blueprint

[chilly swallow]

will do. It's in blueprint, not code

[odd ember]

same thing

blueprint is code

[chilly swallow]

Somehow I feel like generating the BP_Items as Child Actor Components is not the way to do it. Seemingly this leaves all the variables on the BP_Items components uneditable (maybe because changing the variables in the details pane re-runs the construction script, which then clears them and sets them back to default?). I'm also having to do kooky things to get the variables of the child actor components available to the BP_DisplayCase and then one step further to get them available to the editor for edit - basically having to duplicate the variables in the main Blueprint. I'm tearing my hair out trying to understand how best to set up this system in a smart way. Is it easier/best practice to just have the BP_DisplayCase spawn the BP_Items as individual actors? Or should I be using ActorComponents? Or SceneComponents? Or something else entirely?

[odd ember]

generally you never want child actor components

but I don't really know what you're doing

because I can't see your code

[tidal marlin]

Hello.
Why when i open new level the HDR Gistogram open as a default show?

[chilly swallow]

okay. Construction Script for Items:

Items event graph:

[little escarp]

Yea I fixed it. My weapon switching is solid. I can sleep now. But maybe…

[chilly swallow]

Construction script for DisplayCase:

When I create an instance, the variables show up in the editor

[odd ember]

what you can do is spawn actors at runtime and pass parameters to them

that's the easiest way

expose the spawn parameters to the detail panel

then use them to spawn on beginplay

[chilly swallow]

yeah so this child actor component thing is just a terrible approach?

[odd ember]

attach accordingly

yes absolutely

[chilly swallow]

so what's their use case?

[odd ember]

it's buggy and heavy on performance

[chilly swallow]

I thought it would be handy to have all of these individual items be inside the container of the displaycase

I was wrong

so then I could just e.g. drag around the displaycase and all the items would move around together in this box

[odd ember]

also I would see if you could expose the FName variable as is on the detail panel. if you have a static data table, then you actually get a combobox for your FName on the GetTableRow node

[chilly swallow]

Oh what do you mean? Yeah I went with the enum as a janky workaround but i really couldn't figure out the best way to do the key on the data table rows

[odd ember]

there's also nothing wrong with setting up pre parameterized subclasses from your classes

[chilly swallow]

It seems redundant to have an enum that gives you unique item IDs but then you can't set the first column on that data table to be that enum

[odd ember]

the first column remains an FName, but if you remove the wires from the pin you should see a combobox showing the FNames of all the options within the datatable as a drop down

[chilly swallow]

okay I'll try it out. Thanks for the hint

[chilly swallow]

so when you say classes, are you saying I don't make these BP objects but classes instead?

I think I need to learn the distinction there

[odd ember]

basically you can have a subclass where the only thing you do is setup parameters exposed from the parent class

so all you modify is data

[chilly swallow]

ah okay so I do it the other way around

[odd ember]

no logic

an object is an instance at runtime

[chilly swallow]

so I would make the BP_Item into an Item class, and then set up a subclass for it that spawns a bunch of them from an array and sets their parameters?

[normal adder]

Brilliant, thank you for the help!

[odd ember]

you can do that, or you could just have it spawn something from a class where that is already setup

that class exists as a separate asset in the content browser

[chilly swallow]

so the structure would still be to have a BP_Item and a BP_DisplayCase but then to use the DisplayCase as the item spawner? I don't really understand

[odd ember]

you could have that yeah

[chilly swallow]

🥲

[odd ember]

and then just instead of setting up all the spawning and parameters at runtime and having to deal with the details panel

[chilly swallow]

I'd like to understand the approach you're suggesting, because it's probably ... better

[odd ember]

have a few actor assets in the content browser that inherit from BP_Item and have their parameters preset

[chilly swallow]

ah okay I see. So if I had different product variants, I'd make them all different subclasses inheriting from BP_Item

But I guess that wouldn't be as streamable/on-the-fly. I'd have to set up a subclass for every item variant

[odd ember]

@maiden wadi probably has something here about how DataAssets would be the correct way of doing things, but even just as actors you'd be fine

[chilly swallow]

rather than e.g. pulling it from a data table at runtime

[odd ember]

sure but in the end you're dealing with a finite amount of elements

[chilly swallow]

right. In this case

[odd ember]

and data tables are static data too

[chilly swallow]

but at some point, that may be 10000 different variants

ah so you're saying I can dynamically generate the subclasses?

[odd ember]

then have the subclass perhaps generate randomized values

[chilly swallow]

okay gotcha

this helps!

[chilly swallow]

So if going with one of these approaches, how would I then make all of these spawned actors part of a group that moves around inside a box together, so I can drag the whole display case around and position it in the editor?

