blueprint

[vagrant flicker]

oh

[wary shadow]

Hi, is it possible to trigger a custom event due to a console command? I saw that’s possible inside the level BP, what’s about the pawn one?

[vagrant flicker]

@gentle urchin Sorry, Can you screenshot me the whole timeline settings when u have time? It seems I am little confused about the length

Oh, I think I get it

It's vector track

[gentle urchin]

As i mentioned id use two float tracks instead if i did it again,

Vector track was cumbersome to work with

Locking only locked them partially etc

[vagrant flicker]

Yeh, but I have to follow since zero experience with this animating shits 😄

[gentle urchin]

Experimentation is golden 😎

[dry monolith]

Hey all, just a very general question about using tinelines: basically I'm using SuggestProjectileVelocity to add an impulse to an object and move it towards the players vr hand for to achieve a similar effect to half life's Gravity Gloves, but I wanted the object to slow down and sort move towards the hand just slightly when it is within a certain range.

Anyone know the best way to achieve this, so that I keep some of the initial velocity of the object, but add a slight velocity in the direction of the hand?

[vagrant flicker]

Sooooo.. I've tried using two different timelines, but this happened...

[dawn gazelle]

If you're controlling one thing, then you probably should be using a single timeline. OpenDoor should plug into Play, and CloseDoor should plug into Reverse.
The float output from your timeline should be a value from 0-1 over a certain duration, ie. if you want your thing to move within 1 second, your timeline should be 1 second long with your curve ending at a value of 1.

[vagrant flicker]

@dawn gazelle

Yes, but I want to recreate that "gate fall" bounce that gates do when they fall quick.. for realism
And that way (using only 1 Timeline) on reverse it will "bounce" again going up

Actually that little "bouncing" thing is screwing my whole mechanic. Otherwise its working perfectly

[zealous fog]

Then add more key frames to your timeline and make a curve at the end going to 1, curve back and going to 1 again

Can you screen your timeline

[dawn gazelle]

You can create external curves and set the timeline to use them. So if you want something different for closing than opening you can do something like this:

[vagrant flicker]

This is my timeline curve

[zealous fog]

OK so the closing animation does play sometimes and it does so correctly

If you use that reverse method does it work then

[vagrant flicker]

I have working variant of this, and the closing animation plays the exactly start animation but on reverse 🙂

But i need to play without that little bounce effect

[fair magnet]

actually just wanted to create a macro that could cast an array into another :o
and since I would need it to be somewhat flexible (change the class I want to get) I need some kind of "dynamic cast" if you understand ^-^
But I got your point :D

[vagrant flicker]

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/qs2zzhn8/ this is the working version @zealous fog

Its almost like @dawn gazelle BP

And I need to find a way to play it on reverse, without this bounce animation.

[gentle urchin]

the reverse lerp was the entire reason for using two float curves ^^

one for forward, another for reverse

[dawn gazelle]

As I said, you can use two float curves and change them, or you could even have the two curves defined in the timeline and switch them based on the playback direction:

[vagrant flicker]

I will try this now :))) Thanks!

[gentle urchin]

sounds like #multiplayer

[sly forge]

oh right

[bitter tundra]

I've been looking around for a UE4/5 Criminal System guide, but I've only ran into a Unity based system which is based on C, does anyone by chance know of any good documentation for setting up a criminal system within UE with BP?

[maiden wadi]

Not sure what the definition of a criminal system is?

[bitter tundra]

Aim is similar to gta's wanted system

[maiden wadi]

Sounds like some form of GameState or PlayerState variable. And based on that, AI can switch their logic if it's high or low enough to do things. UI can display it from there as well.

[bitter tundra]

Brilliant, thank you!
That's a pointed direction I can run with

[gentle urchin]

Add in a few dispatchers for statechange, and you're good to go

[maiden wadi]

For instance. Low wanted, Ai detects player in vision. They ignore you unless you're very close. If you get closer at low wanted, they might attempt to arrest. If at high, them seeing you at all might trigger their arresting state.

If it's multiplayer you'll probably put this in PlayerState if you want it per player. GameState if you want it for everyone. If it's Singleplayer, GameState is probably simpler and easier to work with. Just depends on your necessity.

[bitter tundra]

I can do multiplayer, but still undecided if I should bite that off or not, my first self publish multiplayer didn't do so hot so was considering a sp-storydriven, but I'll probably do it in playerstate regardless

I appreciate the help folks!

[willow phoenix]

anyone got a clever solution to make the TopDownTemplate have a "Max Walk" Distance? So if i click into some maze, the char does not go to town instantly?

i thought of making an "test char" that walks super fast and records the distance it took him

but im not sure, this seems a little overkill 😄

if i spheretrace from the char in a visible line, going around corners is painful

[earnest tangle]

I haven't looked at topdowntemplate so not sure how it works, but if you want to limit the amount of distance you can move at a time, you could probably add a variable into the character which has the allowed distance, and then keep deducting from it every time you move by the distance moved

[willow phoenix]

i tried to have the navmesh on a cylinder shape and attach it to the player too, but that did not work iguess

[earnest tangle]

if it reaches 0 then don't allow any further moving

[willow phoenix]

yea but i don't want him to move at all if thats something thats really far away

[earnest tangle]

If it's using navmesh based movement, then you could get the path length

[willow phoenix]

that sounds great! do you know how this node is called?

its using the "simple move to"

[jolly knoll]

Hi guys, I need some help with using interactions to open widget menus. This is the blueprint I have to show the prompt once my character is within the collision box, but I can't seem to figure out how to make it so when I press 'E' it closes the prompt and opens up a new widget... Any help would be great!

[earnest tangle]

@willow phoenix I don't remember it off the top of my head, try searching for nodes with the word "nav" or "path" or such in them and see if any of them sounds like they would give you the path

[willow phoenix]

nice ill check it out! thanks mate 🙂

was looking for something with "distance", glad there is already somethhing in the engine 😄

[icy dragon]

I would consider look up on BP interface, and have the interact button send interaction function call.

[willow phoenix]

works like a charm

❤️ zomg ❤️

[jolly knoll]

So set up an interaction interface, add it to the object I want to use, and then add it to the function in the object blueprint?

[willow phoenix]

damn thats working better than a charm, man you are my hero

[icy dragon]

Pretty much. So the gist of it is you have your character BP have an input action event to call interaction interface function, with the object pointed by linetrace from a camera responding to it. Interfaces are more one for all with the communication, unlike Event Dispatchers which are more specific with it

[jolly knoll]

Would I be able to use the widget interaction component to do the line trace? My issue is that I'm relatively new to blueprints and I'm trying to work on building a prototype on my own so I'm really unfamiliar with all of this

[icy dragon]

Better do the line trace starting from the camera center

The point of doing the line trace is to determine the priority, in case you overlap with more than one interactables, and to prevent getting cheesed by interacting on something you don't look at

[jolly knoll]

So this is what I need to change, I'm building a sailing prototype game and at the moment I take control of the ship by changing the control scheme in the Character_BP, I need to change this so when I interact with the Helm object, I can use that to switch the controls, and attach the player character to the socket so they remain in the right place. I've tried using line trace all day to interact, but at the moment it doesn't seem to work, which is why I have it set to collision because the interact prompt only comes up when you're within the assigned collision box

I just thought that was easier than using line trace

The problem is now I have change the way it's done to separate the controls for the ship, only I can't figure out how to get it working if I don't use what I already have

[twilit heath]

having the ship bind its own controls, and pushing its input component on top of the input stack

that part is actually documented

[jolly knoll]

Sorry, binding in what way?

[hearty sand]

hey is there any way to trace a custom event? i tried using a breakpoint but the stack trace says whatever called it has been deleted.. when i try "find references" nothing shows up... but it is getting called because it does break

[maiden wadi]

@hearty sandTry the FindInBlueprints window. Search for the exact function name.

[hearty sand]

yep thats what i needed! this actionrpgstarterkit i got from the market handles spawning in its inventory BP.. no wonder I couldn't find it

[vagrant flicker]

This worked perfectly for one door 🙂 But If I have simultaneously two doors one that fall down, and another that goes up -> this way the sequence fails again ::)) Cuz the falling door for example play's the right animation, but the lifting gate plays the reversed animation

Since they both share 1 timeline :))

[dawn gazelle]

Then you can have 4 float tracks... One for open/close of the first door, and one for the open/close of the second.

[spark steppe]

you don't need several tracks for that, you can just invert the result for one door

[vagrant flicker]

But how do I split the timelines? My doors all shares one timeline

[dawn gazelle]

Even better

[unique wyvern]

Which is more performance efficient?, one nav invoker for the the entire playable area (about 30k units length and width) or each character given its own smaller nav invoker (about 50-100 characters)

[icy dragon]

Assuming it's not open world type of game (90000 m²) with smaller ped spawn range, then single nav invoker could work.

[unique wyvern]

I did some tests, it seems like the performance difference between either option is almost negligible

[idle vale]

Hey Folks ! 👋
Hope you're good !

i'm actually diving into some Utility Widget.
I'm searching for something, but i don't know how to do or even if it's possible.
I've actually selected a bunch of assets in my level.
And i want to "bake/save" them somewhere as a Blueprint Actor (with everything in it) or just a prefab.
I don't know if it's possible.

If someone have an idea or ever exeperienced that, would be awesome !

[spark steppe]

you are aware that this is an engine feature? (combining selected actors to a blueprint in editor)

[astral estuary]

if I want to leave a print string node forever on screen, do I need to put 99999999 on the duration? or is there a way to mean "inifinity"? 🤔

[idle vale]

Yes, but i want something to automatize that, the selection is automatically done then i want the bake to be one click too (in order to save me time on right click, merge actor, choose location)

[young sandal]

Hey! I plan to use only one component, the capsule, instead of the entire Actor with w the components. Tell me a rational decision or not?

[rose elbow]

I'm getting these errors but when I try fix them by selecting the widget asset it just doesn't do anything

and they do still exist just in different locations than before

[calm schooner]

My blueprint looks like this. "Actor hidden in game" is unchecked. The actor is visible in the editor, everything but the light is invisible in play-mode. Any ideas what's going on?

This BP was made by placing lights/basicShapes in the level editor, then going Blueprint>>CreateBlueprintFromSelection

When I add a new mesh to the Blueprint int he BPeditor, it is listed as a SteticMeshActor, and stays visible after hitting Play

[real notch]

Hi, very new to unreal! I'm having a hard time finding how to listen to the end of a particle system. I would assume there is a bleuprint box to listen to a niagara system "ending"? Maybe this is a bad assumption. Do I have to create a an event in the particle and go through that?

[warped spindle]

Hey.. can someone help me , please?
I finished my game and I wanted to try it on my phone. In package i selected full rebuild and then made the install APK. Nothing works. I mean on PC now i have a lot of bugs. They were working perfectly before and on phone those bugs are working ,but there are still some other bugs. I don't know how to fix this

[dawn gazelle]

You can get this event in your blueprint if it contains your system by right clicking it. Otherwise, if you have a reference to the system, you can also bind to it's finish event dispatcher.

[real notch]

Will try around with these! thanks!

[zealous fog]

Is it bad to cast to your main character if the main character is always in the scene the class is loaded anyways right? Or should interfaces still be used?

[icy dragon]

Crosspost in #ue4-general

[leaden helm]

I've just been looking into soft/hard object references and I've got a question. I'm using data tables pretty extensively, and say for in an inventory system; a data table with 100s of items, each item with its own icon, mesh, sound, class etc... If I access that data table in game, does it load all those references? or just the references when I get a data table row?

In the above DataTable example, the asset that is referenced is a lazy loaded asset (TSoftObjectPtr handles this). If the Asset field type was set to UTexture, all of the assets would be loaded whenever the DataTable was loaded.

