blueprint

[gentle urchin]

which makes this even more questionable

[brazen merlin]

@timber knoll you're looking particularly formal this year 😛

[timber knoll]

😂 it was a random thing from yesterday with friends

A very formal voice channel haha

[brazen merlin]

lolwut?

formal != discord

[timber knoll]

What do you mean by this btw?

[steady thicket]

I initialized the size to 4 because I thought that the BP would get an error if they access the specific indices like 0,1,2,3 when setting the actors I placed.

[timber knoll]

With copy I mean you would still lose the previous size

But it wouldn’t do a resize operation is what I’m thinking

[timber knoll]

You would go out of bounds yes, but the main issue is the C++ code gets run before your levelBP BeginPlay

[steady thicket]

I don't think there's an Actor array in BP

[timber knoll]

There is

[steady thicket]

where can I access that? XD

[eternal reef]

Just create an actor variable in your level blueprint and in the details pannel switch it to array

[timber knoll]

Wouldn’t it just be TArray<AActor*> exposed to blueprint

Been a while since I worked with UE C++ tho so 😓

[steady thicket]

this is what I'm doing before

[timber knoll]

Yeah but you’re setting the values on BeginPlay

[brazen merlin]

thats right, succumb to the ease of bp 😈

[timber knoll]

Not in the parameter itself

[gentle urchin]

That's probably true. Haven't gotten to a point where i'd need to check it. ^^

[timber knoll]

Nah I’ve been working on my exams 😛 no time for UE

[brazen merlin]

lol, i can relate, was writing papers in nov

[gentle urchin]

I was talking more figuratively as the array will get resized from the copy, not the actual Resize() operation

[timber knoll]

Your C++ code on beginplay will only be aware of what BPs have in the parameters and components before playing the game

[brazen merlin]

id be happy to help btw, instead of just spit out quips, but thats a long read to figure out whats wrong 😂

[eternal reef]

We are all in the same boat - unreal slackers is good for procrastination

[timber knoll]

🙈 I’m not procrastinating, I study game dev haha

[eternal reef]

Should have picked a games related topic for my thesis, oh well 😅

Check the variables you are feeding into the array, are they static meshes?

[proper umbra]

In my editor game, I have actors that cast to the player character. However, in the packaged game, the logs seem to say that the player is pending kill. ANyone know a workaround?

[timber knoll]

I think you should just check if the references are valid, before casting

I got you abaddon 😂

[eternal reef]

I like your little addition youve made there

[worthy rock]

Is there some sort of goto BP command just to clean the wires up a bit when you're jumping from one group of commands to another?

Always hire a qualified elechicken to do your wiring for you.

[timber knoll]

You’ve got me very confused haha

[brazen merlin]

like an auto arrange?

[proper umbra]

Thanks for the quick response. The player was valid but It seems that it was just an error in how I put the code. Thanks for the quick reponse 👍

[worthy rock]

More like so you don't have to have a wire stretching across stuff like that.

But I suppose I could jump move the top block of code to the right.

[brazen merlin]

Some of that cant be avoided - functions can help in certain cases - but for this, because theres an event, you can CreateEvent

[timber knoll]

Well blueprints is supposed to be from left to right

you already have all those things on top

[eternal reef]

Not so formal anymore it seems

[timber knoll]

Back to happy peepo!

[eternal reef]

In the end you have to find your own "style"
There are many ways of structuring your Code like using functions, macros, custom events, etc.

[timber knoll]

as conrad said, if you really want it to be above the beginplay: use an event to make it more readable

It's really weird, with blueprints I always work with functions and events
only do that in code when necessary 🙈

[brazen merlin]

Uhh.. blueprints execute left to right bcuz thats the exec flow....

Event begin play is the first thing to fire for this graph

[eternal reef]

Well "technically" you could go from right to left

[timber knoll]

I will come knock on your door personally if you do that 😂

[icy dragon]

كما ينبغي أن يكون

[feral ice]

There is a node called get velocity whats the name for the node set velocity

[timber knoll]

Set Physics Linear Velocity

If we are talking physics based at least

[dusky harbor]

Hey,
I am trying to make a blueprint, who randomize only the numbers in this variables.
No Max Value and no Min Value only one of the number between the variables
Does anybody know, how can i do it?

[timber knoll]

you want to basically have one of the three?

make a random number being 1, 2 or 3

1 = A
2 = B
3 = C

an array would probably be easier to use (random index between 0 and size-1)

[whole girder]

Hi Community!
Simple question: What might be the best approach to interact with objects in the world?
Using sphere trace by channel(or smth similar) or create for each interactable object its own collision to detect overlapping when the player hit it?

[timber knoll]

Really depends on some factors

is it 3rd/1st person, then you might want the player to look at objects
topdown/2D you could do sphere trace

own collision in case you want more flexible approach and different hitboxes depend on use case of the interactable

[eternal reef]

If you have many objects that can be next to each other overlapping can be annoying, especially when they are swappable like Weapon Pickups

[brazen merlin]

What Eezeh said but even simpler. Use an array then use one of the randomFromArray nodes

[eternal reef]

I prefer to do manual pickups for things that are important like weapons for example
While potions are just automatically picked up with an overlap
But I guess it really depends on what you are doing

[timber knoll]

oh theres a node to do that with arrays 🤔 the more you know

[gentle urchin]

New one I think ^^

[onyx token]

would it be doable to not inherit the character controller that comes with ue4 - but make your own in blueprints?

[faint pasture]

Do you mean character movement component?

[onyx token]

hmm i guess so...
Well although for my needs it'd actually be fine to still use the character movement component but just have my own skeleton mesh

[gentle urchin]

I dont think you easily get around atleast using their base cpp controller as a parent

[onyx token]

because my problem is-
For some reason - when you add a character, the skeletal mesh is rotated by -90°

[faint pasture]

I think he's speaking Unity, where a character controller does what our CMC does.

[gentle urchin]

Oh, my bad then ^^

[onyx token]

and i'm trying to rotate spine bones based on where the camera looks, so i need the character rotation & the camera boom rotation

but if the character mesh rotation is -90° - it doesn't work well

[faint pasture]

CMC has nothing to do with the mesh being rotated.

[onyx token]

well if you go and add a character actor, it gets inherited right

[timber knoll]

rotate it in your import settings

[faint pasture]

Show your mesh asset

Is it facing x axis?

[timber knoll]

then you can have it without rotation inside the blueprint

[onyx token]

well it's just a-

problem is

if you want to have the Y axis the front one

you need to rotate it by -90°

[faint pasture]

You don't want to do that. X is forward in unreal.

[onyx token]

but why is the arrow on +Y then?

[faint pasture]

Thing.forward is x axis.

That's local y

[onyx token]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/847253861403197471/928602712063504444/UE4Editor_2yPQcIBjq5.mp4

[faint pasture]

Because that mesh is imported facing y

Just spin it in the bp

[onyx token]

yea, by 270° right?

[steep tartan]

Hey, can someone help me? When I try to open some specific blueprint classes I get this error. Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000040 from UE4Editor_Kismet. Yesterday it all worked fine, nothing was changed since then...

[faint pasture]

Don't rely on the mannequin, it's been facing y since forever. No clue why it does tho, just a relic if the past

[onyx token]

here's my issue:

i'm using these couple of nodes

to rotate the spine

so my characters head always looks in the direction of the camera

but if the mesh is perpetually rotated by -90°

i'm screwed

[faint pasture]

Your character or the ue4 mannequin?

[onyx token]

mesh mannequin, sry

not the character, i'm using the mesh as a base, because the character has the whole "rotate based on movement" thing going on - which i could disable - but then the legs wouldn't rotate, which i want

this is stupid to explain, hang on

[hybrid ether]

Why this prints only 0 everytime?

[faint pasture]

If you're not using a mesh which is aligned correctly on import then you're wasting your time. Do that first.

Or build your whole system assuming a charmesh facing Y, however you want to do it.