[odd ember]

spawn actors inside of the display case, attach actor to the displaycase

[chilly swallow]

after spawning actor, can I just add them to a parent or something?

ah okay

[odd ember]

I think spawning the actors has to happen at runtime

[chilly swallow]

so instead of adding child component, I just spawn actor and it's more or less the same, but operating differently

[odd ember]

so it's off limits for construction script

[chilly swallow]

hm damn. So then I wouldn't know what the display case looks like before it gets into the game?

[odd ember]

however that doesn't prevent you from having the locations for their spawn as scene components inside the displaycase

[chilly swallow]

Right. Another question here. Is it better to make the spawn locations scene components or just an array of transforms as I've done in the example I sent?

[odd ember]

depends on your approach. I'd say scene components are easier to manage. but if you have a large amount of data then an array of transforms might be better

[chilly swallow]

okay. So no obvious performance benefits or otherwise?

Seemingly the Scene Components can be dragged around and manually edited after construction. The array I might have to clear again each time it's constructed

@odd ember thanks a bundle! Super helpful to get some pointers and at least a new approach to try

[plucky harness]

i have a UMG combobox and i get a string out of it as value, how do i convert it to enum?

[chilly swallow]

🍕

[odd ember]

nothing really that matters

[chilly swallow]

kk

Thanks for your help!

[chilly swallow]

oh one question - is this a good use for an ActorComponent?

Then you combine the SceneComponent and the BP_Item?

[odd ember]

actor components don't exist in world

so you need a scene component to get the transform

[chilly swallow]

oh really? So what are they used for?

[odd ember]

abstract logic

things that don't need a world

a health component for instance is common

[chilly swallow]

okay. Weirdly confusing name then

[odd ember]

🤷

[chilly swallow]

https://tenor.com/view/del-griffith-oh-sure-sure-whatever-you-say-gif-14447521

[outer pewter]

guys how can i get the players location when he died and then transform it to a transform variable and then add a bit to it so the player will be able to spawn a few meters ahead

[outer pewter]

i know how to say it but i dont know the blueprint set up for it or how to link them all

i link the spawn point to this variable but idk how to make this variable equal teh players death location plus move it forward a bit

[gentle urchin]

you've already casted

cast fails if object is not valid

thus

it is valid

if success

Castin AND isvalid is sort of wasted

you'd just use the regular cast then

instead of pure cast

So.. use the regular cast? 😄

[boreal marsh]

is it possible to create an event for tiles on a tile map? For example when a mouse is hovered over a tile?

[gentle urchin]

Also.. Wouldnt it make sense here to have the aim transform as an input to the function/actor/event that spawns the projectile?

[graceful forum]

Is it possible to debug blueprint utility widgets?

[gentle urchin]

the dual cast also doesnt make much sense to me

why cast to pawn and MyCharacter?

surely character is a pawn?

pawn might not be a character, but its not treated differently in this case

[zealous fog]

Is there a more effective way to do something like this?

[icy dragon]

Switches.

[zealous fog]

Yeah I was looking at switch on int but then the attack percentages are equal

[gentle urchin]

if only there was a case

[proud hedge]

Hey quick question does anyone know how to get the Vector position of a bone in an anim blueprint?

[gentle urchin]

Not as cool as i like them but it works

More generic

[zealous fog]

Thank you! But thats basically the same thing as I made right but in a macro right? (I realise now I didnt need the third branch)

It will clean up the code thats for sure

[gentle urchin]

Yes, it is

Im confused. How does that change anything?

You'd swap the CastToPawn with your very own CastToMyCharacter, and fetch the transform

[winged thicket]

so i was trying to make a blueprint using blueprint in ue4
but when i hold left mouse button i lose capture or focus or something like that and i cant get mouse position or hover events
so how can i.. fix this? or atleast workaround it

[gentle urchin]

would surely have your custom transform instead of actor transform,

[gentle urchin]

probably easiest to do this with drag and drop operation ?

[maiden wadi]

That is not exactly beginner level. Don't have a ton of time, but in short if you want to try looking some things up, check out DragDropOperations. You're looking to basically create a Pin UserWidget. It needs to have OnPaint overridden and used to draw your lines. You can create a new Pin widget and pass it to the DragDropOperation's Drag visual to draw a line between the widget you were dragging from to the visual widget at mouse. OnDrop, link up the original dragged widget with the dropped on and start drawing lines there.

You can pretty much make the whole system with one single UUserWidget for the pin.

[gentle urchin]

The pin would just work as an interface between widget A and widget B, with some functionality to bind up a delegate , i think

[winged thicket]

..
is there a way to just make the hover event work when holding left click?

cant i reset focus or something like that

[maiden wadi]

Not without complicating the system further and relying on other classes.