[lyric relic]

In unreal, can I have an actor with physics get attached with a physics constraints to an actor that has physics disabled and moved by setting its location.

[trim matrix]

Anyone know why 'set percent' isn't working? I am printing the 'current hp' value after it's supposed to set, and the correct value is being pulled in, but the progress bar never updates. I can even use a 'get percent' to print the progress bars percentage afterward and it shows the correct progress, but the bar itself on the widget never changes.

[brazen merlin]

i am also curious about this too. I tried soft objects in the past but wound up not using them (i cant recall if it was because I didn't want long file paths in my data table - using excel - or because i couldn't get them to work at all). I have somewhat tested the performance (i tihnk) as I had many different assets referenced from my data tables and haven't noticed an spikes in spawning situations (though i have not profiled this yet)

[brazen merlin]

i dont believe the string is accurate, maybe it is, it's grabbing from an output that may not change at the right moment (or at all?). If this is a function you made, you can provide an output from it. I dont exactly understand the need for this function. If it is for umg stuff, those update on tick, so you can just make a binding instead

[trim matrix]

I did it on tick with the same result, which is why I moved it to a function that's called when damage is actually taken.

Neither update the progress bar.

[leaden helm]

I just changed a bunch of my datatables to soft objects, and didnt notice any change in them. But havent been able to run a test cause I have to fix/change a lot of code to handle the async loading. And naturally because so many files were "dirty", the autosave crashed my ue5 again

[trim matrix]

Both the current print, and a print statement attached to 'get percent' show the correct value, but the bar doesn't move.

[maiden wadi]

@leaden helmIf you have a Datatable with 100 entries. Each row has a hard pointer to an Image, Sound. Mesh(which also has a default material or two applied). If you so much as put this inside of a class that gets referenced, you have now loaded over 400 assets into memory. You don't even have to use the table. It just needs to be in a class that gets loaded.

[trim matrix]

The function is inside of the health bar widget. It's called on the character blueprint that receives damage. Everything except for the progress bar actually moving works.

[bright nebula]

Sorry to pop in unannounced, but does someone know how to make so that my widget shows the textblock I’ve put in? I have already made the triggerbox blueprint that shows the widget whenever you click E in the said zone and removes it whenever you leave the area, but the text won’t show up. Cab someone guide me please?

[leaden helm]

Thats what I was afraid of. I'm changing to soft references right now, so that should stop that. But I reference this data table in multiple blueprints, does it get loaded multiple times? or just once into memory and referenced?

[maiden wadi]

No. Once you load an asset, you can access it multiple times from any pointer pointing to it. You still "Load" it using the same function, but that function is designed to get the current loaded asset, and if it's not available, load it and then pass it back. So only slower if it's not loaded. For a few or smaller assets, you won't notice this much if at all.

[leaden helm]

Ok. So I may get a slight delay when I"m changing my vehicle mesh (larger file prolly), but for smaller objects it should be fine. Thanks 🙂

[woven moon]

Hello ! What should I change in my setup to make the transform of my projectile be on the left side of the arrow instead of the middle ?
Should I remove the BoxComponent and make the static mesh the root ?

[dawn gazelle]

Pretty sure the issue is you're setting the SetPercent node to HP which is 50. Progress bars go from 0 to 1. So you need to divide CurrentHP/MaxHP to get the appropriate value to put into the progress bar.

[maiden wadi]

@leaden helm Think of it this way. You have a mesh that is your character's eyewear, maybe sunglasses. You have a StaticMeshComponent in your character for this. By default this is just a static mesh component. No asset. Very lightweight class without the asset. When you load your soft ref, this takes extra time the first time to load these glasses. But then three hundred other players show up with the same glasses, these glasses all load instantly because one already loaded the asset in and the other soft refs resolved nearly instantly. Now all of those characters go away and you're left with your own character's glasses. This is the last pair of these in your game's existence at the moment and you unequip them. This goes and nulls the asset reference in the static mesh component you had them in. Garbage collection can now come along a little later and sweep that asset away from memory to allow other things to load quicker.

Some times you might hear that most of this is largely useless for smaller games. But you never know where your game is going to scale. You don't know if you're going to end up with 6 massive DLCs adding major content and new stuff to the game. And the use of Softrefs for assets is incredibly simple.

[trim matrix]

Yeah, that was it. Weird because in the editor, setting 'percent' in the details panel to '1' shows a small sliver, and setting it to 100 shows a full bar.

[leaden helm]

Yeah. My previous projects never used softrefs, but thankfully(and unfortunately) they never got very big. And my system is decent enough I never noticed issues myself. This time I'm planning a bit further ahead

[trim matrix]

@dawn gazelle Thanks. The editor must have a bug.

Now to figure out how to animate the reduction so it's not a sudden 'jump'

[vagrant flicker]

Hey, sorry for the delayed answer here.. I am trying to find a way of how to split my timeline to different actors. Until this point I have an interactive door BP which holds the information about the door. If I place another actor of the same door I adjust only the target location which is a simple Vector and points where to move the door.

Do I need to create two different blueprints for each door?

[gritty elm]

when this event will be called?

[vagrant flicker]

what do you mean by that, I am trying to understand -> How to place the timeline exactly on the door? It's now in my event graph

[gritty elm]

using "set movement mode"?

i searched for "set movement mode", but this function isn't calling anywhere. then how this event is still calling?

[trim matrix]

Found exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the help guys!

[vagrant flicker]

It is there. I have an Door which have defaultsceneroot -> Cube (which is the door)

If I duplicate the actor the timeline stays the same

Is it possible to do it in this configuration? https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/pt7zro-k/

I have 1 pressure plate that activates 2 doors. One up and one down

The first goes down, the second goes up and vica verse on actorEndOverlap pressure plate

How can I play them at different times

[supple bane]

how do I get the transform of an object already in my level

I get an error

[trim matrix]

does collapsed graph in blueprint have negative impact on performance?

[trim matrix]

what about macros?

thank you 🙂

[vagrant flicker]

you have to point a respawn point variable

[supple bane]

I do

like this?

[trim matrix]

Click on the 'respawn point' variable and under details there's a 'default value' section

Or set it on construction/begin play

[rose elbow]

what do you connect to object when casting to a widget class?

oh lol

didn't know if it was like getplayer character when referencing a character bp

[trim matrix]

Yeah you'd pass the referenced testhud object you created earlier.

[flat coral]

Quick question, if I'm trying to SpawnActor attached to a different actor, do I use the target socket's world location or relative location?

(I've tried both and they're both fucked, but in very different ways)

[rose elbow]

it works but says that not sure if that'll cause problems down the line

[trim matrix]

Means you don't need to cast

You are already acting as the actor

[rose elbow]

yeah me big dumb

[vagrant flicker]

Ok, so, let me try once again to explain where my exercise is failing and why I cannot understand what you've saying trying me to help so much ❤️ (thanks btw, u are awesome!!)

I have a pressure plate and doors...
Here is my BP for PP: https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/19cgzb0w/
Here is my BP for Door actor: https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/pt7zro-k/
Here is the timeline:

So, The result of this is:

My main goal is:

For polishing purposes, I want my doors to have a little of that bounce effects like they are simulating physics. (this curve is ugly, don't look at it, i'll polish it)
But, now, the problems are:

First door does not bounce when falling (the bounce animation is played when the door is going up - dunno why)
I don't know how to separate the doors to be playing different animations and curves
I tried what @trim matrixand @dawn gazelle suggested, by making two separate timeline curves, but that is the result.
Also, it has some glitchy effect when leaving / entering the actor's overlap

Everything is working perfect If I am using only 1 curve and does not recreate that bounce effect.

But If I try to make the curve and recreating this, everything fails 😄

[dawn gazelle]

SetMovementMode exists on the character movement component which is normally attached to character actors. There's built in code that changes the movement mode of a character, such as when you jump you're set to falling.

[trim matrix]

Maybe a base actor and each door type a child?

[vagrant flicker]

@trim matrix Yeah... That's why I was thinking of a way of just releasing the door and setting simulating physics on, but for some unknown reason I was not able to do the BP using physics and my doors disappeared...

I was not able to lift up the door and return it to the original place after falling with simulate physics on..
I thought it will be easier overall

God, so much troubles for stupid polishing

@trim matrix is there any tutorial or a brief overview of that approach with the data assets? first time hearing that

[spice smelt]

So... what to do if no matter what the function i'm looking for refuses to show up?

[brazen merlin]

thanks, this also also explains some things for me (also using data tables). I do have a follow up question if you don't mind answering. I use several data tables - usually one or two are referenced by different classes (AI references 2 tables for example, while the world gen class references a different 2 tables) - and from what I understand, the data table is hard pointers - which means that if my struct (which defines the data table columns) has classes or w/e in it, then those are loaded into memory when? Once the first AI is spawned or already because the code knows to spawn the AI on event begin play (it sounds like once it gets spawned rather than any time sooner).

But here is where i am curious, as i do not put classes into my data tables since those may change in location (and i dont like how long they are when working in excel, personal preference). So what i am doing, and maybe this already is what soft objects do, is defining classes as names. Therefore, my data tables are primarily bools, floats, ints, vectors, and names - some of them in array form - but that's literally it, no classes or objects or w/e. Would this mean, that my data table is not hefty even if i have a large volume of rows because the data types are "light" and are not actually hard pointers?

[blissful widget]

Outdated docs I'd assume, look through the entire section instead of trying to find it?

[vagrant flicker]

Thank you very much, I'll take a look and try to figure it out

[rose elbow]

what is it you're trying to do?

[spice smelt]

I can't find anything related to "value", "handle", or "normalized". Everything that works for sliders doesn't work for radial sliders.

[spice smelt]

getting and setting radial slider values

which for regular sliders is quite simple

[rose elbow]

oh what kind of slider you using?

[spice smelt]

radial slider

it's builtin

[trim matrix]

its slate function you have to use c++.

[rose elbow]

ah right idk then

[spice smelt]

ah

well thanks

[rose elbow]

I just know how to change the value of a normal slider with a float using a function

[rose elbow]

if you try searching it up on google someone may have made it already and you can just copy the code

thats how I got this

[trim matrix]

you can inherit from UMG component URadialSlider and access its protected variable"<TSharedPtr<SRadialSlider> MyRadialSlider;"

[muted halo]

Hey everyone, what is the best way to call or trigger something from a blueprint into my sequencer?

Im trying to activate a random zoom-in effect from a camera blueprint into the sequencer

[maiden wadi]

That's pretty much what soft pointer are, yes. Basically they're a weak pointer to the type(Weak pointers won't stop garbage collection), and then a path(string I think) to where that asset is located on disc. So you datatables are more or less that. As for when things get loaded, they're loaded as something needs them.

For instance, Just to set up a single straight hierarchy, and this is a very rough explanation. If you have a spawner class instantiate from your game mode, that has a datatable pointer set to a table used to spawn monsters, that datatable uses a struct to populate from a CSV style data storage. That struct has a hard pointer to an image that is the icon for these monsters. So your game loads the level, GameMode needs to instantiate, but it references that spawner. So the spawner needs loaded. But the spawner has that table, that table needs loaded, but it references these images. So first all of these images need to be loaded, after that the datatable, then the spawner, now game mode can finish loading it's CDO to be instantiated.

[brazen merlin]

this example here is using soft objects?

[maiden wadi]

Hard pointers in everything in this case.

[brazen merlin]

ok

[empty needle]

Hi, is there a way to bind a listview directly to a datatable?

For example, I want to know if the ListView will automatically add an item, when an Item is added to the Datatable?