[onyx token]

to show what i mean - basically this is what results due to the -90°

the idea is - the feet rotate like normal with WASD - and i'm using the standard character controller for those-

But i cancel the rotation out with the spine bones

that way the character always looks in the direction of the camera

which works - if only there wasn't those -90°

[faint pasture]

Turn on your capsule visualization so you can tell what's animating and what's just rotating with the actor and things will be more clear.

[onyx token]

capsule visulalisation?

[timber knoll]

colliders are hidden in game by default, you can change it in the details

[onyx token]

oh you mean if i rotate the character with like a bunch of blendspace animations?

dw, that's not happening, i'm purposefully doing it this way to avoid blendspaces

[timber knoll]

think it's just to make sure the problem isn't with the capsule rotation

but i suppose the capsule is following your movement direction anyway

[onyx token]

yeah

it's just the standard third person character

press D - capsule turns right. Press A - it turns left

that's why the feet rotate that way

[dusky harbor]

Anyone with an idea how could I do it.
It depends on random value which number for X and Y I receive 🧐

[gentle urchin]

pick two random, get their X and Y ?

Result.X = Get(rand()).X
Result.Y = Get(rand()).Y

[spark steppe]

oO

does he really want x/y from a different array element?

sounds like he just wants get random item from the array (if his UE version has that node), or random int in range 0 - last array index as input for the array get node

[feral ice]

What am i doing wrong? I am just trying to get the location between two points and its all messed up.

[gentle urchin]

It could be, it wasnt obvious to me with that attatched drawing xP

[spark steppe]

@feral ice plug both locations in a vector lerp node and set the alpha to 0.5

[gentle urchin]

(LocA + LocB) / 2

you'd only have to add world pos if you were working in local space

[gentle urchin]

there's also this

[spark steppe]

yea but only since 4.27(?)

[gentle urchin]

true

I guess that's not always given

[willow phoenix]

there is also "random in range", but i love to shuffle. feels like casino-card-mixing, but i guess its based of the computing time so its not really random when you get a random number in ue4 :3

[spark steppe]

also shuffle is way more cpu "intense"

[hexed glade]

Hi everyone. I'm having a problem with this equipment system using child components. Whenever I run the function it tries to equip the base component despite the print string retrieving the child component name. Anyone got an idea what is going on?

[zealous fog]

OK this is my issue. I have a projectile BP that can be spawned by enemies or my player character. When they spawn it the send in a few variables. How do I prevent the enemy bullets from hitting the enemies, and my characters projectiles from hitting my character?

[timber knoll]

If you're using collision, I would just set a collision preset

[gentle urchin]

correct collision setting, check for tag etc

[zealous fog]

But they spawn the same projectible blueprint

Would I need to make 1 for enemies and 1 for myself?

[gentle urchin]

nah, but you have an instigator,

you could attatch a team tag to the bullet

or use the instigators tag

[timber knoll]

you could also have a function that you call right after creating

[zealous fog]

Cheers I'll try it out

[timber knoll]

to swap these things around at runtime whenever you want

[icy dragon]

<@&213101288538374145>

[dusky harbor]

Thank you for the answers!
I think, that i am trying to do something other and i didn't explain it right.
Here a photo what i wanna do.
If the random number is 1 . I want to reset the coordinates to new location of X = 150, Y=-200, Z=27.
If the random number is 2 , then X=350, Y=-100, Z=27
...
How can i connect each of them to "New location" if is it possible.

The final goal is, that i want to reset the location of my target only at certain coordinates

[timber knoll]

then you should save the locations to the array

so you have an array of 3 vectors

then get the random index, and just pass the value from the array

which also solves connecting each since there will be just one pin 🙂

[snow sand]

recently I started exploring collab viewer template. i am trying to run build for windows 64.i am able to connect with other users on same LAN network but could not connect with users on internet. KINDLY GUIDE

[steady apex]

I've got a blueprint derived from UStaticMeshComponent which I'm creating in my actor, but when I call DestroyComponent on it in the actor blueprint, the component doesn't actually get destroyed. Any idea what might be causing this?

[timber knoll]

#multiplayer

ah I see you already asked there

[timber knoll]

hard to tell without more context

where do you destroy it and how does the actor look like?

[steady apex]

I think I solved it

I just moved the destroy call into the component blueprint itself and now it works

[blissful widget]

Am I missing something, or can actors components not have timelines in them? Kinda rules out a lot of possibilities for components 🤔

[trim matrix]

Whoops wrong channel

[willow phoenix]

@dusky harbor draw out from one of your vectors and use "select", maybe that will help

[hexed glade]

Did some more testing with the equipment system and I noticed in the world outliner that the weapon appears to attach to the character, yet it still stays put on the ground.

[blissful widget]

My janky one for example

I have a scene component on each socket, and switch them between the components... seems to work

[rose elbow]

anyone able to give me and indication of how I would make the character look towards the mouse cursor as well as shoot towards the cursors location? trying to do it for a 2.5d side scroller but I can't find anything online to help

[odd ember]

get hit location under cursor, break vector, use depth of character

[gentle urchin]

They cant directly but you can pass in a timeline if that helps

[odd ember]

components can't have components

timeline is a component

[blissful widget]

Ah cheers, might have to resort to that eventually 🙂

[rose elbow]

so I have this code in now to change the rotation but the mouse cursor isn't actually moving for some reason

[languid hemlock]

i wanted to ask something about blueprints basically i wanna make a mario kart styled item box and wanted to ask how i could make one as all resources i can find are well closed source :(

[blissful widget]

What part of the pickup are you struggling with?

[languid hemlock]

basically with everything tbh >w< like the item box dissapears but its the item giving part where i struggle with basically i wanna make my item appear behind the player

[blissful widget]

That would be attaching a component to your player character, to a specific socket maybe

Basically the same deal as equipping a sword isn't it?

[languid hemlock]

and also the item giving part where its like doesnt give ebverytime a different items tho i just got 3 implemented rn into my game

[languid hemlock]

uuuh i guess >w< sry i barely work with unreal but our college basically wants us to create a mario kart styled game with items and we have to finish it in 3 weeks

its just the item part where im rn struggling with if i could fix that than a huge rock would be lifted :P

[blissful widget]

The above still applies, it's not particularly different conceptually to equipping a sword for example is it?

[languid hemlock]

ye i guess

is there a tutorial youd recomenned for equiping stuff?

[blissful widget]

BP sets are allegedly immutable, but adding/ deleting nodes in them works still... UE docs 🤔

[earnest tangle]

Yeah I just checked the source out of curiosity, they most definitely are not immutable lol

[smoky marsh]

I'm guessing by that they mean the items in a set can't be changed, so you could remove something, edit it, and put it back, but you couldn't get a reference, do something to it and expect it fixed the original item

Its very poorly worded don't get me wrong, but that's my hunch anyways

[languid hemlock]

btw uh may i ask would yall say to use a item database just for 3 items? >.>

[smoky marsh]

Scalability

[earnest tangle]

@smoky marsh I don't think that would work because it would suggest that for example if you were to store actors in it, it would end up duplicating them every time you tried to access them

[smoky marsh]

I think it would just make a copy every time you tried to change it,but not if you just needed a reference to it. Say you have an array that takes up x amount of bytes, for some reason you've decided to store it in a set, now that array can only ever have that size

[earnest tangle]

It doesn't work like that in C++ so I'm not sure why they would change it to work like that in BP's 🤔

[smoky marsh]

The note about it currently being immutable in BP might be why

I'm guessing the set is actually just a set of pointers and not actually the container

So they set it like this for idk, safety I guess, bp limitations, someone else might have a better clue

[earnest tangle]

Well I'm looking at the C++ implementation of it and it doesn't really do anything like that so it looks like just a goof in the docs tbh :D

[smoky marsh]

Lemme give it a one over as well, I'm curious now

[earnest tangle]

It's in Containers/Set and BlueprintSetLibrary

[smoky marsh]

Looks like pointers to these eyes

[earnest tangle]

Yeah, and the set library just takes refs as parameters with void return which does suggest it's definitely mutating the input

[rose elbow]

I'm not sure how to properly describe my issue but pretty much I've now made it that the mouse cursor is visible at all times as it is currently a crosshair and when the player left clicks it shoots towards the cursor/crosshair. But for some reason when I left click the cursor will disappear and it won't shoot, it will only shoot if I double click.

its got something to do with unreal when you hold left click it just hides the cursor?