[humble vine]

I'm using FindLookAtRotation and it is lerping over time. However if my actor that the node is rotating moves to pass the target actor's up vector from one side to another (basically in relation to target passing from Y to -Y space), my actor flips. Any ideas how can I fix this? If I track dot product of the target's up vector and moving actors forward vector, it changes positive-negative at this point. I can do select rotator based on this but I can't seem to figure what would be the correct math to flip point back to the original direction after the actor has moved from one side to another

[winged thicket]

ok with the system i have here
what do i do?

the only thing i need is to make the hover event work so i can know if player's mouse is on the event or not

[remote meteor]

isnt mouse enter the hover event 🤔

[winged thicket]

every event that has something to do with mouse doesnt work

while holding left click

[remote meteor]

its umg we are talking about right?

[winged thicket]

uhh.. what does umg stand for?😅

[gentle urchin]

unreal motion graphics iirc

[remote meteor]

basically blueprint widgets

[winged thicket]

yes

[gentle urchin]

Looks like it could work. I'd suggest giving yourself something more to go on when you print failed tho ^^ Like inluding ActorName, and/or function name can help alot when troubleshooting alot of things

[topaz plover]

Hi there, I have a bunch of BPs that need to be set up in order:

game instance: loads from game save

player state: copies from game save

game state: does stuff

pitch: builds self from game state

barriers: position themselves based on pitch dimensions

ball: spawns once barriers are ready

where would you put all this logic? would you call a function from one to the next in order? what do ya recommend?

i realised I can't call a "get ready!" method in the player state from the game instance - would you set this chain up in player controller maybe?

[gentle urchin]

you'd probably want the class executing, not any of the involved classes

so just "get display name" from "self" has atleast gotten you the class who's doing the shenanigans

[remote meteor]

did you use a button for mouse click?

[winged thicket]

wdym

@remote meteor

[gentle urchin]

self, as in the ability class ^^ not the owner of the ability

Anyways, no need when its working i suppose 😛

[remote meteor]

as in when you are holding the left mouse button, is it on a button widget

[gentle urchin]

Sometimes it's overkill to do this. But in large functions with many possible return or exit paths, it's helpfull to know where it failed.

The more descriptive your print is in such case, the easier it is to track

[cold sigil]

Would someone knowledgeable be willing to let me pick their brain for a few and maybe help me out with creating some consumables and being able to use them from inventory? Im still new to UE and gamedev so any help would be appreciated tbh

[winged thicket]

yep

[gentle urchin]

Yes, append combines several strings. 🙂

[gentle urchin]

Remove from inventory -> Spawn Actor -> Execute its "OnUsed" function ? 🙂

[faint pasture]

Depends on your item system but you'll either have a Use function which takes an item object/struct or an on use event for the item actor. Really depends on your architecture.

[gentle urchin]

Yeah there's like a million ways to do this

[faint pasture]

@cold sigil What IS a stored item in your system?

[gentle urchin]

and complexity depends on the requirements of the system

[faint pasture]

The simplest system would probably be

A stored item is a struct with a field for an actor class.
The base actor class has a Use event.
Subclasses implement the event.
Eating an apple would look like

Read struct, spawn actor from class Item_Apple.
Remove struct from inventory
Call Use on the spawned Item_Apple
Item_Apple's Use event applies -10 DMG to user

[cold sigil]

Sorry, im trying to get screenshots and put the system into words. Im such a noob 🤦‍♂️ lmao

[spark steppe]

ideally the struct would just include the information of the applied effects

10 dmg from an apple. ffs

[gentle urchin]

-10 😄

[faint pasture]

Yes that would be the efficient way but it's depend on your system. It'd be hard to do really complex on use effects. Really depends on what you're trying to do.

[spark steppe]

nvm 😄

[gentle urchin]

including applied effects, you'd still want to spawn an actor for handling it tho wouldnt you

[spark steppe]

depends on how you implement all the things

[gentle urchin]

gives a lot more flexibility to what it can do, and how it does it

[faint pasture]

Nah not in a good/efficient system. You'd do it GAS style

[spark steppe]

you can have it either on the character, e.g. consume item from a struct, or handle it on the object (apple/fooditem) itself

[faint pasture]

But this guy's new, data driven gameplay is a bit advanced.

[gentle urchin]

Sure, but that's still essentially spawning an actor to execute. Multiple even

[faint pasture]

No in GAS the execution is handled in the system. No actor spawning.

[gentle urchin]

So when you have an effect with an emitter, no spawn has taken place?

[cold sigil]

would one of you be willing to talk with me via DM? i gotta go afk for about 20 mins and ill be back. I gotta run the fam to school real fast but i really would appreciate going into this so i can gain some understanding

[spark steppe]

if you just started use adriel's suggestion, it works fine and you can apply that knowledge later on to other things

[faint pasture]

Particle effects don't require an actor.