[trim matrix]

Hmm are you able to assign widgets to ai controlled players? I can't figure out how to link my second players health bar widget to the ai controlled player

[brazen merlin]

hmmm. So by using a soft object, will that get loaded in lazily (?). I currently have various places in code that access a data table (again, the AI may reference it to determine its attack anim or what to drop when it dies) but these are names, and usually occur once (i get the attack anim array and then set that as a variable in the specific AI when it spawns) but these are always names, not actually class references. If i use soft objects, is there a limit in their flexibility vs. a name?

When I get the data table entry specifically, i look up that name in another struct of maps (name|class or name|texture) which is what finds the actual asset. This is the only struct that has this setup, sort of a global dictionary for all asset look ups. The convenience is to manage where these assets live or to change that asset without having to change the name (and therefore where the code calls the name look up). Is this more roundabout that just doing a soft object? Does the soft object require a file path of the asset?

[polar moss]

Hey ! has anyone had experience with spawning meshes from an array on a spline?

[brazen merlin]

all except the spline part

[light token]

Hello. I've got a question. I have a project which contains background items (actors) and a play area (actors) now there are users of my game who want to disable the background items in the game. Before I implement something hacky I'd like some more eyes on this. How would you solve it? I was thinking of adding a tag to the background items. and set them to auto disable visibilty, and enable the actors with the tag if the game mode allows it. But maybe there is a smarter way I don't know so I'd like somebody elses look.

it's about the treasure chests in the background. I'd like to disable them for a specific game mode.

[brazen merlin]

can you not add these specific actors to an array so you can access them when needed?

[light token]

Yes I could do that

[brazen merlin]

that's what i would do

[light token]

That's a good idea I think. So no tag?

[brazen merlin]

tag doesnt seem bad either, at least in this case

[light token]

But it needs to be a blueprint right?

[brazen merlin]

uhh, not sure

[light token]

It are static mesh actors if Im right

I think I'm going with the array method

thanks a lot!

[brazen merlin]

i would say tag is more versatile than an array if it is different class type objects

i think tag is at the actor level though

[light token]

I don't know what versatile means

is that, better or worse?

xD

[brazen merlin]

it means that you can tag different classes and still look for them

if you use an array, that is specific to the class - sounds like static mesh class in this case

i could have a tag on a pawn, a physics actor, a particle (maybe?) - whatever has the tag property on it basically

[light token]

Ah alright, thanks for explaining

Yeah I'll figure that out first, what different kind of items I have

[hallow wraith]

I have kind of an open question... I'm working on a Crash Bandicoot style game. Basic 3D 3rd person platformer.

My question: how should I handle the camera? At the moment I'm using the typical 3rd-person "mouse-to-look, wasd-to-move" controllscheme, but the crash games don't let the player control the camera...

I could easily just turn off the mouse-input looking, BUT it's hard to ensure that the camera is pointing in the right direction, especially if my levels aren't 100% straight lines.

I'm imagining some way of telling the camera to subtly change which direction it's pointing depending on where you are in the level, but I'm not completely sure how to go about wiring that up.

[light token]

Thanks a lot for the initial help!

[vapid ibex]

Is there a way to calculate a normalized distance, but in a kind of oval-shaped fashion? Here's what I want:

[brazen merlin]

i thinks its more like using several cameras, each one setup for the area, kinda of like the cinematic shots in the older god of war games. And you'd set the camera or blend the current camera to the next section via trigger. Could probably have a spline control camera position (but then what about rotation?) and based on some parameter like distance or position, progress the camera through the spline. This is all off the top of my head, ive worked with others who were making this sort of thing and i recall something like this, though i dont know what they did exactly

[brazen merlin]

you'd treat it like a box then, rather than a circle, unless you want the heavy math to figure out positions along the circumference

[cobalt temple]

Is it possible to keep the particle effect's location and movement relative to the camera? If I move the camera 1,000 units right there is a brief flash before it respawns.

[vapid ibex]

So, just solving separately for X and Y, and separately for Z, with different distance normalizations?

[brazen merlin]

🤷 not sure the entire goal there, but if we are talking math i think you have to treat it as width, height, depth

[maiden wadi]

@brazen merlin In the event of using soft object pointers. It only loads up the asset path. I'm unsure how you're loading the stuff from names alone. You'd have to at some point point to a hard pointer to compare the name?

As far as the basics of SoftPtrs, they're pretty simple. If you read C++ basics, then it's mostly a ton of code surrounding two major properties. These are on TPersistentObjectPtr which is a template for the TSoftObjectPtr which is what you specify in your structs or whatever as TSoftObjectPtr<UObjectClassName>. For the properties in question, one is a FWeakObjectPtr, which is a pointer that doesn't stop garbage collection. The other is the ObjectID, that is the GUID of the asset in question. This ObjectID is used to load assets via an FName converted to string.

[brazen merlin]

thanks for the breakdown, really appreciate the time and answer. I'll be reading up more about this then. It sounds like im doing things in a different order: getting the name, looking up that name to find the object class, therefore the last thing in the chain is the hard pointer.

im curious about how what im doing affects gc too

[vagrant flicker]

btw sorry for the off-topic, but can lasers apply force?
is it possible to create a laser effect that apply force on object when it's targeted

[vapid ibex]

Something like this.

[brazen merlin]

i honsetly dont know too many of these nodes

Lorash know math better than Conrad brain

[vapid ibex]

Well, it's just a custom node I made:

[brazen merlin]

ah 😅 that explains it

[polar moss]

haha yeah that is the part that is throwing me for a loop too

[vapid ibex]

I've amassed some over the course of production X)

[brazen merlin]

yeah.... you dont wanna see my func lib

yours is neater

[brazen merlin]

not sure if the ending bit of getting the length would help, would it?

[vapid ibex]

Why wouldn't it?

Oh, I see

[brazen merlin]

im not sure 😂 i dont even get what this is for

gotta run though

[muted halo]

Is it possible to activate my movie render through the level blueprint?

[trim matrix]

Is it a level sequence?

[muted halo]

Yeah it is

[trim matrix]

Then yeah you can

Do you want it to play at level start or at a certain time?

[muted halo]

In this case at the start of the level

[trim matrix]

Just drop it into the level then and click autoplay

[muted halo]

Oh yeah that I have no problem. but its actually rendering out that sequence as a video Im having troubles with

Because I have a camera blueprint keyframed to orbit around a city that has a random zoom in/out effect. But that effect doesnt take place when i render out the movie. So I need a way to call/activate that in my sequencer

[trim matrix]

Is it a sequence you rendered out to an actual movie? If its a sequence it should play it directly in game the way it was created. If it's an actual video file you'll probably need to create some sort of full screen ui and render the video on it

Idk I'm not very familiar with video

[muted halo]

Yeah sorry for not knowing the right terms but I want to hit the "clacker board" in the sequencer and output the video with the zoom efffect

Yeah me neither lol. Everything works when I play my scene but I just dont know how to have these blueprints take play in the sequencer

[trim matrix]

I guess im not understanding what you are trying to do. Just dropping it into the level and selecting auto play should start playing it automatically on level load, but you can also pass the sequence object into the level blueprint and use play sequence on it

If it has a special non player camera you may need to switch to it first

[muted halo]

Yeah I guess Im not hitting the "Play Scene" button im hitting the render button in my level sequencer. and for some reason it doesnt capture the zoom effect in the sequencer. Maybe because I dont have the blueprint keyframed or something?

[real notch]

Fairly new to the discord, has anyone compiled a list of the best UE5 tutorials? as I'm ramping up on the tool, if we don't, maybe I'll start making a list. If there is already a list, would love to see it!

[trim matrix]

From what I understand, render is if you want to export it to a gif, jpg, or mov/mp4 video. Play scene is when you want to play it in game.

But it should export it exactly how it plays including any camera movements that are key framed

[muted halo]

Yeah I want to render and I think its because the camera zoom in/out is part of the blueprint but its not like "keyframed" so it doesnt know to zoom in/out

[trim matrix]

Yeah pretty sure that's why

I think you can move your camera movements to an event and add the event to the sequencer

[muted halo]

Yeah Im going to try to do that I just dont know how atm haha

[trim matrix]

Create a new custom event and attach your blueprint nodes there instead of im assuming on begin play, and change begin play to call the event.

[muted halo]

Okay Ill give that a go! BRB

[trim matrix]

It's probably not right but not sure what else to do

Without doing the actual camera movements directly in the timeline

[muted halo]

Yeah its going to take some trial and error. Ill get back to you!

[devout pecan]

peoples i have a problem, i make this https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimHowTo/AimOffset/

But now i can move my camera around and the character dont move with who i view

[maiden wadi]

Is that UE5?

[devout pecan]

no

ue4

4.27

[maiden wadi]

Oh. Looks weird. Anyhow. Is this in the Anim Blueprint?

[devout pecan]

that is my

idk if wrong

[maiden wadi]

Is this here in the Animation Blueprint?

[devout pecan]

its in this

yeas

who?

lol

[maiden wadi]

This.

[devout pecan]

yes

but how connect?

ok

[maiden wadi]

Also. That tutorial is bad. Replace GetControlRotation with GetBaseAimRotation.

[devout pecan]

yes its a bad tut

ok wait

[trim matrix]

Left click your mouse on the little person and drag the line to the other person

[devout pecan]

ok now i have

and @maiden wadi now replace getcontrol with you say

that is wird

weird

why lol xd

[maiden wadi]

Control Rotation is local only. If this ever ends of multiplayer, then you'll need GetBaseAimRotation

[devout pecan]

ok

i changed it

[devout pecan]

but why buggy

[flat coral]

Having issues with a timeline. The output value is always 0 the whole time it's playing, even though that's not what it's supposed to be in the graph it contains. Anyone have a notion of why this isn't working?

[devout pecan]

my weapon goes up but not down why?

and when i disable this in the player pawn the player dont turn arround why that @maiden wadi

[flat coral]

But yeah I like to start the timeline on a separate call, just to keep everything as separate as possible. This pattern, with almost exactly the same timeline, has worked just fine in other classes which makes this double weird

[thorn fiber]

What would cause a breakpoint to be skipped but the print statement to still fire after said break point?

[flat coral]

Okay this timeline issue is getting even weirder. I added an event track and tied that to a simple print, and it DOES print each one, proving that this whole timeline IS playing. And yet I'm still just getting 0s from the others.

[devout pecan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGhkNjxvD0Y

why its so....

[flat coral]

...What the hell is wrong with this timeline lol. I guess the "Update" event was only ever called at 0 and at the end, and never in between? How do I fix that?

[thorn fiber]

What are you trying to do?

[flat coral]

I'm just trying to set the opacity of a tracer beam when a weapon fires. The beam should flash for an instant then go away

Oh and have a light appear for a moment too, that's Flare Brightness for the muzzle flare

[thorn fiber]

Yeah that should be pretty straightforward

Where are you playing it from?

You wouldn't happen to be calling it on tick now are you?

[flat coral]

Yes, but not constantly or directly.

There's a refire delay (which I've set to 2s for debugging so there's plenty of time for the timeline to elapse

[thorn fiber]

I don't see a call to Play From Start there

[flat coral]

HandleFire is (for now) a separate event which contains alll the steps

play from start's the second last step there

And then, without all the bullshit print statements, my timeline is just this

[thorn fiber]

But your issue is that it outputs 0 the entire time?

[flat coral]

Yes, except I'm starting to think there is no "whole time". I think somehow the timeline is only outputting the start and end values and nothing in between

[thorn fiber]

What is your timeline length?

[flat coral]

0.03 seconds

[thorn fiber]

And your Refire delay?

[flat coral]

Right now? 2 seconds

[thorn fiber]

.3 might be too short of a time for timeline

[flat coral]

Oh?

[thorn fiber]

Timeline can be odd/not smooth depending on frame rate it isn't reliable

and at that small of an interval you are testing its limits is my guess

[flat coral]

Hmmmm shit that makes this complicated. I'll pull a couple decimal places off all these values and see where I'm at

[thorn fiber]

what happens with like 5 seconds

[maiden wadi]

In a 60 FPS game, that's barely two frames, that's nearly indecipherable.