[toxic trout]

i'm copying this blueprint from unreal's official fluid surface tutorial, and my project doesn't like the "static mesh component" nodes. i can't make them from within my own editor, and copy-pasting them in from the website throws errors. following the tutorial, i have a "static mesh" type variable but no "static mesh component" type. is there a way i can work around this?

[spark steppe]

you get them by adding a static mesh component to your blueprint

which is not done by adding a variable, but above that on the blueprint hierarchy is an add button, search for static mesh component

if you now hold ctrl while selecting the component and drag it to the blueprint graph, it would give you the variable reference

[toxic trout]

thank you! they really ought to be more clear on stuff like this in official tutorials

[languid hemlock]

may i ask uh so basically my object needs the e key to get picked up but i would like if it it immidially could get collected without having to press e

[blissful widget]

Give the object a collider and pick it up on overlap with player

[languid hemlock]

uuuh how do i add an collider? >.>

[blissful widget]

Is that something Google may have an answer for maybe?

The UE Learning Centre definitely covers it in the intro to BP as well, IIRC, which should be required completion before joining here 😅

[languid hemlock]

oooh oki

ye i mostly work with godot or SFML but we had to use Unreal for the School Project without any prior knowledge

[slender idol]

Hey whats the go to solution for handling camera bobbing and movement? I find timelines to be a bit unwieldly and the camera shake component seems a bit too random for an attack camera animation for example.

[languid hemlock]

tho im fucking stupid i finnaly found out how to add an collider

[earnest tangle]

gotta start from somewhere

doesn't mean you're stupid if you don't know everything lol

[blissful widget]

Stupid is a strong word, but we're all clueless when it comes to things we are inexperienced in.

[chrome fractal]

spring arm probe collision not working when I change the target arm length of spring. Anyone knows please help

[south merlin]

I've got a gun that has standard vars, like magazine size, rate of fire, damage. Stuff you would expect. I add these to the gun in the construction script. If I have a modifier that lives on the player (+1 to magazine size). Can I grab that var from the player and add it to the magazine size in the construction script? Or should I do that in event begin play for the gun? I'm not sure the order things execute.

[rose elbow]

right so I have this code for a full auto rifle, the sequence is connected to left mouse button and when its first pressed it works fine, but after the first time doing it the code doesn't work unless I double click the left mouse button. Anyone got any idea why this is?

[vapid flume]

are blueprints bad?
any Games Created 100% Fully with Blueprints?
||
don't misunderstand it 🤐 ||

[earnest tangle]

Bad no, 100% bp's yes, afaik for example Epic's Robo Recall is BP's only

But more complex games will usually benefit from using C++ alongside BP's as it can offer advantages, and not all engine features are available in BP's

[blissful widget]

I think Mortal Shell is close to BP only, as they ran into issues with nativization for example. It's a soulslike

I'm sure there's lots more examples too

[tight schooner]

A lot of game engines offer something like a "scripting language" and BP is UE4's version of that. It's meant to be the primary avenue for creating game logic and prototyping stuff as it's a lot faster to work with compared to continually recompiling C++

For complex projects that need C++, Epic still intends you to use BP and C++ together

[icy dragon]

Something like this?
https://www.tomlooman.com/unreal-engine-render-character-wounds/

[vapid flume]

some says visual scripting is bad! what do u tell about it?

[icy dragon]

Most of those are coming from typed programming elitism.

In reality it's a balancing act and more importantly getting shit done.

[vapid flume]

i see many YouTubers teach to use blueprint than c++

[odd ember]

because blueprints are easier

and it allows people to shortcut certain rules programming has setup

so you can make rapid prototyping at the cost of well established architecture

[tight schooner]

Yeah the article seems to suggest sphere masks, which is a material graph node iirc. Whatever technique you use depends on what you need the effect to look like (is it like a wound or does the whole body part glow?) and how long it needs to persist (does it need to track with character animation?)
Maybe ask #graphics or #visual-fx for ideas. I've never dealt with exactly this thing before.

[onyx token]

is there a node that lets me point an object to this lil cube that i have (it's a child of my camera object) ?

like always just point to it

[pine hatch]

Hi everybody.. i have a problem regarding my Blueprint . It is a water volume so i added a plain with water texture and a box collision below... i tagged the box collision to water, than for my camera controllers on begin overlap event i add the post process if it collide with something with the water tag .. in the editor it works perfectly but as soon i built it the event doesn't run anymore .. i added print string nodes to find out and it prints in editor but not in the build. Ps : i builded as development so i can still see the prints in the build.. i wonder if anybody had the same issue or have some idea how could i fix it.

[dark crow]

Find look at rotation

Or i think you can lock the camera to it?

[onyx token]

look at rotation

well- what i want to do

is point the head of my character to that little cube

problem is, the head of my character (the bone) runs on relative rotation

and my character rotates using WASD and rotates based on camera rotation

so i need some way to either basically make the head bone rotation world rotation

Or just skip all of it and use a lookat

[dark crow]

Look at gets the starting location and end location and calculates the rotation needed to look at it

It can be done multiple ways, even with an aim offset or you indeed just rotate the head bone

[onyx token]

hmm that does sound exactly like what i'm looking for

it takes a vector tho

and all i got is a rotation

can i just convert it?

[dark crow]

WorldLocation of your Character and WorldLocation of the Cube i think then use the Rotator to SetRotation or such

Gotta see what fits the Start the best in this case

[onyx token]

ooh i need a location

ok that makes more sense

is that node expensive? I'd need to run it every tick

[dark crow]

Should be fine

[eternal reef]

Custom Loop that updates just every 0.1 seconds or so? Might be less expensive then running on tick

[onyx token]

god damnit, never mind it still doesn't work

because the bone is on a relative rotation

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/847253861403197471/928696445681414144/UE4Editor_FY3EgsG9yn.mp4

[timber knoll]

for look at to work it, forward = x axis

you could just save the relative rotation at start and use that to decide the actual rotation after look at

[dark crow]

You setting the rotation in the AnimBP?

[onyx token]

yeah

[dark crow]

Pretty sure there's an option to use World Space

[odd ember]

custom loop?

🤔

[dark crow]

If you click on the Node and dig into the details

[onyx token]

i'm basically modifying the bone rotation of a bunch of spine bones

[dark crow]

Ye, click one

Rotation Space

World Space

[onyx token]

hmmm ok i felt stupid, and put it to world space, but it didn't change anything

[eternal reef]

Custom Tick would be a more appropriate naming I guess
Basically just a timer

[native ferry]

hey i have an anim montage and i want to it to loop it a certain number of times, is it possible?

[dark crow]

Actually Unreal :p

[odd ember]

how many characters will need this behavior?

[onyx token]

only my player

[odd ember]

then performance wise tick isn't an issue

[onyx token]

it's so when i'm in combat mode, my character always looks towards where my third person camera is looking

well-

it doesn't seem to work anywho so...

[odd ember]

plus all your nodes have lightning bolts, which means they run on the animation thread instead of the game thread

[feral ice]

is there a node that take in two vectors and spits out an angle

[odd ember]

atan2?

not the cheapest way to do it but eh

[feral ice]

that takes in two floats

[coarse forge]

for random playing of the loop each play in the timer.. ks that Time, Initial Start Delay, or Initial Start Delay Variance and would it calc a new range each time the timer fires or no?

