving side to side really fast, you can essentially just float, how would i fix this?

[thorn fiber]

Character Movement Component has settings to tweak for that.

[bright harbor]

which settings though, there are so many and it seems so cryptic

[worthy carbon]

Hi! i want to setup a system where when the player clicks 1 he equips an rifle and when he press 2 he equips an shotgun etc. Does someone knows an tutorial?

[thorn fiber]

Probably Braking Friction stuff

and acceleration

[bright harbor]

alright, i'll play around with it and see what i can do

[thorn fiber]

this too

Anything under Walking

[zealous moth]

is there a way to parent UMG elements together? I have an image as a backdrop and I want to put specific buttons in specific locations as per the image. However, when resolution changes, the buttons fly off

[icy dragon]

Anchors.

[thorn fiber]

Not sure what you mean by fly off but if you want buttons adjust correctly use Anchors

[zealous moth]

hah sec

kinda not sure why the blue bar is so stretched out

[thorn fiber]

The flower thing is the Anchor

you will want to play with that

[wary tinsel]

is there a way to package a game with saved file inside?

[maiden wadi]

@zealous moth If you want it so that the top left and right bar stretches but the whole thing does not, then you need to add all four of thsese images in the green to one panel. Adjust them, then set their anchor to top center with an offset of 0.5X and 0Y. Then for the Orange, you just use the margin settings to keep the left square part of it intact, and allow the rest of it to stretch. Then you can anchor it to fill the top left of the screen with some left right and top margins. Mirror for the right side. That should keep it stable for anything from 3:4 to ultrawide resolutions.

[eternal gate]

How do I fix this return value from being "HOTRELOADED" instead of just "Weapon Base"

[maiden wadi]

Don't compile C++ with the editor open.

[eternal gate]

really? wow that's annoying

Should closing and reopening fix it then?

[thorn fiber]

You should be able to use live coding now right?

[maiden wadi]

Check the second pin in the #cpp channel. You'll get used to it. The basic gist is that any changes in the .h files or class constructors needs to have the editor closed and compiled before reopening. You should do this for more than just that naming issue, because hot reloading can also cause some pretty severe blueprint corruption. It's not a pretty thing.

[thorn fiber]

You can play with this https://gyazo.com/f4b88807701ddcb52891737db9bfa720

[maiden wadi]

And yeah, any C++ .cpp file changes that are not class constructor can be livecoded safely.

[eternal gate]

Just constructors? How about header files?

[maiden wadi]

Livecoding won't work on constructors or any .h file changes. Nothing that alters how the engine could use the function, so no changing arguments and whatnot.

You'll get used to it though. I admit I remember it being incredibly annoying. Now it's just tuesday.

[eternal gate]

I guess its better I learned this now than earlier... otherwise I might have just stuck with using Unity but now I've kinda committed myself to UE

[maiden wadi]

Having never used Unity, can't speak for it. Heard it's easier to program in, but eh. Unreal is really easy.

[eternal gate]

Personally I had a way easier time picking up Unity than UE. I tried and failed several times in the past to learn UE, but this time I'm actually making progress and figuring stuff out on my own without following tutorials.

[vagrant flicker]

Hi. I have a simple BP that forces push objects. I am looking for a way to clamp the spell and not be able to cast spheres if my camera is behind my back

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/jiddn-zm/

I cannot clamp the axis from the rotator directly in get control rotator

Is there any way of doing this? Or I must cast a tracebychannel If I wanna clamp something?

[maiden wadi]

Could probably just dotproduct the camera direction to the character forward direction.

[bright harbor]

i've been playing with the values but nothing works! the odd thing is, none of this was an issue before, and i never touched the movement component between then and now, the only thing that changed was updating from 4.27.1 to 4.27.2

[maiden wadi]

@vagrant flickerIf DotProduct of Cameradirection and CharacterForwardVector > 0, allow sphere creation.

The closer to 1 that is, the more forward the camera needs to be looking. 0 is at the character's sides, -1 is directly backwards.