[flat coral]

We're talking about two frames of bright light in a dark corridor, it'll be visible.

[thorn fiber]

Also you can probably do that in a material?

the opacity over time deal not sure you need a timeline for that

and at that short of a time just make it binary light or no light?

[flat coral]

How would you do it with a material?

It should probably be binary, slowingi t down worked but it looks like shit 😄

[thorn fiber]

Just look up Unreal Material Flash/Blink https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxHLw8r-4gE

But yeah it happens, you expect a timeline to keep track of time but then like you try to keep track of really small numbers and boom it can't handle it lol

[maiden wadi]

I feel like maybe it should be a niagara emitter setting over life.

[thorn fiber]

Like I expect Breakpoint to hit but then it doesn't XD Thanks epic. You can do Nanite but my breakpoint won't trigger

[devout pecan]

@maiden wadi why so

[thorn fiber]

Ah yes for particle FX yeah

[devout pecan]

Pls help

[flat coral]

That's a good idea, it's already a niagara emitter, I could play around with that easily

[maiden wadi]

@devout pecan You turned off character using Yaw control rotation.

[thorn fiber]

Then yes, exactly as Authaer states, look into Niagara tutorials #niagara

[devout pecan]

yes the docs say that

But how make that on… when on is buggy

[maiden wadi]

It seems you already have the parameter. You likely just need a module that updates that color's alpha on emitter update. Can't remember which one it is offhand.

[hallow wraith]

hey.. i asked a similar question earlier, and got an answer, but I don't think the person that answered me understood what I was asking.... THOUGH: it was a clue that I'm going to need soon.

video of what I want to do: (timestamp is important)
https://youtu.be/u7ozq0q1Irk?t=52

How can I make my camera follow the player, and rotate with the turns in the level like in the above linked video? At the moment I'm using the typical 3rd-person "mouse-to-look, wasd-to-move" control scheme, but the crash games don't let the player control the camera...

I can easily just turn off the mouse-input looking, BUT I don't know how to make the camera turn when the player goes around a curve in the level. (again, see the vid above at around 55seconds)

[devout pecan]

He should run when I press d also To the right there he remains but so and goes forward

How

[thorn fiber]

Did you start with the ThirdPerson Template project? That should get you going well.

[maiden wadi]

Your control axis events aren't set up to handle that via camera view direction then.

[thorn fiber]

The Third Person template has all that wired and setup for you to study FYI

[devout pecan]

What I must make

[devout pecan]

It’s a blank

I have Code forward etc in cpp

Left right

[maiden wadi]

I would advise the same thing as Nonlin. Check out the third person template. You don't need a new project, you can import it into your current project.

[thorn fiber]

I would have the camera follow a spline that is driven by the characters position near the spline points location while getting a look at from Camera To Player Character using only the Z Axis

[devout pecan]

Yes but I only need the animation when aiming and who he looks the weapon moves

[hallow wraith]

aha ok.. i'll have to look up splines.. but that does sound promising

[thorn fiber]

Yeah the spline would trace the path, never done anything like it so there are probably edge cases I have not accounted for

@hallow wraith Actually there is probably a better way. Maybe they just lerp the camera position once the player has moved a certain amount left or right but don't lerp for forwards and backwards

Yeah I think its a fixed camera on the pawn that just lerps around to follow the player but with certain min/max threshold on the varying axis

[hallow wraith]

right on

i'm like half way into figuring out the spline so I'll try that first.. but the other sounds simpler. 😄

thanks

[thorn fiber]

Such a great game Crash is, good luck!

[hallow wraith]

OK so spline works, but the player char goes out of view when the camera snaps to the spline lol

[thorn fiber]

I was thinking you have your map laid out and then you put the spline on the path of the map then the character is confined to the path of the map and hugs the spline. But the later idea I had might be more flexible.

[hallow wraith]

indeed

[thorn fiber]

I did find this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zyGY2qhZI

[hallow wraith]

👀 looks promising.. thanks

[thorn fiber]

Check the end to see if that is what you want.

[hallow wraith]

that seems exactly what I'm thinking

thanks

[trim matrix]

What exactly is a spline? Is it like a dolly / tracks? I understand its use with cameras but i heard it being suggested for other things like holding variables (iirc?). In that case is it like a timeline or vector? Am a bit confused because camera spline is easy to conceptualise but other usages for example are?

[gentle urchin]

Spline is like a vector track, which can be extended, curved and whatnot, with specified tangents if desired

Practical for anything from movement (following a spline) to generating splinemeshes (morphed) following said spline , like a fence, road, or tubes etc

[hardy forge]

Can anyone steer me in the right direction? I have a widget inside of the player character that will serve as a phone the players can use. When I press "1" the phone comes out, and I would like to have the player be able to click on the names that will be populated on the right of the screen, as well as be able to chat on the left side. I have a widget interaction component inside the player as well, but it's not allowing me to do anything on the phone (click / type). Any help getting this to work will be much appreciated.

Picture of what it looks like visually as of now

[icy dragon]

Ah, so it's similar to GTA V's.
I never go far with widget component, but the setup should be the same with any other 3D menu in Unreal

[hardy forge]

GTA's phone is exactly what im looking for. And its just because its on the player himself that I think its different. Im trying to set focus on the input message box, and thats not working either.. Im at a loss lol

[hexed cloak]

Construction scripts work in a compiled game, right? Is there a performance benefit doing it somewhere else?

[icy dragon]

Yes, but it got executed before Begin Play, so some things might not work and you have to redo it in Begin Play. It'll be apparent even in Editor.

Performance wise, there's barely any difference, its execution order is before Begin Play, and that's about it.

[hexed cloak]

I asked this the other day but can't find the response now. I just need to grab all of the environment lights (street lights and such) in my time of day manager to turn them on and off at certain times. What do you think is the best way to do that?

[icy dragon]

You might want to do that with timers and get the value every few tenth of a second or so. It doesn't have to be on tick

[hexed cloak]

The day cycles are pretty slow, so it won't even need to be every few seconds. More asking the best way to get all of the lights, not how/when to turn them on and off

Most performant way haha

[icy dragon]

Well, if you have the lights contained in a scene component, looping and casting isn't bad
Though you might as well want to side load the job to C++

[hexed cloak]

Thank you

[zealous fog]

Question, if c++ is more efficient why wouldnt you just nativize everything?

Dont know much about nativization but it just turns BP into C++ or not?

[hexed cloak]

Doesn't always work? I tried to nativize my project and it failed.

[trim matrix]

I'm new to the engine and have very limited experience with C++ but my best guess (and this is a guess) is that you need the player controller to interact with the widget, without programming / integrating the controls to control the widget you won't be able to interact with the widget (i guess). So you would need to implement that functionality

[trim matrix]

another guess but i'm thinking a lot of the engines functionality doesn't use native C++ functions, but otherwise it seems C++ is more efficient for calculations whereas BP is more efficient for essentially, blueprinting the codebase. Iirc the recommended practice is to create the Blueprints and then convert it into C++ for best efficiency etc

[thorn fiber]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/UMG/UserGuide/WidgetInteraction/

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/ProgrammingAndScripting/Blueprints/TechnicalGuide/NativizingBlueprints/

[devout pecan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGhkNjxvD0Y

why so buggy?

this docs: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimHowTo/AimOffset/

Say i must disable Use Controller ROtation Yaw

but then its buggy

[trim matrix]

Couldn't you just tag all your lights and use get objects with tag?

[hexed cloak]

That's what I did haha

[icy dragon]

Nativization sucks.

[static charm]

wrong answer

[icy dragon]

It's not that reliable, and difficult to setup, manually translating BP code to C++ code is way easier.

[static charm]

i use it daily, out of 100 different blueprints it didn't work once and i fixed it the same day.

[trim matrix]

I never understood the difference between blueprint nativization and c++ code. I thought it automatically compiled into c++ anyway at build time.

[icy dragon]

Eh, I say UE5 getting rid of Nativization is a good frickin riddance

[icy dragon]

That's what Nativization supposed to do.

Without it, BP codes will just executed through its VM as if it's a compiled scripting language.

[trim matrix]

Even at build/package time?

[static charm]

yup

[trim matrix]

How much less performant is it?

[static charm]

like 1000x slower

[trim matrix]

Ark was originally built on blueprints. I remember modding it and seeing the blueprint references.

[static charm]

but c++ is so fast that blueprints are still fast enough for general gameplay things.

[trim matrix]

Can you mix?

[icy dragon]

Yes

But BP is on top of C++

[trim matrix]

I always thought it was an interpreter

Like it writes the code behind the scenes

[icy dragon]

Think of it as scripting language, more akin to Lua

[still delta]

Hey all! Was wondering if I could get some assistance here. I'm currently following along on one of the Unreal Learning Courses (Blueprints & Gameplay for Game Designers) and was wondering if anyone had any idea why my code isn't working as intended. I'm currently at the section where you add the health widget & debug to the screen. I've set it up appropriately as far as I can tell (Pressing P diminishes player HP by 10 on the widget, and level is restarted once player HP reaches 0), however, my healthbar turns black instead of red as intended after falling below 50. Any ideas?

[trim matrix]

What is your background color set to?

[still delta]

background tint is white, as is marquee tint

[trim matrix]

Hmm interesting

[still delta]

Maybe it's just a bug? I'm not using UE5, but the project is specifically compatible to 4.26, not sure if 4.26.2 is too much of a difference

[trim matrix]

use widget reflector and see if its really red or black.

[still delta]

Newbie here, not sure how to do that if you could elaborate

[thorn fiber]

https://gyazo.com/57cd27862df67055b749e70a8bf1b1dd

[zealous fog]

Woah you can resize your application there too thats nice

more space for my viewport

[still delta]

Tyvm! I'll try that out

[flat coral]

Quick niagara question, I've only ever used systems that auto-play on an actor. How do you play an emitter or system via blueprint?

[flat coral]

AH it's on the parent class, I was looking for it in the Niagara section. Thanks!

[thorn fiber]

Or Spawn one when you want it via Spawn System At..

[flat coral]

That seems expensive. This is for bullet traces from a rapid fire weapon, so I'd have to spawn multiple systems per second

I can only assume it's more costly to spawn a system than activate one

[thorn fiber]

At the bottom there is a pool method

Object Pooling is to optimize for those situations

it should then recycle them as required if set to auto

so it will spawn the initial batch of lets say 20 and then recycle

In one situation (I was using the older Cascade version though). the first spawn caused a hitch due to loading the assets in so I just hid it somewhere on the map to pre-load it

[flat coral]

Well now that's interesting. I'll give that a shot tomorrow, getting weird behavior with my current approach

[fossil linden]

if you use bp its already loaded, dont worry works fine

[zealous moth]

@still delta @trim matrix the background is set to blue by default.

You have to set it to white. I had the issue a few days ago

[burnt citrus]

Hey I have a question
How to change the visibility of particle between 2 cameras?
I want to make effect visible through the Camera when I use Camera A
And I want to make effect invisible when I use Camera B

[zealous moth]

@burnt citrus are those cameras controlled by the same owner or different?

[ornate linden]

I made a blueprint class that has a static mesh component, in this case it's a door. If I place that bp (and thus door) in multiple places, how can i get all those components in the level event graph? I'm trying GetComponentsByClass, but I don't know what to feed it. My custom bp class isn't in the list of component classes I can choose from.

This being for doing something like: when the player presses E, I check which door in that list the player is in front of and open it or whatever

[zealous moth]

@ornate linden why though? You dont need a full list of all doors. Each is its own isntance you can do stuff with.

[static charm]

In the door blueprint : On Begin Overlap with Player - set a boolean to true. Then on Action press/E key press, check the overlap boolean. then open door. (door blueprint setings needs to have Auto recieve input from player 0 instead of disabled.