[odd ember]

uh my bad, dot product is what you're looking for

[maiden wadi]

Blueprint Cons: (Avoiding people's personal preference issues here like not liking node based design)

•Blueprints are slower to execute the same logic that C++ would and this causes problems with heavier code. This is immensely true for any sort of math equations as you have to copy the values around a lot instead of being able to reuse them and each node has to recalculate the things it's using every time something pulls a value from it. Sorting is another major flaw here. You have to write slow executing, complex blueprint functions to redo what is a single line of C++ code using a predicate to sort an array.

•Blueprints are designed on top of a complex framework of C++, this means that they only have access to what that C++ allows them to. This makes changing game framework extremely difficult without simply redoing the entire system from start. There are thousands of virtual functions in C++ that are not blueprint exposed that are extremely helpful.

•Blueprint structs are extremely unstable. One bad compile change can corrupt blueprints using those structs. Possibly a fault with the generation code. This has been less of an issue in recent releases, but it still happens. It makes altering structs in BP very dangerous. In C++, this is not an issue as long as you do not rename variables.

•Blueprints are not text based. They are binary files and this makes diffing them in source control mostly impossible. This causes strong problems with people working on the same code base. When most logic is in C++ this is less of an issue because most of the changes are there and there may be minor BP overlap that can be easily corrected with a second source control commit.

Blueprint Pros:

•Blueprints are extremely fast to iterate in. You can change logical order and test it much faster than in C++. This is due to BP compiling much faster. Even livecoding can't really match this. This makes Blueprints extremely nice to prototype in. You can get a good idea of what you want your logic flow to be in a very efficient manner and then translate that to C++ and optimize it there if necessary.

•Blueprints require less to learn. An example of this. Lets do the steps of starting a new project and creating an actor that prints on beginplay. You download the engine, you start a new project, you are in the content browser. To create a new blueprint actor, you simply right click on the content browser, drag off of the beginplay and type PrintString, add the node and you're done. In C++, you have to first close the editor, download an IDE like Visual Studio. Create a new C++ .h and .cpp file. In those files you have to set up your includes, write your UCLASS(Which means knowing class naming conventions, what specifiers you'll use, knowing to add GeneratedBody macro, a default constructor, etc), add your virtual void BeginPlay() override function, implement that in the cpp file, then you can write your print code after adding the kismet library include. Now you can compile and restart the UE4 editor and use your actor.

•The next is the biggest pro to me. But it is also a severe problem with allowing designers access to assets and code without them understanding how pointers work. That is that Blueprints have access to everything easily. Need an image in a widget or a static mesh in an actor? Just search for it by name. you don't need to know a source path to the asset or anything. This is fantasic because it allows very easy access to your whole project without having to hard code asset locations like you would in C++.

[feral ice]

Yeah thats what its called thank you

forgot the name

[maiden wadi]

@feral ice

[onyx token]

wall of text

[feral ice]

yes exactly thanks @maiden wadi

[odd ember]

#blueprintessays

[coarse forge]

lol can i repost my question then "essay"

[odd ember]

try it

[coarse forge]

hmm

[eternal reef]

If I remember correctly it checks the input everytime

Well atleast the Time Input, im pretty certain on that one

[quasi kayak]

wrong mention lol

[coarse forge]

lol

[eternal reef]

Sorry about that one lol

[maiden wadi]

@coarse forgeThat only calculates when that node is ran.

[coarse forge]

in this case.. once because begin play

[maiden wadi]

Looping timers will remain the same. If you need a changing timer, you have to have a timer that doesn't loop and will call the set timer each time.

[coarse forge]

hmm

[odd ember]

calling timers to set timers

that's next level

calling timers to set timers on tick

now you're thinking

[coarse forge]

trying to see if i can do this without timers hahah

and not sure I want that much on tick

these are playing sounds

[odd ember]

use an event track with a timeline perhaps?

[crude dew]

Hi not sure if this is the place but if you had a "MasterItem Blueprint" which then made children say for example a Sword (Melee weapon), Grenade (Ranged Weapon) and a Healing Potion (Obv) would you

These children would have various functions Sword - Attack , Grenade - Throw, and HealingPotion - Heal X person who collects it.

Would you have the functions of Attack on the Sword or the Player who collected the sword? same with the Grenade and healing potion ?

Hope this makes sense, I will try to upload an example blueprint. 🙂

[odd ember]

player calls the function on the weapon

or player calls the function on the item

[crude dew]

So it would be something like "Player X collects the sword", "Then player X hits the mouse button and then get cast to sword -> attack ?

[odd ember]

you can probably abstract it to be a Use() function

[crude dew]

in laymans terms xD

[odd ember]

you don't need a cast

you just call the function

the sword Use() could be an attack

but the healing potion Use() could be healing

the grenade Use() would be a throw

etc.

[crude dew]

Ahh yes i never thought about that.

as i had a MasterItem which had a Blueprint interface which had functions of Throw(Grenade), and Attack (Melee Weapons) and UseItem(HealingPotions) so they would all inherit these functions from the master ?

[odd ember]

you dont need an interface

and you dont need separate functions

[crude dew]

so just make them inside the masteritem blueprint?

[rain moss]

Anyone know how I would go about getting more information about a node in blueprint? For example how can I know what As VRPawn is doing?

[odd ember]

in your master/base blueprint, create a Use or UseItem function and leave it blank (or returning a bool or something)

[crude dew]

have a Use inside the master and then every child you create you make a use function for each individual item ?

[odd ember]

you can then make inheritance hierarchies that increasingly add functionality

[crude dew]

Ahh thank you that makes sense! 🙂

[odd ember]

so the base weapon blueprint would start using UseItem as an attack

but still keep it generic

[maiden wadi]

@rain mossThat is a variable. It's type is a pointer to an object. Pretty sure you just have to spend time in the engine and learn the environment.

[rain moss]

Yeah for sure I am very new thank you for you help! @maiden wadi

[maiden wadi]

Feel free to ask questions here as well.

[crude dew]

i thought i would try to use an interface but maybe thats overcomplicating things when it doesnt need to be. I,ve not really used interfaces yet so not too sure how they differentiate to functions.

[odd ember]

interfaces are if you have multiple hierarchies that need to share functionality

so maybe you want Use() to be a thing for NPCs too

NPCs obviously aren't items

but with an interface you could have the same functionality

[coarse forge]

is this on the right track?

[odd ember]

so Use() for NPCs maybe calls their TalkTo() functionality

whereas on items it calls UseItem()

[crude dew]

Sorry im really new to interfaces how would it differentiate like if the NPC walked into the sword weapon and then you had a behaviour if npc close enough to player Use() weapon?

[odd ember]

that's got nothing to do with interfaces, that just a function of what happens when you swing the sword

[crude dew]

I,ve seen videos and tutorials on them but its a lot of "do this and do that" oh look you have a workiung interface but doesnt quite tell you why

[coarse forge]

you could use overlap events to set a variable

[odd ember]

most people use interfaces wrong

more often than not, you don't need interfaces

[coarse forge]

Most people are trying to use timers wrong.. ha hahaha...ha..

[crude dew]

I think i need to do a lot more reading on when and how to use interfaces xD but im only about 7mths into UE

[odd ember]

they are very abstract, which is why they don't allow for functionality implementation

forget about interfaces

really

[crude dew]

Ok 😉

thank you for the help!

[maiden wadi]

@crude dew Good example of interface versus inheritance. You have a button press that line traces to interact with something.

You want to open a trade menu when used on other players, you want to open an interaction menu when using it on ally AI, you want to cause ally AI to attack. These can all inherit from your pawn class and be the same function override in each child class or instance difference.

But then you want to line trace and pick up an object. Now you need an interface. But instead of interfacing to every single class, still consider the hierarchies. You can make a single class of AInteractableActor that has the interface and then other classes of that which can handle that interaction through inheritance.