[vagrant flicker]

How can I obtain the character forward direction to plug inside the camera direction?

[maiden wadi]

Where are the controls that spawn the sphere?

[vagrant flicker]

What do you mean by controls? Sorry

[maiden wadi]

Input. Or whatever code you use to spawn the spheres.

[vagrant flicker]

This is the blueprint in the post above

In my 3rd person characteer

[maiden wadi]

You can get the character's forward from GetActorForwardVector. And you can get the camera's forward via GetPlayerCameraManager, GetCameraRotation MakeRotationFromXVector

Er

[gentle urchin]

Being an actor, you could probably just get camera managers forward vector directly

[maiden wadi]

Probably. Either works. I'm so used to working abstractly with the camera manager. 😄

[vagrant flicker]

Let me try, thanks! O: I'll write If I have some issues with my new BP

😄

[vagrant flicker]

I'm plugging all this to the tracebychannel, right?

[maiden wadi]

No, this should be used as a check before that. Is this on button press?

[vagrant flicker]

Yes, this is the configuration until this point

I am not using traces

[maiden wadi]

Pretty much just a branch gating your delay there with that check.

Though you may also require checking at sphere fire time as well.

To make sure you don't start a cast, then rotate the camera behind and fire 0.2 seconds later. Could just branch before and after the delay.

[vagrant flicker]

Oh okay.. I'll try to do that now

Oh man, it is working like charm.

Thank you very much.

So basically, If I want to clamp left and right angle more, I have to change the value of 0.0 after the dot product, right? To shrink the perimeter

[maiden wadi]

Yeah. Dot Product goes from -1 to 1. It's just a measurement of how closely two arrows are pointing in the same direction. -1 is pointing in opposite directions. 0 means that one is pointing perpendicular to the other, and 1 means that they are both pointing in exactly the same direction.

[vagrant flicker]

Actually, is there a way of drawing or visualizing this arrows? I assume there have to be a way of debuging this

[maiden wadi]

Sure. You can use something like tick to DrawDebugArrow.

If you make start point GetActorLocation for both and then take each of those vectors you're plugging into the dot product, you can just multiply them by like 300-500, add that to the GetActorLocation for the end point.

Should give you two arrows on your character, one is it's forward facing arrow, the other would draw facing the direction of the camera.

You may also consider locking their Z to the same as GetActorLocation in this case for easier viewing since you only care about backward and forward, would make seeing the arrows easier, but it's not necessary.

[vagrant flicker]

Will try that!

[maiden wadi]

This'll get you started at least.

[versed zealot]

Hey guys, not sure where the best place to ask this but I want to save user progress, I think on a server (I have a webserver and DB set up pretty quickly) but I'm not sure if UE offers a more seamless way to accomplish this in BP? I want to save info like, player coins, player xp, etc.
Is it better to save that kind of thing on a server, or just say whatever and do it local? Any reading material on this?

[bleak sable]

Hi, I have a quick question. I don't if this should be in the animation channel but I am trying to use BPS to attach hands to my floating gun on my screen. I am trying to bend and attach both arms to sockets on the weapon mesh and don't know how to do it. Currently I have one arm connected but I am using a solution found in a tutorial where the Left arm IK is attached to the Right hand but I can't do that because I need both hands on the weapon and when I move the right hand the left one glitches out. 🙂

[icy dragon]

Definitely #animation, I can discuss it there.

[bleak sable]

okay thank you

[icy dragon]

How do you set up the ADS?

I don't think activating/deactivating the camera is a good idea 🤔

Because ADS view isn't happening instantaneous. There's always be a small blend from hip aim to ADS in other games.

You should have the camera offset lerping over time. Depending on how you set up the FP camera.

If it's a static mesh, you can't. You can only add sockets on skeletons, those that skelmeshes use.

[warm ermine]

Hi everyone - What would be the best way to go about coding CCs (Crowd Controls)? Is there a good video explaining stuns and knockdowns?