[zealous moth]

@static charm hah nice one. I wouldve done a trace with interface

[static charm]

yeah there many ways, are all valid. persoanlly i just enable Apex destruction and knock the door down.

[ornate linden]

@zealous moth I'm only doing what I'm doing because I wasn't sure how else to do it haha. Ideally, I suppose, I'd need a way to bake into the door bp itself that if the user is by the door then if they press E it does the opening events. I believe I was trying to capture a key press earlier within the door bp and it wasn't picking it up

[zealous moth]

Both my way and gallonmate's are valid.

[static charm]

also destruction

[zealous moth]

Especially destruction

Make sure to sing the song of healing to repair

[static charm]

yeah to recieve input from players, by default regular blueprints have input disabled. so you have to change it.

[ornate linden]

I'll look for that setting then. Also how does that work? how does it know when to listen for the user? or will every single door on the map check if i'm next to it whenever i press E

[static charm]

recieving input can get a little messy with a lot of instances but by default only one bluprint will work at a time.

but all your door inputs will see the input, just only one will execute

which is fine because you would only be in front of one door at a time

make sure to also disable boolean on End Overlap

[ornate linden]

There we go I found the setting for input on the bp and keypresses are working from it now. I'll head back in and see if I can get it to work now.

[ornate linden]

So, If I wanted a function that does something that I know I'll reuse on a bunch of different components or possibly levels, is there a place to define that so that everything has access to it?

I made a public function in the level bp, but components within that level didn't seem to be able to use it.

[still delta]

Tyvm!

[static charm]

you can make a Blueprint Function Library, which lets you create functions that you can reuse in your project.

[ornate linden]

Awesome. I'll mess around with that and see if I can get it to work.

[dry monolith]

Hey all, just a very general question about using tinelines: basically I'm using SuggestProjectileVelocity to add an impulse to an object and move it towards the players vr hand for to achieve a similar effect to half life's Gravity Gloves, but I wanted the object to slow down and sort move towards the hand just slightly when it is within a certain range.

Anyone know the best way to achieve this, so that I keep some of the initial velocity of the object, but add a slight velocity in the direction of the hand?

[ornate linden]

Worked like a charm. Thank you.

[high marsh]

How can I make the capsule follow the player?

[dry monolith]

@high marsh Try enabling root motion in the animation asset, there is also a allow physics rotation during root motion that could work here too?

[burnt citrus]

Same owner
tbh, I want to make FPS
and I want to switch Third person camera and First person camera
To synchronize gun effect location, I have to switch effect visibility

[grave apex]

If im making a rhythm game, and Im deciding when to play an ingame event based on notes in a song, should I measure that time from the start of the song in milliseconds? or something else? (and if I did, should that be an int, or a float?)

[trim matrix]

how did you get the capsule to unfollow the player? lol

because of the animation?

[trim matrix]

if i'm not mistaken you could get away with an int as long as you don't use decimals, should be ''faster'' too

as long as you don't need a value bigger than 2147483647 you can use an int

measuring the time from the start of the song is one way to do it, there are probably others but i lack an idea for that

floats are for anything decimal related and extremeley large numbers ( 1.175494351 E - 38)

(iirc)

it's been a year since i last did anything C++ related so don't take my word for it anyway

if anyone can correct me on anything i appreciate that

[grave apex]

ah

Im just wondering if that's a good way to do it seeing as how poeple like doing world delta seconds for stuff, and idk if ms are even easier than just saying a note appears at 1.2345 seconds

[trim matrix]

Well i don't know enough about the engine to say for certain but personally i would say yeah, i think your way should be more convenient even. You'd have to check with other people tho cause i don't know if i'm missing something here.

[brazen merlin]

just kinda spit balling here on the idea, sequencer can show the entire length of a music track.... maybe there's an interactive way to check for things

[stable quiver]

@high marshtry with blueprint the attach to node and attach it to your skeletal mesh

[brazen merlin]

maybe.... https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses/audio-driven-gameplay?sessionInvalidated=true

[grave apex]

ooh

[brazen merlin]

hope its cool, just judging from the name

[trim matrix]

yeah you might want to actually program it to trigger on the note in question instead of timing it out in ms per track

would also be better for ur workflow

I'm just spitballing here too but i reckon conceptually you'd copy some data from the track (waveform clipping or w/e) and have it recognize when that piece of data is being played, have it trigger upon overlap or w/e. Just from a conceptual p.o.v dunno if there's better ways to do it or if it's the right concept but yeah that's how i imagine it rn.

you want it to recognize the note so maybe hold the data of the note being recognized

correct me if i'm wrong btw i learn that way too

[grave apex]

hmm, im not sure how far I want to go with it ultimately, but its gonna be a guitar hero/DDR typa game

[brazen merlin]

you know how a sound clip can play but the game itself (visuals and input) can hiccup?

[trim matrix]

yeet

[brazen merlin]

i wonder how that is linked for unreal, like how all game logic is on the main thread

[trim matrix]

yeah that's gonna bug aint it

[brazen merlin]

i thought about a few that rely on the audio, but i figure its not that simple, sequencer seems like it connects though

[grave apex]

yea, that's what im worried about, synchronization with stuff

ive only made fps's and simple stuff so far

not a lot of precise stuff

but audio hasnt been too big for me until now

[brazen merlin]

someone else here may be better informed on audio (like in the audio channel)

[grave apex]

tru

[brazen merlin]

at least to answer this problem

[trim matrix]

sorry i tried 😂

haha

[grave apex]

lol yer good, I havent had much experience myself

[brazen merlin]

i know some different devs (fresh devs) they did audio in their own problem-solved ways

looks like sk0g mentions this briefly in the ai channel

the take away term is spectrograph, though ive never "converted" audio into one within engine (or for use in)

just worked with it in audio software

[icy dragon]

If you're in 4.26 or newer, look into Quartz subsystem.

[tight schooner]

UE4 (current version) has a system called Quartz used for timing stuff musically. I think a more advanced version of it (and various other sound synthesis systems) have been rolled up into #metasounds ? I haven't really looked into it. Quartz is usable for precisely timing spawned sound playback to a tempo.

Using pure BP to time stuff is wonky in practice

[grave apex]

hmm

[tight schooner]

cuz its fidelity is quantized to the framerate ofc. Quartz is meant to be the solution

[brazen merlin]

omg, i was just logged into epic and i went back and it asked me for login, now saying this is a new device, wtf

[grave apex]

is quartz made by epic?

[trim matrix]

yes

i would recommend it from what i've gathered it's in the ballpark you're looking for

[icy dragon]

Yes, it is part of Unreal's new audio engine

[grave apex]

aah

.26 or higher right? like, I dont need 5?

[trim matrix]

not that my recommendations hold weight or anything lol but it's part of UE's audio engine (good way to put it)

[icy dragon]

Yeah, Quartz is first in 4.26

[grave apex]

aah

ok

[brazen merlin]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/WorkingWithMedia/Audio/Quartz/

says so in the url

[icy dragon]

I myself have been messing with Quartz to make Idolmaster clone lol

[grave apex]

aah!

(is that like the miku games?)

[tight schooner]

The thing I dislike about Quartz though is its BP dispatcher tempo events are slightly delayed (like 50ms). I had to wrap it in additional code to correct it. IDK, your mileage may vary. But queueing up audio playback to the next quantization event has been reliable.

[trim matrix]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj05ZgxRTA0&t=4042s
this is also a good one to watch if you have some free time @grave apex

[grave apex]

ooh! timestamp!

[trim matrix]

not particularly informative but can help with orientation

timestamp is arbitrary it's where i left off :p

[icy dragon]

Well, not really, but Miku did appear as DLC in one of the main games

[trim matrix]

but it's just a few minutes after an interesting segment i suggest rewinding like 10 or 20 minutes from there

[brazen merlin]

metasounds are ue5

[tight schooner]

I think Dannthr is the guy who made Quartz? He's pretty active in #metasounds and #audio

[grave apex]

I've got other people making the music for me so far, I can use premade stuff with this right?

[icy dragon]

Also the latest Idolmaster game is a UE4 game
(Bandai Namco might use their own quantizing system for it)

[grave apex]

like, its not just for like generating synth stuff?

[tight schooner]

Quartz is mega bad at tempo changes, so whatever you're using should have a rock solid fixed tempo

[icy dragon]

Prog rock is a no go then 😂

[tight schooner]

I haven't looked into it deeply but it seemed like it has to reset the timing system to e.g. change BPM and that creates a huge tempo stutter in the process. That's what I recall anyway...

[trim matrix]

didn't know that, still fun to listen to Dannthr go wild lmao (or that's another guy?)

[icy dragon]

Both Dan and Aaron are active in #audio

They're my favourite duo from the audio team lol

[brazen merlin]

i know all the usernames on this discord, yes

[icy dragon]

Speaking of which, I still haven't completed my OpenMPT integration to UE4 😭

[trim matrix]

@grave apex https://youtu.be/lj05ZgxRTA0?t=1949 listen from here if you just want to listen to something interesting for 10 minutes or so haha
edit: it's indeed about metasounds more than quartz tho

[tight schooner]

to answer the direct question, Quartz is for queueing playback of spawned audio components. i.e. playing a imported wave file at the exact right moment based on a running tempo.

you spawn a sound and tell Quartz to queue it up for the next tempo event (bar, quarter, 8th, 16th, etc.)

[grave apex]

aah

[ornate linden]

If I have a door BP I've placed in my level, and I want a static mesh actor like a chair to move when you enter (by pressing E, which the door is checking for), how would I go about that?

Should I have the door BP try to grab the chair as a target somehow? maybe through accessing the level scope somehow?
Do I make a global function to call which is able to access the level and chair somehow?

not sure how to go about this.

A similar use case would be like pressing E at a light switch and it turning a light on.

not sure how the two different blueprints can interact with one another

Seems you can do it through events.

Also its starting to feel like I should make everything into a blueprint before placing it instead of having a bunch of static meshes. cuz any items i want to move or do anything with via events would need to be a bp

[silver edge]

Whats the best way to make a physics object always land right side up. I thought maybe I would apply rotation based on the difference between its up vector and the z axis but Im not entirely confident on how to do that or even if thats the right way to do it

[dawn gazelle]

What I'd do with a light switch/light scenario is, yes, to have blueprints set up for both the lightswitch and the lights. Within the lightswitch you can have an exposed array of light blueprints. When the lights and lightswitched are placed into the level, you can then set the lights that the lightswitch controls into the exposed array on the lightswitch. Then when you interact with the lightswitch, you loop through the array, and turn each of the lights on or off.

The door and chair could behave similarly, but instead of using an array of light actors, you could use just a generic actor array and use an interface to trigger the event on the actors that should have some behaviour after the interaction with the first object.

[ornate linden]

The array idea sounds pretty cool. I'll try to do that way. Thanks!

[proper umbra]

Is there a way to use the Mouse X/Mouse Y event without having to hold down the mouse button?

[maiden wadi]

Not as input events usually. Save a Vector2D. On Tick get the delta of current mouse location on screen - start location. Then save a Vector2D after you're done.

[proper umbra]

ahh okay, I'l try it

thanks

[timber knoll]

Calculate trajectory and then apply necessary rotations yeah

With some math you can get exact time of impact etc

[quick kettle]

hi, how to change a landscape by using BP? i want to change the shape of a river during gameplay

[gentle urchin]

the river should be a bp Actor, with a spline that you can modify

[quick kettle]

but i created the river through a height map, it's a real place on the earth

so i need to find another way ...

[brazen merlin]

fill it up then use a river actor

[quick kettle]

emmm, alright, i will try

[brazen merlin]

oh wait i missed the last bit, how do you want to change it during gameplay?