Like say, ADoor, and then APickupable. These need to do different things but can inherit from AInteractableActor.

The only classes in this scenario that use the actual interface is the PawnBase, and AInteractableActor. But now you can have wildly different use cases for everything without repetition.

[odd ember]

interfaces are generally not accomplishing something that can't be done better by using event dispatchers (which people seem completely oblivious to), or just plain inheritance

[crude dew]

@maiden wadi Thank you for that explanation!

[odd ember]

only really in the instance of multiple hierarchies do they do what they are made for

[maiden wadi]

In a perfect code base, interfaces are useless. You'd just put the virtual function higher in the tree. But when you can't change basic architecture, it's your only decent option.

[odd ember]

perfect code base

the dream

0 entropy

[coarse forge]

Maybe this language hahah

[odd ember]

0 tech debt

[maiden wadi]

The unicorn.

[coarse forge]

tech debt is job security

[maiden wadi]

Only if you work for someone who doesn't know better.

[coarse forge]

They all work for me.. soo... 🙂

[maiden wadi]

There's always something else to be made.

[coarse forge]

If product can't get me feature stories.. we do tech debt

my engineers always have something to work on

different work though.. not game related

[maiden wadi]

I don't think my personality would let me do that. Too much of a stickler for doing it the correct way. Mostly because I'm lazy. Correct means me not fixing it later.

[coarse forge]

so.. you can't call a function from a function ...

hmm

[maiden wadi]

Wut?

[coarse forge]

well i have an idea to ditch the timer

and just play my function with a delay during tick with a am i playing flag

but.. delay node isn't available in a function

no exist

[native ferry]

sorry for asking again but is it possible to loop an animation a certain number of times?

[odd ember]

why do I feel like #audio has a better solution to your timer issue?

[coarse forge]

because its not an audio issue

[odd ember]

anything is possible

[native ferry]

well

yeah probably

but how

[odd ember]

magic, presumably

have you asked in #animation ?

[native ferry]

i'm doing it in a blueprint

[native ferry]

i mean not an anim bp

[coarse forge]

this one is in hud...

[odd ember]

well maybe, just maybe #animation would still be the place to go

[native ferry]

i'll see thanks

[maiden wadi]

@coarse forge Loopable timer with variable differences.

[native ferry]

i don't think i'm gonna get any response

[inland stone]

I need help, i have a simple blueprint that allows me aim around the mesh when i press a button and when not press it will return to its original point, the problem is that if the mesh strafe and rolls when aiming the spring arm controlling the camera returns tilted is there a node that resets its rotatiion

[coarse forge]

Thanks man

[odd ember]

rule #2 of this server

[native ferry]

my bad

[coarse forge]

Thx, so in this case my actual function i want executed goes in the HandleTimerFinished event correct? I've only ever used the timer by function name

[maiden wadi]

With what I posted, you'd run the stuff in TimerFinishedLogic. It calls that before checking if the timer should rerun.

[trim matrix]

idk how to get help but my stamina doesnt increase or decrease

[coarse forge]

thx

[dreamy musk]

I've been using UE4 for a few months, but somehow I still can't figure out casting at all. I have a simple blueprint in the world that spawns enemies. I want the gamemode to cast to it (for the sake of being able to change difficulty) but I don't know what to put in the wildcard. Every single suggestion I've found for this either looks convoluted and not something I understand, or is in reference to a type of BP that's got an obvious inheritance.
This is just a regular actor blueprint that sits in the level, and I have no idea what it inherits from.

[maiden wadi]

@dreamy musk #blueprint message

[smoky marsh]

Casting basically helps you with nothing, it's a way to check if something is of a type and then to access all it's data and simultaneously bind it if it's a hard reference, what it won't help you is with actually getting the reference

[zealous fog]

Thanks this worked

much easier

[gentle urchin]

Sweet

[zealous fog]

Set it up like this

[gentle urchin]

Exactly

[gentle urchin]

Unless you wanna do some global search its probably easier to let the spawner wuery the gamemode insteqd, since its globally accessible and all that

[chrome fractal]

Please review this and help if someone knows about that.

[dreamy musk]

But I need the MaxEnemies variable to be globally accessible, since the spawners run off their own MaxEnemies variable

it's set to 4, but that means each one spawns 4, I want 4 to be the max ingame, period

[gentle urchin]

Which is why you could pit it in gamemode, if you find that a suitable spot to have it

Theres a global static get gamemode node

There is no global static get "myCustomActor" node

[maiden wadi]

There is if you make it. 😄

[gentle urchin]

True^^

[odd ember]

there is, on actors

GetGameMode

[gentle urchin]

All can be, if made so

[gentle urchin]

Exactly

[smoky marsh]

There is a global static

❤️

[odd ember]

well gamemode is an actor

so it requires world

and anything that queries it would have to have an excuse for finding a world

hence why objects don't have it

[coarse forge]

you could also make an enemies subsystem to hold and manage all that logic

[gentle urchin]

Which would work perfectly in this case

[astral epoch]

I think I got more async shenanigans breaking certain variables.

[gentle urchin]

But may be way out of scope :p

[odd ember]

subsystems are the best

[gentle urchin]

Cant wait to start with async. Need to up my trace performance

[odd ember]

async trace?

[gentle urchin]

Ye

[odd ember]

👀

[coarse forge]

It could hold your max enemies, and your spawning of enemies, and when one dies, etc you want to spawn another one.. accessable from everywhere

[gentle urchin]

Purely for path tracing

[astral epoch]

I'm using a macro to load character data and then spawn them in. Needs an input int for setting array stuff. Currently the macros are being called like this

[smoky marsh]

Did I read async trace?

[astral epoch]

However they all seem to use the last int value passed.

[smoky marsh]

I'm interested

[astral epoch]

Can I not have multiple instances I guess of the same macro running at once?

[maiden wadi]

What macro? Those are functions.

[astral epoch]

Oh yeah; I had to make an event that calls the macro because the macro exists in the parent class.

[maiden wadi]

Those are inside of the macro?

[astral epoch]

That's in the parent class.

[tribal kernel]

hey how do i change the starting character

to a normal character

[gentle urchin]

Gamemode^

[tribal kernel]

instead of the ball?

[astral epoch]

Gamemode

[smoky marsh]

What does your macro look like

[maiden wadi]

@astral epoch And I assume you have some form of latent nodes in the macro?

[astral epoch]

Yes. Async Load Class Asset.

It reads that input soft reference.

Hence spawning different characters with one thing.

[astral epoch]

Give me a sec to clean up the print strings.

Load, cast, spawn

Takes the newly spawned character and sets them as the pointer for an array that holds all characters for this squad

That index for the Set Array Elem is the int being passed in.

Which should be 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.

[smoky marsh]

Looks like you're calling em before finishing the load

[astral epoch]

And with a delay after each it works fine. Without, they all end up with the final int value.

[smoky marsh]

Due to your out going into the next instantly

Without just waiting for the complete

[maiden wadi]

Yeah, you're calling the macro multiple times. By the time the async runs, the macro has been ran multiple times so when the async callback runs your variable is set to the last thing.

[astral epoch]

I figured that's the case. But wouldn't macros have multiple instances firing anyways?

[chrome fractal]

Spring arm collision not working if I change arm length at runtime please help on this

[smoky marsh]

Right but your int is being set instantly to the last one

[maiden wadi]

No, a macro is not instanced every time it's ran, it's "instanced" when it's placed in the graph.

[smoky marsh]

It doesn't have time to do it's thing

How come it's macro anyways

[astral epoch]

Cleanliness. It looked a lot worse before and was taking up a lot of space in the graph.

[smoky marsh]

Just chuck it into a function

[astral epoch]

Can't do function. Has latent operations.

[smoky marsh]

Just chuck it into a separate graph

[astral epoch]

Unless we're talking custom events and not actual programming functions?

[smoky marsh]

Right, should've been more clear on that

[maiden wadi]

Logically you need to separate your call and the action.