[icy dragon]

Crowds as in mass #gameplay-ai? Stuns and knockdown sounds more like a fighting game thing

[warm ermine]

Yes sir or ma'am - Of the fighting game type. A couple videos I seen had information scattered. So was tough for me to understand the concepts

[icy dragon]

It's sir :3
(Shouldn't use my waifu's name as username but oh well)

I'm inclined to think that it's the same as regular fighting AI, just in higher quantity.

[trim matrix]

this is hard to explain but i'll try my best lol. so, i want to collect like a powerup or a drop and i want it to do another thing outside like turning on a light or something or calling upon an actor that is in another BP. how would I set it up to do something like that?

I know I don't explain things well

so, if you need me to elaborate then I will

appreciate the help

[icy dragon]

Sounds like a job for Event Dispatchers, particularly if you have specific relation from one key item to something in the world

[trim matrix]

event dispatchers?

time to look that up lol

appreciate it

[icy dragon]

Yeah, compared to BP interface, Event Dispatchers could be useful for more specific communication between two (or more) BPs.

BP Interface is more "one for all", as it could apply to any BPs using the interface.

[wary tinsel]

how to package .txt file?

[earnest tangle]

depends on what exactly you're doing with it

in project settings you can find packaging options which you can use to package specific non-asset files which could be used

[warm ermine]

I figured it out - Thanks for responding 😄

[wary tinsel]

problem is, I can only add folders which are inside the Content

but the .txt is not working inside the content 😦

[earnest tangle]

you will have to elaborate on what you're doing with it

[wary tinsel]

I need to store offline ghost replay for my racing game, like the default

because idk if I can package the .sav file

[icy dragon]

You don't store them as .txt file then.

[wary tinsel]

I have location and rotation into a struct and I thought saving a json was a good idea

[leaden helm]

I cant seem to set the external curve on a FRuntimeFloatCurve in BP...

[icy dragon]

Not sure about ghost players in racing games but maybe you want to store the inputs instead as a replay 🤔

[wary tinsel]

but they will end up somehow in some kind of file no matter the way you record it

because idk is it possible to package a .sav file? It's my first time with this kind of things

[icy dragon]

No. .sav files are not asset files.

And this really depends on how you made the replay system

[willow phoenix]

did you check how big those files become wozzos?

[trim matrix]

so, I am kinda stuck if anyone can help then it will be appreciated. I am trying to get a powerup type of thing then when acquired it will turn on a light or do something else. I tried the event dispatcher and it seems I cannot understand it tbh lol. If you need a screenshot of my screen then I can provide.

[willow phoenix]

i made a ghost-race-thingy with structs too, and lerped between the positions every 0.1 seconds because the files became insanely big on tick

[willow phoenix]

provide a screenshot then

who picks up the powerup?

[trim matrix]

it's in the training map the third person map

so i guess the third person character

I got the basics I think lol

maybe I am not so confident and very self conscious now

[willow phoenix]

destroy actor is like the end of the line. if something is gone, it can't do other stuff

[trim matrix]

ohhhhh

then how does the actor begone?

[willow phoenix]

(most of the time, there is actually a event on destroyed but i made the same thingy)

[trim matrix]

like I want the square to not be there and the light to turn on

should I put the destroy actor at the end?

[willow phoenix]

the light trigger is super strange 😄 what do you want to to here? (just say it like "i want to move on a button and then the button switches on a light"

[trim matrix]

lmao

I knew I'd get torn into lol

Idk how it'd work there tbh

i'll explain it the best I can

[willow phoenix]

np, i can make you an example 🙂

[maiden wadi]

Rotating Cube's overlap should just cast it's overlapped actor to your character type, and call a function on the character that turns the light on.

[trim matrix]

so, the light is turned off and I want to turn it on when the cube is "picked up" like a power up type thingy lol

not a power up

i guess trigger

the reason I use the other terms is that I want to learn how to call from different blueprints so I am trying to do the basics