[icy dragon]

I don't think it's possible in runtime

The heightmap has to be dynamic, somehow, which can be painful to setup more than voxelised landscape

[lucid lynx]

Is it possible to use TakeHighResScreenshot and use the resulting image for another function? My goal is to dump the image into a save file to use as a thumbnail.

Right now I can't figure out how to actually get the image that the TakeHighResScreenshot node produces.

An alternative I think would be to use SceneCapture2D, but it seems more like a roundabout way of doing what I want.

[brazen merlin]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/WorkingWithMedia/CapturingMedia/TakingScreenshots/ you read this?

i think you need it to be in the content folder though

[lucid lynx]

As far as I can tell the node will dump the image into the project folder, but where I'm lost is how to actually take that image and do something with it in-engine.

[brazen merlin]

oh, so you cant some how load that onto an image via variable reference?

[lucid lynx]

The return pin on the node is an AutomationEditorTask type variable rather than an image.

[brazen merlin]

ewww

[chrome fractal]

can I add data in data table at run time?

[gentle urchin]

No

[chrome fractal]

Is there any other alternative?

[dawn gazelle]

Data tables are read-only data effectively. If you need to save stuff, you store it in a save game.

[chrome fractal]

But till now my whole structure depends on datatable.

[gentle urchin]

It doesnt change the fact that you cant write to a data table

datatable is static

you're only supposed to read information from there

[brazen merlin]

you could get from the data table to set your struct then change stuff there, but thats about it

[chrome fractal]

But if I need that to be saved for further use when I open the game again is it possible?

[dawn gazelle]

You could save the data in a map of Name -> Your Table Struct in a save game - if your map contains the table row name, then load the data from the save game, otherwise, read the row from the data table using the row name that you look up in the map.

[brazen merlin]

youd be using a save game as Datura mentioned

[dawn gazelle]

(just a basic example!)

[chrome fractal]

Ok thanks a lot. I will try it.

[torpid niche]

Heyas, its possible to Reset the Jump Count from a trigger or an event?

[trim matrix]

i'm pretty sure this can be done with C++ at least

[rain egret]

So I have a skeletal mesh on an actor turret
I make this turret actor a child in a pawn via a actor component who creates and adds a reference to it.

The animation blueprint keeps telling me tho that accessed none is trying to read a value.

I have printed out the two variables I have in my animation blueprint, mainly a reference to itself and to its parent, and both return the correct thing, none of those has null

How come I still get the accessed none error

I also added is valid nodes all over the place

[trim matrix]

https://www.cplusplus.com/reference/fstream/ifstream/

dunno if this is what ur looking for tho

[lucid lynx]

Thank you. Right now I'm going the SceneCapture2D route. It seems like I'm almost there as I'm able to accurately get the screenshot I want when saving the game. My issue seems to be actually attaching the image to the save file.

[trim matrix]

ifstream stands for input file stream it's a standard function for loading files into the application
ofstream for the opposite, to upload files from application to folder

[maiden wadi]

<@&213101288538374145>

[torn kettle]

:no_entry_sign: Gabii#4346 was banned.

[dusky harbor]

Does anybody know, why i always receive error "infinitive loop detected".
I want the actor to change the position when i step over

[icy dragon]

Show your problematic BP setup in question

[dusky harbor]

Sometimes it runs normal, sometimes it doesn't ...

[dawn gazelle]

If you're moving Puddle1 and it overlaps something again, then it's going to move again, then on that move, it may overlap something again, so then it moves, etc.

[dusky harbor]

how could i fix this, do you have any idea?

[dawn gazelle]

You need some way of preventing puddle1 from constantly being moved. Like, is it supposed to move whenever anything overlaps with it?

[fair sun]

my expose on spawn variable somehow isn't exposed on spawn, tried recompiling and closing/opening the editor like 10 times

[surreal peak]

Is that a C++ type?

[fair sun]

nope it's an enum created in blueprints

[surreal peak]

And that variable is part of the Class you specified on the SpawnActor node?

Did you try to refresh the node itself?

[fair sun]

yup, nothing

yes

[surreal peak]

It's the naming

You can't all it class I guess

[fair sun]

oh boy

that makes sense now

thanks for noticing that

[iron bone]

Hello, I'm looking for some advice for building a "sword in the stone" type of situation. I want to make the player spam a button to remove the sword and have an animation of the character struggling to remove it. I'd like for the animation to start playing in reverse from where it's currently at if the player isn't spamming the button fast enough. Planning to bind the amount of presses to a progress bar as well

I've already made a somewhat janky progress bar that fills when you spam a button fast enough but not sure how to approach tie-ing the animation to it

[maiden wadi]

The state should be saved as a float or something somewhere. At button press, add to that float and save a second float of the last time that was incremented up as game time. At tick check if the last time that was incremented up is GameTime - LastTimeIncremented > 0.5ish. If true, lower the float. Then your animation can poll it as well as your progressbar.

[iron bone]

Thank you! Much appreciated advice - One question, which node would I go to to save the state as a float

[maiden wadi]

Really depends on how you want to handle it. My initial thought was that you had an actor you were interacting with. The state could be saved there.

[iron bone]

Just looked up "single frame animations" and this seems very helpful and relevant to what I'm doing. Thank you!

[icy dragon]

I kinda doubting on the loading of it, but perhaps preloading all of the anim sequences at once on memory is possible through BP?

Wait, I've been interpreting as a chain of separate anim sequence assets

Is that the case here?

[formal wren]

Get angle between Impact and Normal and rotate Impact by 90 - angle

[trim matrix]

is it possible to get a url using blueprints? i want to read http://127.0.0.1:5000/gyroscope_read which just returns text content, however it apparts that there isnt a way for this to happen

[hallow wraith]

dumb question... what is actually changing when I "add controller YAW input"... like what component in my player is getting rotated? I want to disable controller yaw input and control my player's rotation programmatically, but I don't know which property to change.

[keen wedge]

Hi all, quick query regarding Timers... I'm using a SetTimerByFunctionName node in Blueprint, passing it a Time via a variable. I had assumed that if I later updated the value of that variable, the Timer would be updated...

As an example, if the variable was initially set to 1 second, the looping Timer would fire every 1 second, if I updated the variable to be 5 seconds, after the first firing, the second firing of the loop would occur after the 5 seconds.

That doesn't appear to be the case, so I assume my interpretation of how it works was wrong. Does this mean that in order to change the time between each execution of the Timer I need to ClearAndInvalidate it, and then SetTimerByFunctionName again? Seems a bit heavy handed as an approach. I looked at the SetMembers option, but it doesn't appear to expose anything I can set.

Thoughts would be very welcomed 🙂

[hallow wraith]

more specifically: I want ot change the direction the player goes when you press the 'move forward' button

[haughty nymph]

i dont no what is wrong with my enemy attacking

[tidal marlin]

Interesting.

Breakpoint and check path.

[tired cypress]

This was my first thought on how to do it, yes. Setting a timer kind of sets up a new execution thread and it will keep rolling until it's reset.

[tidal marlin]

And add fail task if casy not sucsrss.

[tired cypress]

However, you shouldn't actually have to call a reset node...it should be enough to set the same timer again with a different loop value

[haughty nymph]

where the breakpoint

[tidal marlin]

Right click on cast node, add breakpoint, start.

And after use step.

[stuck plaza]

I want to SetActorLocation my actor to a point location FVector. I pass desired actor and vector. everything works perfect, but I have an issue where my actors clips into the ground. I think its because the point location where i move the actor is barely above the ground and actor has its root near center of mass. Is there any way around this so my actor can properly teleport above the ground instead of clipping into it?

[keen wedge]

Hi @tired cypress, thanks for the reply. Yeah, I assumed that by setting the variable that it was referencing to a new value that would be enough, or, at the very least I could set a member on the Timer but that doesn't appear to be the case. I'll give the clear and invalidate approach a try. Thanks 🙂

[maiden wadi]

@stuck plazaNot sure if there's a default function for it. You could simply set the actor to location, but add the actor's bounds Z value to the location. Then do another movement with sweep straight down for twice the actor's size. That should set it flat on the ground.

[quick lance]

Does anyone know what Create Action Instance does? I can't really find documentation on it and someone mentioned it would help with setting a streaming level's transform in editor

[gentle urchin]

It works just setting the timer again

I'd ofc never connect it up like this, but for testing purposes, it works

[keen wedge]

Presumably each call to SetTimer is creating a separate reference/object somewhere though isn't it? So, I'd still want to clear/invalidate the each one?

[visual hamlet]

dowloaded a project, message log says this is the reason for the infinite loop detected error im getting. not sure why?

[gentle urchin]

Guess i didnt even consider that. Expected some internal signature to handle that part

[meager spade]

Local integer + 0 doesn't look right to me in the value output

[keen wedge]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking... I grab the reference for the TimerHandle when I first call it, so I think as long as I call ClearAndInvalidate on that, I can then call SetTimer again, effectively creating a new "one" <-- what ever a "one" is in this case 🙂

[gentle urchin]

Yepp! That's usually how i do it aswell, check if the handle exist, and if so, clear and invalidate. Never really changed the frequency of a timer like this before 😛

[visual hamlet]

ah i see, any clue on what i should change it to? im quite a beginner with this.

[meager spade]

Try changing the 0 to 1

[keen wedge]

I'm using it to spawn enemies. I get a random Time value from two thresholds, and then pump that into SetTimer as the Time value. It was only today when I changed the thresholds to extreme values to test something else I realise this wasn't working... sigh...

[visual hamlet]

Thank you so much! i was stuck with that error for ages

[gentle urchin]

I see. Sadly there's no random to the actual execute, only to the start delay and its variation 😕

Sorta wish the timer had a variation to the execute aswell sometimes

[hallow wraith]

figured it out.. "Get/set control rotation"

[keen wedge]

Yeah, feels like something you could write a wrapper to go around to extend it, but more hassle than you'd expect etc. I also discovered today that the InitialStartDelay is not separate from the Time delay for execution... so if you have a 3 second Time, and a 10 second InitialStartDelay, you get a 13 second total delay... again, not what I wanted... had assumed the InitialStartDelay would be first, then the Time delay used for each iteration after... so now I'm having to do a hacky 0.1 approach for the first Time value to get something to spawn straight away... can't set it to zero as that Clears/Invalidates the timer... 😄

[gentle urchin]

You could have the initial code call the spawn function to have an initial spawn aswell

[trim matrix]

Hmm. Am I missing something in my blueprint? I am trying to get my controller to register hover over buttons, but whenever I turn my controller on and play, I get nothing on the buttons.

[gentle urchin]

As for randomization you could (altho sounds like more work than it should be) as you suggested clear and invalidate, and set a new one..

Or keep the timer low (0.1), and have a time window where there's an increasing chance for something to spawn, up to 100% chance when >= MaxTimeBetweenSpawn

[keen wedge]

Yeah, I considered that, was trying to keep it all tidy/same way etc... my OCD 😄

[haughty nymph]

i start the game and its going wrong

[keen wedge]

Yeah, I think I'll stick with the clear and invalidate for now, its straight forward. this wasn't something I'd planned to work on today so I'm already a bit behind on other features... joy..

Thanks for your replies and help 🙂

[tidal marlin]

You add breakpoint?

It stop you on node?

[haughty nymph]

yes i add

[tidal marlin]

What path it go. Breakpoint not help fix you code, they can see where problem is.

[haughty nymph]

it stops when i want to walk to the enemy

[keen wedge]

What you have I think is ok, but it would be in your UI widget, where you have the buttons for example, you'll want to access their OnHover/OnClicked etc events, and then fire the audio then.

[trim matrix]

The audio is set to play on beginplay, it's bgm.

I am trying to troubleshoot why the ui isn't letting me use my gamepad to navigate

[keen wedge]

Oh I see, sorry... misunderstood. Have you got the gamepad set up in the Project Settings -> Input ?