[astral epoch]

(legit forgot you can make multiple graphs)

[smoky marsh]

Good heavens your poor blueprints

[astral epoch]

Just a bit

Not the worst I've worked with though. Had to pick up the work of someone who put everything on the on tick.

I mean everything.

[smoky marsh]

Ah, a stress test we call those

[astral epoch]

No wonder the game ran terribly on my phone.

[smoky marsh]

And not for your pc

But for you picking it up

[astral epoch]

But yeah, move macro to a graph of its own and calling a custom event instead of a macro should work here?

[maiden wadi]

Not really.

[astral epoch]

Also seems kinda weird that macros aren't inherited by children.

[smoky marsh]

Probably not anyways, just like wait for the async to do its asyncness

I doubt it's slow enough to worry about it

[astral epoch]

I can try that but I don't think it helped?

Since it was calling through the event anyways, it was firing that then letting it run while it ran onto the next character.

[maiden wadi]

Async is always at least a frame behind in most cases. If you want to do it that way, change it to blocking. Otherwise you need to create a system where your calls input data, and the system spawns them from that data and removes it.

[astral epoch]

Delays helped but I don't really want delays everywhere just to fix order of operations.

[smoky marsh]

Have it fire an event when it's finished letting you queue up your next action

With idk a timer trying to fire off the call while waiting

This is just an off the top of my head thing from looking at your setup

[coarse forge]

I fixed some of this in my hud's by overloading a custom intiialized event that fires after begin play to ensure all my widgets were in the game before adding them

[smoky marsh]

Dunno if I'd necessarily do it this way

Couldn't you just increase your current index every time you run the function, that way you wouldn't need to set it to 1 then 2 then
..

[coarse forge]

i haven't done any multi player, but maybe spawn them all, send events to a subsystem that holds that info on is the squad full, then fire event on full to start game

[astral epoch]

To be fair the way I had it before worked... it just looked messy.

But basically instead of using the macro I just had its code copy-pasted for each character spawning.

Which got the arrays correct.

[maiden wadi]

@astral epoch What is ArrayPos? Is that the index that you need to add the spawned actor into an array?

[smoky marsh]

Never be afraid of your shit looking bad, this is just hiding it instead of showing it

[astral epoch]

Yes Authaer, exactly.

[smoky marsh]

Better to clean it than put it under a rug

[maiden wadi]

Sec

[balmy mesa]

So I have two blueprints that are copies of each other, though they aren't children. They both have tick events in them, but when I save and compile one, the other stops firing. Whichever one I compile works but the other just doesn't. Does anybody know what the issue might be?

[odd ember]

copies how?

[balmy mesa]

I copied and pasted one blueprint to make the other, then renamed it

[astral epoch]

Did you copy the Event Tick part too?

[balmy mesa]

yes

[astral epoch]

Could be wrong but I found copying the event things to be janky at best.

[balmy mesa]

So what do you recommend?

[astral epoch]

Its copied into another blueprint right?

[balmy mesa]

yes

[odd ember]

my question is

why did you copy it

[astral epoch]

Then put in a new event tick. Right now what its doing is creating a custom event that has nothing calling it.

And hook it up to the event tick.

[balmy mesa]

cause I don't know what I'm doing and this seemed like the easiest way

[odd ember]

yeah but that aside there's no point to having 2 blueprints with the exact same functionality, unless they are in a hierarchy

and in that case you don't need to copy anything

I swear blueprints will cause the fall of our civilization at some point

[astral epoch]

They will

The inefficiency uprising is coming sooner than you think.

[balmy mesa]

I did that for both of them but it still only works for one at a time

I'm just gonna see if I can figure out parent stuff and get that to work

[odd ember]

delete the code from one of them

parent the non code one to the parent

spawn the non parent

done

[balmy mesa]

yes but I want the non parent one to output a different value than the parent

[odd ember]

so... make that a variable in the parent and set it to a variable, then change that variable in the inherited class to something else?

if you're ever finding yourself repeating code

you're doing something wrong

[balmy mesa]

All of that just flew over my head

[astral epoch]

looks at my macros

indeed.

[balmy mesa]

I understood nothing

[odd ember]

I would go do something like learn.unrealengine.com or similar

until you get the basics

if you continue as you are you'll only dig yourself into a hole

[astral epoch]

You got that on speed-dial?

ah

[odd ember]

there's also a bunch of pins in this channel

true

[toxic trout]

sorry i know this is probably a stupid question but i keep clicking components>add component and adding a static mesh, and nothing appears in my viewport?!

[brazen merlin]

because there is no mesh assigned to it 😛

[maiden wadi]

@astral epoch This should help. This is a simple spawning system that allows you to ask the system to spawn a soft object class and place it into the spawner's array of spawned actors at an index. Added some prints for logical order explanation.

The whole of beginplay is unnecessary and just for show.

[toxic trout]

does anybody know what this error means?

[zealous moth]

is there a way to always make a sprite appear in front of everything else?

[coarse forge]

Did you drop the actor in the level

[toxic trout]

yes

[coarse forge]

looks like you are using a plugin

[toxic trout]

i'm not using a plugin, i've been following this water tutorial https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/RenderTargets/BlueprintRenderTargets/HowTo/FluidSurface/

at least, i don't think i'm using a plugin

[coarse forge]

yeah where is the thing that holds that funciton?

can you show the BP you made?

access none is a null pointer

which means it can't find the thing you are calling

[toxic trout]

i've fixed that error (i just didn't specify a render target at one point)

now i'm not getting any errors but my entire effect just isn't rendering?

it's completely invisible

[coarse forge]

whats the material like?

i'd check that next

[toxic trout]

it's using a couple different materials

(love your url btw)

[coarse forge]

my url?

[fluid rover]

Sorry, something came up yesterday - so when you specify Casting here, I have access to the FadeIn variable, what am I casting to, node-specific? "Cast to Widget"? "Cast to WidgetComponent"?

[toxic trout]

i think i meant handle or whatever, your discord name

[coarse forge]

oh thx

its my company name

[toxic trout]

that's brilliant

what about my material/s do you think i should be checking?

i copied them all from the tutorial

[coarse forge]

um.. well its been a year, but with water there is tranlucency

i would ask in #graphics

they'd be able to help with that much better than i

[toxic trout]

alright i'll ask there, cheers

[brazen merlin]

you are casting the widget component in the bp to the widget class where you made its variables - then the return of that cast is stored as a variable in the former bp

[fluid rover]

Like this?

oh, hang on, might be flubbing it

[brazen merlin]

not CastToWidget

Cast to whatever that widget class was

i cant recall, it was so long ago 😛

[fluid rover]

Hahaha, ancient history

[brazen merlin]

whatever you plugged into the component

Door or something right?

[fluid rover]

Yeah let me check, looking now

"TeleportMenu"

[brazen merlin]

lol way off

Cast to that

[inland stone]

is there a way to reset the spring arm to its original position and rotation?

[brazen merlin]

i think so yes... hang on

should be something that calls it to go back to the behind view of the character

[fluid rover]

Hmm, might be an additional step, but we're on the right track: "TeleportMenu does not inherit from Widget Component"

[terse elm]

whats a good way to disable player collision so you could do a roll or a dash that passes through an opposing actor/enemy? been trying a number of things to no avail. just want to allow them to pass through any other player when rolling/dashing, then enable it when finished

[brazen merlin]

you're not disabling collision, you're changing collision flags 😉

[terse elm]

i am? or i want to?

[brazen merlin]

thats what works for me so i dunno, did you change the FadeWidget variable type to be that of the cast?

[brazen merlin]

to allow the player to still collide with Static but not with other Pawns, yes?

[inland stone]

@brazen merlin Thank you

[terse elm]

yea basically. its just a side by side fighting scenario. and i want the roll to pass through the opponent and other actors. like fireballs and all that sorta thing

so really its like "dont collide with anything except mesh"

well

not mesh

[brazen merlin]

then yes, but again, you'll need to pay attention to how things use collision channels

[terse elm]

basically anything that isnt an actor i suppose

[brazen merlin]

WorldStatic seems like the best minimum so they dont fall through the floor

[terse elm]

then again if i have hitscan dmg coming in hmm

interesting

[brazen merlin]

think in collision channels is what im saying

you've got trace and object responses

[terse elm]

i saw mention of that in my googling just need to figure out how to set it up

[brazen merlin]

so decide which to turn off and then back on

[terse elm]

ill go watch a vid on collision channels

[brazen merlin]

or even better, make yourself two collision response presets and then simply set the profile by name

[maiden wadi]

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

[terse elm]

ty

readin up on it now thanks

interesting, so i could set up a preset or whatever that says... overlap, so i could still get overlap events, but still allow you to pass through

like if you passed through at a certain time. perfect dodge so to speak

ill watch some vids on it as well. appreciate it

[brazen merlin]

im going to throw you a curve ball

i only allow damage and other events to register if my player has a certain tag 😉

[terse elm]

but what is the tag setting?

[brazen merlin]

the point is that i check to see if that tag exists

still, you do need collision control, just wanted to mention it is all 🙂

[terse elm]

i thought about setting it in an notify state event so i could just drag the window out, make that section pass through, and also generate special overlap events while active

[brazen merlin]

you could still do that through ANS or whatever side, so its frame-specific

you'd still need to called SetCollisionProfile and set them from one then back

[terse elm]

yea thats pretty cool. ok ill give it a try

[gentle urchin]

Get widget is missing

[zealous fog]

Can I set a single value in a struct without resetting the other values?

[brazen merlin]

i didnt need to do that. It is a widget object already and GetWidget returns the same

[brazen merlin]

i believe SetMembers is what you want

[fluid rover]

Actually @gentle urchin may be right - having added a get user widget object to the mix, I can see specific components now:

[gentle urchin]

FadeIn is a widget component according to the warning

[brazen merlin]

well i mean, this is working fine for me....

[gentle urchin]

What is AICBHealthbar

In your case

Type/class?

Userwidget?

[brazen merlin]

that my thing yeah

[fluid rover]

As a comparison, FadeIn is a WidgetComponent

[brazen merlin]

and is therefore WidgetComp

[gentle urchin]

Yeah but its a userwidget ref, correct?

[brazen merlin]

but i can cast it and its fine 😛

so your all on crack

[gentle urchin]

Widgetcomp is afaik != userwidget...

[zealous fog]

Cheers this was correct

[brazen merlin]

to be clear, casting my WidgetComp to my WidgetClass to then get my vars

w/e if that works then it works

no sense arguing 😆

[gentle urchin]

Sorry, it wasnt clear what type yours was :p

I prefer making the widgets, saving them, and setting the component to my widget

But thats me

Dunno how you do it 😄

[brazen merlin]

honestly just referring to this one situation where i am using a widget component and this was setup awhile ago so i dunno this sort of thing that well

if you can tell, its for a health bar to appear above the specific enemy

[gentle urchin]

I see^^

Im used to atleast having to get the widget object from the component before casting ^^

In my little head it just works as a container for a widget

[brazen merlin]

all of my other widget stuff is always by create and then storing

[gentle urchin]

Phew, sense restored! Jk

[terse elm]

conrad i must be missing something. as a basic test i just tried to set collision response to channel to pawn/ignore. still collides hmm. also tried world dynamic

[odd ember]

collision between pawn and what?

[terse elm]

the other pawn / character

[odd ember]

did you set it to ignore for both pawns?

[terse elm]

so on action, the collision response of my char ref > mesh > set collision response is channel pawn / ignore

[odd ember]

oh

it probably collide with capsule

[terse elm]

so basically while active

should i just disable capsule while dashing/rolling?

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[odd ember]

I don't know what you're trying to do

[terse elm]

basically character 1 does a roll/dash. idea is that its fully invuln and can pass through/cross to other side of the other player

[odd ember]

character or player controller

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

capsule probably needs to be set to ignore pawn

[terse elm]

let me try

[odd ember]

what are you trying to do?

[odd ember]

keep in mind that collision is two way: both things need to be set to ignore

[hexed loom]

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[terse elm]

hrm interesting. according to vid i watched they said it was priority order, so if one had ignore, it prioritized the others block

[odd ember]

nope

both have to be the same

or it won't work

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

if you put that event in the coin, you would pick it up any time by pressing E. find a way of making it available to the player. that way you can use your input action on character to make it work

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

not sure what you mean then

[terse elm]

hm having trouble even turning off the collision volume. i have a ref to my char from other bp.

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

that doesn't sound right

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

cool. what do you need input action for?

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

and that can't be on character because?

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

when you pickup a coin, set a variable on your player character

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

that needs to be set in the player character BP

well you need them to communicate

[terse elm]

ok got it. got my ref, got capsule coppnent. set collision response to channel pawn > ignore. now i can pass through

set to overlap (which is what i wanted) and it works. i was prob using wrong nodes. guess i didnt need custom chan at all

[flat coral]

Yeah if you really want the variable to be in the coins, the player character BP needs to have a method of querying the coins BP and checking

[terse elm]

appreciate the help CE

[flat coral]

either directly expose the variable, or expose a boolean "hasCoins" function that returns true if there's any remaining. Something like that

[odd ember]

that still means the coin will be a variable on the player

[terse elm]

i suppose i can turn this on/off with an anim state now. ill try

[flat coral]

Well no, the player just needs to be able to get a reference to it

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

animNotifies are you friend

[terse elm]

indeed lol

[odd ember]

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

[terse elm]

i had some issues with them earlier

[odd ember]

literally pinned

to the channel

[brazen merlin]

BP communication is hard for most newbies to grasp is why

[odd ember]

all code is hard to grasp

[flat coral]

Worth saying that like 90% of programming is basically building pipes to get a value from Point A to Point B

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

people think so much is implied somehow

but there is no magic

[odd ember]

it's not difficult at all

computers are dumb, but they are fast dumb

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

When it comes to BP I'm not sure how it could be simpler. I guess the requirement of casting in some cases trips people up?

[odd ember]

you have to tell them everything you want to do, exactly how you want to do it

[flat coral]

That's like saying, why have multiple levels instead of just loading the entire game all at once

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

because it sets you up for failure. once you understand system architecture you also understand why global variables are bad

anyway take it or leave it

[brazen merlin]

if you want "global variables" store them in game instance then get a reference to game instance from the specific class

[odd ember]

the code isn't going to change

so I suggest you do it

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

I gave you that tutorial

[flat coral]

If all variables were global, can you imagine the global variable space in a game like RDR2? It would be a nightmare. Literally millions of them, you'd never be able to find anything and the computer would struggle to hold it all in memory

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

it'll help

it showcases exactly what you need to do

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

do you want to learn or do you want to complain?

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

I suggest finding someone who cares then

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

Do you know how to code btw?

In any other language?

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

You wouldn't use global variables in JS either, it's object oriented just like BPs are

[spark steppe]

only half way true xD

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

Ok JS is a trash fire but you see my point still 😛

[odd ember]

javascript allows for weird BS, not a language to measure against for any good principles really

[flat coral]

A variable in a global scope is still associated with a specific class or "file" at least in the JS world

You can have global-scope variables in BPs, they just have to be associated with a specific BP

[odd ember]

JS is the reason there are people fixing the internet non stop around the world just to keep it from failing

well, one of the reasons anyway

[flat coral]

I never met the language that stops programmers from making an absolute mess of it. You can shoot yourself in the foot with any gun.

[odd ember]

good beginner languages should be strongly typed

[odd ember]

sure but there's a difference between shooting yourself with a bb gun or with an rpg

[flat coral]

ANYWAYS ZIP I HOPE THIS IS HELPFUL 😛

[hexed loom]

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[brazen merlin]

srsly...