[haughty nymph]

How? Do you mean the path from the AI or path from the way he is walking.

[trim matrix]

Yes. I can use the gamepad inside of player controller levels. Sometimes it works, but I have to sort of jump through hoops by clicking into the ui from the editor during playback, then back out, etc. It's random.

[keen wedge]

I think that "click in the editor" thing is fairly "normal" behaviour, e.g. you need to focus the viewport in order for the other inputs to be determined. If you clicked outside of the viewport in the editor, you're then focusing the editor, not the game. A short video clip of the exact issue might help?

[trim matrix]

@keen wedge The problem is it's not consistent. Sometimes even clicking into the game window doesn't let me use my controller. The point I was making is that it's not consistent and there appears to be something wrong.

I'll make a video in just a bit, finishing up some things on the ui.

[keen wedge]

okey dokey, was just a suggestion as sometimes the issues are quite hard to understand via text only etc.. you'll obviously know exactly whats happening as you're familiar with it 🙂

[sonic crow]

I seem to be getting an error in my code in this specific section, not to sure if i forgot something or did something done, maybe a fresh set of eyes can spot something

[gentle urchin]

low quality screenshot

[sonic crow]

perhaps this helps?

Make Corridor from A to B on X Axis is being rejected by on all other axis it is working i ma not sure why

[trim matrix]

Here is the trouble I am running into with controller:

https://youtu.be/iXaxjlEG_F0

As you can see from the video, when I first come into the game, I press a button on the controller and you see a 'print string' message show up. Once I am in the main menu, the controller doesn't navigate through the buttons. Once I click 'play' and go to the second screen, the controller starts working. If I go back, it retains focus (sometimes), but loses it others and I have to click with the mouse again to retain it. If I go onto the third screen (which loads a new level), I can't use the keyboard to focus anymore again.

[haughty nymph]

do you have the right level by your open level

[trim matrix]

What does that mean? Am I going to the right level? yes.

I just want to navigate my buttons/ui elements with a controller without having to jump around hoops or click into the window with my mouse first.

[sonic crow]

why do i get error messages sometimes and if i compile again i dont?

[brazen merlin]

i think you're on the right track of considering focus, you can specific which button should have focus right when it loads. It may also be an issue between keyboard or gamepad being recognized first

[trim matrix]

It was my understanding that controller and keyboard for player 1 were mirrors of each other. How do you specify which button has focus on load?

Is that what the widget focus pin on set input mode is for?

[brazen merlin]

its rather specific, you need to hook up the exact button (possibly the widget, but i think moreso the button) - it should be highlighted when you start the game right up regardless of input

[trim matrix]

Yeah I figured. I thought that pin was for the window you wanted to show on focus not an actual element /widget

[brazen merlin]

it kinda can be

focus can be a widget container or a very specific thing

i think there's different nodes

but you want one for the button

[trim matrix]

I'm going to give targetting the actual 'play' button object from the created widget and see if it works.

Is there a way to have the controller use the onhover actions? Its putting a little square box around the button but not using the hover state.

[brazen merlin]

not sure, this is #umg related if you want to ask there. I dont work with it too much, and how i have it setup may be different from yours

(looks like you have 🙃 )

[trim matrix]

Oh you have to use has keyboard focus node

https://www.versluis.com/2020/09/gamepad-navigation-ue4/

Thank you Conrad

[ornate linden]

I'm using set visibility to hide a component. I like that the hitbox stays, but I don't want the shadow from the lighting to stay. Is there a way to do that? remove the shadow of the component when it's gone and when i make it visible again the shadows come back?

and there's not like a light componenet attached to the hidden component in any way, it's just like the ambient light source casts a shadow, and i want it to continue casting shadows on everything else, just not the hidden component, so i can't just turn it off

All my lights have Mobility set to Movable, so i assume that means they're dynamic and should change with the environment

[brazen merlin]

try Set Hidden, that should completely hide it including no shadow casting

[ornate linden]

I tried Set Hidden In Game (is that the correct one?) and it didn't seem to do anything. I also tried it chained together with the Set Visibility one and it did the same thing as just having Set Visibility.

I tried it also just now with New Hidden checked in case I had the checkbox backwords, but it did the same thing, which was nothing as far as i could tell

[brazen merlin]

and the actor is mobile right? not static?

[brazen merlin]

try hiding the entire actor and not the component

[ornate linden]

This is the thing I'm using it on. I'm hiding the door static mesh, but wanting to leave the floor static mesh visible and all that.

So i guess to answer your question, the thing I'm hiding is static i believe? since it's a static mesh apart of the bp. and I think it's considered a component and not an actor?

[ornate linden]

I think I figured out what was happening. My lighting is so wild that the shadow of something else across the room is shadowing my character and the doors shadow is actually gone. Thank you for the help. I ended up looking up a video on hidden in game and ended up messing with the objects settings directly and figured it out.

[silver edge]

Is there a way to make my car always try to land on its wheels while it’s in the air? Like apply a force so it rotates until it’s parallel to the ground

[olive cloud]

You could probably do something like get the normal of the bottom of the car and see if it is more or less down, if not bring it closer to being straight down? Or compare it to the negative of the normal of the ground below

[silver edge]

Do you happen to know of a tutorial for how to do that? I’m not sure what I would search for

@olive cloud

[olive cloud]

not really, that's just something I'm spitballing here, though I'm sure there are tutorials for something like that

there are tutorials I can see that make an actor always face the player, you could probably adapt that but with the ground instead of the player

[vital aspen]

I can't seem to get any where with the Market place Inventory systems and you tube videos don't all was have any help for the project. I need a way to build an Inventory and Crafting system that's easy to follow and has a discord server with Help when I need it. Anyone have any ideas.

[timber knoll]

If you lower center of mass it will always roll back

Also you can shoot a ray down and use dot product to calculate angles, which can then be used to add torque forces

There’s a lot of papers and videos online explaining the physics but you will still need a general understanding on the topic

Car physics are fairly hard, at least from my experience 😅

[ornate linden]

How would I go about creating an exposed array of bps?

The only way I know how to reference a component bp in my level is to drag it from the world outlier into the level bp. but this doesn't work for any other bps as far as i can tell

My guess for "exposing" it would be to make a function in my global functions bp that returns the array of bps, which then my actual component can run actions on. But I would need to be able to get access to the bp in the level. so do i need to get the level somehow? and then access the component bps within it somehow?

Or am I thinking about this in the wackest way possible

[dawn gazelle]

After creating both your lights and lightswitch blueprints, within the lightswitch blueprint, create a variable of your lights BP. Then change it to be an array. Then click the "Expose on Spawn" and "Instance Editable" options in the settings of the variable.

Then in the editor, when you place your lights switch, you can add any of the lights you've placed in the level to the switch's array.

[silver edge]

Yeah I’ve tried the lower center of mass and it seems to help after it’s rolled on its back but I’m trying to make it harder for it to end up on its back I guess. I might try the ray but I’m not sure what I would look up to find those papers or videos.

[proud pivot]

Hi everyone 👋 I got a question that I haven't been able to find an answer to. Hopefully someone can chime in with some help.

I have a collision box that I need to scale on a certain axis. How would I make it scale in only one direction?

For example, I want one side of the box to stay put and the other side to grow in the given axis direction

[ornate linden]

This helped a lot. I learned a lot from going through that. Thanks for the help.

[ornate linden]

Like a collision box you've placed in your level? Did you click on it, go to the "details" tab, "transform" section at the top, and then change the x y or z values? if the lock to the right is locked you can click on it to unlock so everything doesn't scale together

[proud pivot]

No. I know how to scale the box, but if I scale it along an axis, it scales the box from both sides in both directions

For example, if I scale along the x axis, it grows in both the negative and positive direction

I only want it to scale in one direction

[ornate linden]

Ah. I'm not sure. other than scaling it and then moving it to compensate afterwords

[tight schooner]

Maybe... Maybe if you root it to a dummy Scene Component in such a way that it sits on top of (or adjacent to?) the scene component

And then scale the scene component??

[proud pivot]

That was my initial thought but that seems complicated for something seemingly simple

[proud pivot]

If I scale the scene component, wouldn't that scale every child under the scene component as well?

[tight schooner]

Yeah, so make sure there's nothing under it but the collision. Sorry if I was unclear — I didn't mean make the dummy Scene Component the root of the entire BP

[proud pivot]

I'm not sure that'll work in my case since the BP will have multiple components to it

I guess I can try to move everything out of the scene component

Not sure what implications that has though

[tight schooner]

I mean like ...
Root -> static mesh of your cool spaceship or whatever -> the dummy Scene Component I was talking about -> your collision box

[proud pivot]

But wait, would the scene just scale in both directions as well?

[tight schooner]

Scale the dummy Scene Component

[proud pivot]

Right

[tight schooner]

Not the root,not the static mesh etc

[proud pivot]

Wouldn't the dummy scene scale in both directions?

[tight schooner]

Not if you don't want it to? Every scene component has a transform

With a 3D scale

A value for each axis

[proud pivot]

Right.. I'm following so far

[tight schooner]

So scale it on the axis you care about and see what happens. I actually don't know. I don't have UE4 open so this is just a stab in the dark

[proud pivot]

I know from experience that scaling along an axis scales I'm both the positive and negative directions of that axis.

[tight schooner]

But attaching a thing to a dummy Scene Component and manipulating the component is a general way to solve the "I want to transform a thing as if it had a different pivot point" problem

When you attach the box to the scene component,move the box so that it sits above the component.

Not at relative zero

What happens when you scale it?

[proud pivot]

Give me a few minutes. I'll try it

Let me boot up the PC

[tight schooner]

My hope is that scaling the dummy component will also scale the box's relative location to that component

At the same time

If it doesn't then welp,it was worth a shot

[dusky harbor]

Hey, Can anybody help me how can i avoid the error "infinitive loop detection" .

[tight schooner]

box vs scene component, lol

g2g... good luck with your issue

[dawn gazelle]

As I said, you are moving Puddle1 constantly as it probably overlaps with something again after you've moved it. Are you intending to have it constantly move?

[dusky harbor]

yes, always when i step on the puddle, the puddle has to change its position

[dawn gazelle]

Ok, then you need to make it so the overlap only moves it when your player steps on it. Currently as your code is, it will overlap with anything it can, and move whenever it overlaps with anything, not just your player.

[ornate linden]

I'm getting this wild error while trying to loop through my array of bps where it's hiding all the wall bps in the array except 1 in particular. doesn't matter where in the array i have that wall bp, but it doesn't hide it. The weird thing is it hides the point light that's part of the wall bp, but it's not hiding the wall or the torch components. the loop does print the name of the wall though.

the walls are all the same bp so i wouldn't imagine they would do anything differently. there's no wall behind it, because if i delete it there's nothing there. I also deleted the wall and copied another into it's place from the wall next to it and added it to the array, still does it. i tried rebuilding, didn't do anything.

[proud pivot]

Sorry. Got caught up with something. I appreciate the help. I'll give it a go and let you know how it goes.

[burnt citrus]

Hey I have a question
I want to change effect visibility between several cameras
I want to make first person and third person camera, so I have to switch visibility of effects to synchronize gun effects

[dawn gazelle]

Maybe there's a second copy of the wall at that position? Perhaps even delete that wall and place it again?

[ornate linden]

yeah, tried that. i deleted the wall and copied it from the one next to it and then added it back to the array. i can try it again

nope still did it

if it's not obvious, maybe it has something do with the rest of my code somehow. i'll dive deeper into it

[ornate linden]

it's always something stupid. i took a second look and cycled through every object on my level and there was actually a wall behind it but it's visibility was toggled off so i couldn't see it when i deleted the wall in front of it and clicking in the empty spot clicked on things behind it. but i guess it's still there when the level plays. wild. thanks for the help again.