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

neither of those things are true lol

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

it's VM based

so there's an upper limit of how "fast" it can be

[hexed loom]

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[maiden wadi]

This goes against the ideology of OOP.

[flat coral]

C++ is over 10 times faster than JS

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

https://careerkarma.com/blog/javascript-vs-cplusplus/#:~:text=C%2B%2B vs JavaScript%3A Performance&text=C%2B%2B is ten or more,is mid-level and compiled.

[flat coral]

This shouldn't surprise you btw. JS is a high level language, C++ is midlevel.

[maiden wadi]

Not really sure a C++ versus JS versus BP is really relevant. You don't use JS in UE4. You use BP and C++, and those also have different uses in UE4

If you want to use UE4, those are the tools.

[hexed loom]

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[dawn gazelle]

There is a plugin that lets you use JS in UE of course 🙃

[odd ember]

10 times as fast is 1000%

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

Plus just think about it, with Javascript you lose efficiency with dynamic typing, lose efficiency for JIT compilation, lose efficiency because it's VM based. What aspect of C++ should make it slower than JS?

[hexed loom]

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[maiden wadi]

Oof. I don't even want to know how annoying that is to use.

[odd ember]

there will always be evil in the world

[flat coral]

What can men do against such reckless hate?

[dawn gazelle]

Make Discord bots in UE.

[odd ember]

all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing

-gabe newell

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[dawn gazelle]

Anything is possible.

[odd ember]

ninja'd

[brazen merlin]

can we move this to lounge or something?

[dawn gazelle]

except going faster than the speed of light. Don't think we've figured that one out yet.

[hexed loom]

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[brazen merlin]

you've all already answered the question which is to use blueprint communication

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

in your player

it's almost like the default setup is there to help you

[hexed loom]

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[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

OnComponentBeginOverlap

depending on how you want it done you can have the coin register itself to the player

[flat coral]

All the collision methods return an output for what collider / actor you hit. Check if that's the coin

[odd ember]

or have the player just pickup the coin

[flat coral]

Or vice versa, yeah

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

you dont need to bind it

[flat coral]

You dont need to bind an event, it's already an event

[odd ember]

you need a collision to work with

[flat coral]

the engine will call onComponentBeginOverlap for you when appropriate (if your collision is set up correctly)

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

https://tenor.com/view/skeptical-futurama-fry-hmmm-i-got-my-eyes-on-you-gif-17101711

[flat coral]

I mean you need the red one, not the blue one .

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

you need a collision component

look

if you watch the video

[hexed loom]

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[odd ember]

it tells you how to set this up

yes

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

generally you select the collider in your Viewport and hit one of these

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

so select it here, then press the green OnComponentBeginOverlap button on the right

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

indeed. That will create the correct event WITH the collider already associated with it

[terse elm]

is there a simple method for determining if the player is on your right or left side? or should i just make a clockwise detector

[odd ember]

in regards to what?

[flat coral]

..Dumb question, isn't the player exactly where you are, because you are the player?

[terse elm]

sorry i forgot something lol. in relation to "the other player" lol

in a 2p game

[hexed loom]

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[flat coral]

So I have bad news: "Left" and "Right" don't exist, they're made up concept s

[hexed loom]

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[icy dragon]

Split screen?

[odd ember]

you can do dot product from the player 1 camera to the player 2 character location, normalized

[terse elm]

so basically their relationship to eachother. so i can flip their facing AND their scale (so i can make their right hand become their left hand etc. so their chest is always facing the player.. as opposed to turning their back to you on one side while facing the opponent)

[odd ember]

or actually, cross that

[terse elm]

hrm my cam is part of the level actually. not attached to player but hmm

[flat coral]

So... you don't need left and right

[odd ember]

find look at rotation, convert to unit vector, compare between that and camera forward vector

[flat coral]

^

[terse elm]

so its facing, but also changing their scale on the Y from 1.0 to -1.0 depending on which side they are on. so they always appear the same way

[flat coral]

Left and Right are relative to orientation, so you need to find the direction and the orientation

[odd ember]

so that's going to give you 1 no matter which side you are on, and -1 if they are behind you

[terse elm]

true yea hmm

[odd ember]

BUT

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[odd ember]

actually use the camera right vector

[terse elm]

ahh gotcha ok

[odd ember]

and you get exactly what you want

[brazen merlin]

might be a good time to watch that vid

[odd ember]

1 means right side, -1 means left side

[terse elm]

thats cool way to do it. so even tho cam isnt connected to player it still has a right, and since im looking at them from the side, right is always right basically

[flat coral]

What's wrong with using the coin's BP? you can just expose a function on the character called AddCoin, then when the coin is collided with it gets a reference to the player actor and calls AddCoin on it

[terse elm]

hmm interesting

[umbral ginkgo]

Any ideas to why is this branch failing (False) when it shouldn't?

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[odd ember]

the values will fluctuate, if you want it constantly to be either 1 or -1 (or 0, for right in front or behind), use sign

[terse elm]

ok. im gonna make some notes then experiment

[flat coral]

The input function would check the Coins variable on the player

[brazen merlin]

my guess is there are multiple overlaps happening and one of them produces a fail

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[umbral ginkgo]

That would make sense

[brazen merlin]

print string at overlap, before branch

[odd ember]

why dont you use a cast?

[umbral ginkgo]

To player character?

[odd ember]

yes

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[odd ember]

finally

[umbral ginkgo]

I thought this would just be quicker. Do you think it could be problematic?

[odd ember]

problematic how

[umbral ginkgo]

Idk in general

[odd ember]

if you can't think of a reason

then it's of no concern

[umbral ginkgo]

yes...

[tawdry surge]

Casting to the player character isn't ever an issue because it's always loaded anyway

[umbral ginkgo]

Yeah

[brazen merlin]

before we tangent..... the issue is on an overlap misfire

[umbral ginkgo]

Yes

[brazen merlin]

please check that before getting distracted

[umbral ginkgo]

I tried with the print string and yes one fire is false

[odd ember]

doesn't mean a cast won't fix it

[umbral ginkgo]

I dont think the cast is the problem

[odd ember]

well ok

you know more than I do then

[brazen merlin]

@peak wedge is the question. Sounds like you are suggesting Casting to fix it right?

[tawdry surge]

It is..
You're checking a character reference against and actor reference

If you cast the actor to a character it will pass

[odd ember]

yep

[flat coral]

I'd print out what you're actually colliding with to make SURE it's what you expect.

[brazen merlin]

figured. @umbral ginkgo did you do a print string literally after the event fires?

[umbral ginkgo]

Yep

[odd ember]

I was considering this as well

[flat coral]

But failing that, look I'm not sure exactly how UE handles it but in most languages object equality is a tricky thing

[odd ember]

with the cast we'll know for sure 😔

!(T*) == !(T*)

[maiden wadi]

Instance equality isn't tricky. If you get two different pointers to the same instance, it's going to return true, regardless of what pointer level they're cast to.

[umbral ginkgo]

I'll try the cast anyways

[odd ember]

pretty sure this is the exact code for the node

[umbral ginkgo]

Umm

so it seems casting has fixed the problem

[odd ember]

welp

[flat coral]

This is my not surprised face 😛

[flat coral]

wait why even bother with the equality then?

[odd ember]

no need for the equal

well no, it was fixed

[umbral ginkgo]

I have juest realized that

[odd ember]

because the cast goes through

[brazen merlin]

i think you can see how well this works with just event > cast > string

[tawdry surge]

The more dynamic fix would be to save the return from "get player character" to an actor variable and check if that is equal to the "other actor"

[odd ember]

still think it wasnt the correct answer @brazen merlin

[flat coral]

Also some languages typecheck before running a deeper equality. In that case I wouldn't be surprised if the wildcard object from GetPlayerCharacter doesn't match the specific character class you've got

[brazen merlin]

casting?