[dusky harbor]

yes, i can'f find a solution... I tried with "Do once" , also with other loops but nothing... Do you have any suggestion, what could fix this problem?

Thank you for your answers!

[ornate linden]

... i deleted a bunch of code so that i could test to see if it was a problem and now that i know it wasn't i want to put it back... but undo doesn't work? does playing a level delete all your undos or something?

[spark steppe]

if you haven't saved close the editor without saving

and yes, there are some actions which flush the undo cache, not sure if playing is one of them tho

if you saved but didn't add anything to the code within the last hours/days, you can check the autosave directory for a recent version

[digital palm]

Hi, any idea why the camera is set in the middle of the body instead of the player camera ?

[ornate linden]

Is there a way to run the player character through a "Move Component To" function? I think I was using that before I deleted it and couldn't undo. It was moving my player to a new relative location over a period of time so it naturally looked like they were moving a distance.

getting the parent component of the player character didn't seem to work

nvm. got it to work with Get Player Pawn > Get Root Component > Move Component To

[proud pivot]

So it did work but the problem now is that because the location of the box is scaling with the scene, the box now moves too. I need the one side of the box to stay stationary and the other side to grow in a certain direction. I'll keep playing with this. Maybe the only way is to calculate it's position at it grows.

[lusty shard]

how do I tell the BP_Tool to set its "In Use?" boolean to true from within the character bp?

I tried this.

Also tried cast to BP_Tool, but the BP_Tool component reference returns a yellow error when wired into the cast to.

[trim matrix]

Does bp_tool have the inuse? Variable?

[lusty shard]

yes

[trim matrix]

If so, drag bp_tool into the editor and you should have access to it's variable

[flat coral]

What's the type of BP_Tool?

Like give us a screenshot of the variable details when in the Event Graph tab not the Viewport

[lusty shard]

here is the variable within the bp tool

[dawn gazelle]

You need to do this to get the actual reference to the actor:

That object can then be cast to your actual class.

[dawn gazelle]

You need to cast it

[lusty shard]

oooh have to plug child actor into a cast to?

[dawn gazelle]

yep

Getting the child actor from a child actor component only returns an actor reference.

So you cast that actor reference to your appropriate class to access what you need.

[lusty shard]

sweet

[dawn gazelle]

Well, you can get the "Other Actor" and check if that is your player.

[proud pivot]

It's still scaling in both directions though. If you move the box farther from the 0,0,0 the scaling is more visible

set the box's location farther

[tight schooner]

yeah I know

I super don't know what you want though

[proud pivot]

I want the box to scale in one direction only

[tight schooner]

if you want a way to scale the box in such a way that one extent moves while the other stays in place

there you go

[proud pivot]

I want one side of the box to stay put while the other side of the box grows

[tight schooner]

yeah check out the entire video

[proud pivot]

I did

thats why i'm saying it wont work

[tight schooner]

it's literally doing that thing in the video though

🤷

[proud pivot]

no, its actually moving

its just harder to tell because you have the box so close to 0,0,0

change the position to something farther than 0

[tight schooner]

I mean yeah if you do something other than what I suggested

it won't work

[proud pivot]

it might work. i'll test it out

[proud pivot]

I really do appreciate the help though. I dont mean to shoot your help down

[proud pivot]

I managed to get it. For future reference, in case you ever need it. You need to use the initial size of the box in the calculation. Heres the BP for it

[kind estuary]

I have a cube inside my blueprint I need to delete a small part of it, lets a small cube chunk needs to be destroyed in the original cube. How do i do this?

[proud pivot]

Are you trying to dynamically destroy the chunk of the cube?

like at runtime?

[kind estuary]

yes inside the blueprint during the game

exactly

so i have my cube and i need a little cube out of it to be gone

[proud pivot]

This sounds more like a job for a particle effect

[kind estuary]

😦

[proud pivot]

Look into how to use Niagra and how to make particles using meshes

[kind estuary]

something like subtractive cube that works in outside of the blueprints

i wish it worked inside the blueprint

[proud pivot]

is subtractive cube something that unreal provides out of the box?

[kind estuary]

yes it provides in the brushes

but not inside the blueprint

unfortunately

[winged sentinel]

Hi everyone, I’m trying to figure out how I can get the value of whether an object or actor is visible to my player, for example if the player goes behind a wall, it’ll return not visible and vice versa

[proud pivot]

gotcha. ya I would say that your best bet is probably to use niagra particles

or somehow fake it

to where it looks like your cube is being cut but acutally you are just moving it and scaling it

hide that behind some effect

[proud pivot]

Heres a link to an effect that makes things disappear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dYg4bvf4Rc&t=96s

[kind estuary]

i really didnt want to go for something expensive graphically

just something very simple

like taking out just one cube

out of my cube

[proud pivot]

what Im thinking is that you can spawn two or 3 of this particles to mask out the cube so that you get the shape you want

[kind estuary]

basically a cube, and cut a small cube out of it

well thats exactly what im trying to avoid

because i want to avoid creating more cubes

[proud pivot]

what if you have 2 cubes instead of one?

and make it look like its one cube?

[kind estuary]

thats the problem im trying to avoid

i want to have one cube

and take small cubes out of it

without having to create 1000 cubes

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/making-part-of-an-object-invisible/35552

seems this thread had the solution but the answer is no longer available

[proud pivot]

5 seconds of google and this is what i found but I dont think it'll work for you

https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/6o2bmo/help_how_would_you_do_it_destructible_cube_which/

[kind estuary]

there are some good suggestions there

but they all fall into the same issue im trying to avoid

that is to avoid more actors

[proud pivot]

I mean, at some point,more cubes have to be made

if you split a cube, then you end up with 2 pieces regardless

[kind estuary]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1vld94zm9M

this is the best solution so far

lets say you have a cube and you take one small cube out of it. you have 2 actors. but you can delete the one that was sliced off

saving memory

[still pumice]

Quick question, is there a way to move the default CapsuleComponent on player characters? I'm trying to compose the collision out of 2 spheres, one at half height and the other at full height in order for the player to fit into crevices that are half their height. (disabling the top one when the character is in one of these spaces) Is there a way to do this with the default component?

I noticed it only has a Scale transform, and not a Location one.

[proud pivot]

ya I dont have anything better than that. that's probably how I would do it too except make an invisble actor that cuts out an exact cube

[kind estuary]

thats what i will do thank you man

the only thing im not sure is how more expensive is the slicing process than just making thousands of cubes

[trim matrix]

Hmm im working on a 2.5d fighter game, and the camera is following the 1st player. What's the best way to ensure both actors are always in the camera (camera zooms out if either are out of frame)

[devout pecan]

hey peoples i have a question in a tutorial gives a CameraShake when create a blueprint with class but i always have CameraShareBase

in tutorial is this

its the Matinee Camera Shake? rn?

[trim matrix]

From what I have seen there's no way to adjust transform or rotation on colliders as root components. Typically I dynamically change the collider or half height when neededbans switch it back after.

[gusty cypress]

I am using date-time variable to store my in-game timer, I can easily format this to text but how would I make 3 int values (min,sec,mil) all in 1 int to perform math like how long has passed since X time

I feel like if I add all 3 ints it might not work... like 60 secs, 99 mils, would adding them account for this

because if I added them it would think 01:00.00 is smaller than 00:45.21

[royal helm]

How does Unreal handle compatibility with raytracing? If a non RTX supported card is used, does it simply not work? Is there a way via blueprint to check if RTX is supported with the current GPU or not? I have a workaround using the DLSS supported node, but that locks into Nvidia only GPUs, excluding AMD.

I'd like to automatically switch off raytracing effects, and grey out the RTX settings in my options menu whenever it's not supported.

[lyric relic]

Can someone point out what's wrong with this setup, both ChildActor1 and Actor2 have simulate physics on, and when I move the PlayerActor it moves ChildActor1 with it, but Actor2 stays the same.. I was expecting it to move because of the physics constraint which has Linear and Rotation Locked on all Axes.

-> PlayerActor
-> ChildActor1 (not child actor component)
-> Physics Constraint Component connecting ChildActor1 to Actor2
-> Actor2

[mossy mist]

how do i replicate SkeletalComp->RecreatePhysicsState();

[dawn gazelle]

Are you trying to determine the timespan between two datetime variables?

[bright harbor]

i have a system that allows different levels connected to one another, like subareas in mario odyessey, the system works fine, but on one or 2 of the levels, i have multiple player starts, and when i just open the game on one of them the player doesn't spawn in the right spot, it spawns where the player should come from if they came through the door, does anyone know how to easily set a player start as the default one to use unless told otherwise?

[brazen merlin]

hey panda man, check out game mode, sounds like you want to override the way it determines player start

[bright harbor]

ironically, i just took a look in there, because that's where i was setting the player spawn, via the override on the find player start, and i just fixed it

[gusty cypress]

Solved

[dawn gazelle]

Also, did you get my other message about what you're trying to do a couple nights ago? The issue with using datetimes and pausing the game?

#blueprint message

[eternal flax]

i'm trying to Draw Box in Canvas Render Target how would i do that? (how would i convert the Vector to Vector2D)

[flat coral]

I've got a hit result and I'm trying to rotate a Niagara system so that it looks like it's coming out of the surface that was hit. Anyone know what component of the hit result I should be using? I suspect it's the Impact Normal but I dont know how to get a Rotator from that vector

[brazen merlin]

i believe the impact normal returns with the relative up vector

[flat coral]

So in that case I'd make a rotator from the Z axis? That might be it, I tried X axis and the results were odd

[brazen merlin]

try it

[flat coral]

Fuckin weird. Inconsistent results depending on which wall I shoot. I wonder if my niagara system is using absolute coords for some stuff.

[brazen merlin]

maybe it is x

[flat coral]

YUP scratch all that, I turned on Local Space on all my emitters, I'd missed the biggest one

it works now 🙂

Thanks!

[brazen merlin]

alright

[flat coral]

Man I dunno why Local Space defaults to off. That's been the source of like 3/4 of my weirdest niagara issues

[brazen merlin]

itll stick eventually

[sage heron]

Hello everyone. Quick question. Can I rotate a bone in the actor blueprints? From a skeletal mesh? Or do I have to setup a Anim Blueprint to do it through it? (the object has like 5-6 bones on it and I wanna rotate only 2 of them)

[timber knoll]

Then you’re looking for anti roll forces

Rocket league had a GDC talk for example with a lot of these topics covered

https://nccastaff.bournemouth.ac.uk/jmacey/MastersProject/MSc12/Srisuchat/Thesis.pdf

And here’s someone’s thesis about some of the physics

You basically will want to calculate based on suspension how much the car is leaning sideways

And then add a force on each side based on compression which will make the car stabilise faster

Here’s one on anti roll: http://projects.edy.es/trac/edy_vehicle-physics/wiki/TheStabilizerBars

[timber knoll]

Have you tried set bone rotation by name?

I’m not sure it’s possible, but that’s a node I’ve found

[hybrid ether]

What is proper way to make this work? input is actor class ref but I want to spawn building with default value. First pic: cant select default value. Second pic spawn parent object only.

[spark steppe]

you would change the input of your event to BB_Master_Building Class Reference

[gritty plover]

Look, I know this is gonna sound stupid, but how do I add a delay to a ForEachLoop node so that there's a delay between each loop?

Just dumping a delay at the end there doesn't really work

[spark steppe]

you don't

what you can do is make an for loop in it's own event which recalls itself with the new start index once a iteration is done

however, even that is a bit wonky

[gritty plover]

Huh. Thanks, I suppose.

[icy dragon]

Recreate the For Each Loop macro but with delay in it

[gritty plover]

Yeah I just did that. Too many hacky solutions online.