[rose elbow]

Will I be able to make a blueprint that places an image at the mouse cursors location? I know you can just use software cursors but that isn't working correctly for what I want to do

[faint pasture]

I just laid out what you'd need for a simple system. If you don't already have a simple inventory system that handles moving items around then you need to back up and start there.

[cold sigil]

i have a spatial inventory system. Ill start with what you initially suggested and if i need some additional help ill come back

[rose elbow]

search up Ryan Laley shopkeeper series he has an inventory system in there

[faint pasture]

You can do that in the HUD pretty easily.

[cold sigil]

thats what i tried, and got stuck

[faint pasture]

You can spawn them with an actor but don't need to.

[rose elbow]

as in the default HUD BP?

[faint pasture]

Did you build that system or are you copying or implementing something someone else made? Make sure you understand the system inside and out before trying to extend it.

[rose elbow]

thats a C++ class 😦

[faint pasture]

Nah you can make a BP HUD class

[cold sigil]

gotta run and take the littles to school, thanks for the help. ill be back in the chat here in a few minutes. I used a template from "Reids Channel" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWSECrtUu_g&t=1264s)

[rose elbow]

would I do it with a widget BP?

[faint pasture]

Depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

[rose elbow]

just want the image to go to the mouse cursors location

[faint pasture]

In world space, in screen space, aligned to the XY plane, not aligned to anything, what?

[rose elbow]

wasn't sure if I could do that solely in a widget bp or a mix

[rose elbow]

in screen space and just the xy plane its a 2.5d game

[faint pasture]

You can just draw an image in HUD, look at how the 1st person template does it.

You can prolly do it with a widget too

[rose elbow]

the Y and Z axis

alreyt i'll have a look

[faint pasture]

1st person template crosshair

[rose elbow]

that doesn't move the image to the mouse location does it? it moves the entire characters rotation

[faint pasture]

It still draws an image at a specific point on screen. It's up to you to get the mouse location and translate it to screen location

Can't you just override the cursor though, that would be a lot simpler

[rose elbow]

ah well that first part is pretty straight forward

[rose elbow]

Yes but I ran into an issue with that no one seemed to be able to help me fix

I used a software cursor but it was weird af

[faint pasture]

That doesn't exactly describe the error but you do you

[rose elbow]

I didn't want to get into it but I can if you want

[rose elbow]

Hey guys so I'm running into a really weird issue with my project now. As you can see in the video below when I initially hold left click everything works fine. The line trace shoots off towards the mouse cursor (albeit a bit of axis). But for some reason after the first time doing I then have to double click to get the line trace to start working and when I hold left mouse the cursor then disappears and is locked in place. I have showcased the code I am using and the fact that I have set the input mode to game only to show mouse cursor in event begin play and this isn't changed with any code throughout the rest of the project. https://streamable.com/a4hq30

I just thought of a potential fix

[unique wasp]

I'm confused by execution order of pure functions in Blueprints. I read in documentation: "a Pure Function will be called one time for each node it is connected to." I interpret that as that in this case, GetHitResultUnderCursor is called twice, since it's connected to two different impure nodes. Is that correct? Does that mean I should avoid connecting pure functions that cost a lot of performance to several impure nodes? (or just not make expensive calculations pure functions)

[winged thicket]

so i was trying to make a blueprint using blueprint in ue4
but when i hold left mouse button i lose capture or focus or something like that and i cant get mouse position or hover events
so how can i.. fix this? or atleast workaround it

i just need to know if the mouse is hovering over seq_1 button

[icy dragon]

...what the fuck is this BP?

[boreal marsh]

what is the world space boolean for? returning a tile location in world space?

[icy dragon]

Paper2D?

[boreal marsh]

yeah

[icy dragon]

#paper-2d might know something, but I'd think it's the case

[boreal marsh]

ok thanks

i thouht #paper-2d was more specfically paper2D graphics creation

[rose elbow]

so if I have the code like this the line trace shoots out but it doesn't go to the exact location of the mouse cursor whereas if I include the x axis it is exactly accurate. The only issue being that I don't want the line trace to move behind the character as it does when I include the x axis as it is a 2.5D game. Anyone got any ideas on how I can fix this?

[winged thicket]

this is the bp i made xd

[faint pasture]

@rose elbow What X is that world space node returning BTW?

I don't use that node so how does it know the depth?

[rose elbow]

what C?

[faint pasture]

X rather

Instead I do a line plane intersection just using camera location, mouse direction, and a plane through origin.

[rose elbow]

I actually don't know but for some reason its really far behind my character

[faint pasture]

I'm doing something very similar but top down. If there's no way to define the plane to project the mouse to, use my system.

You should be generating an AimPosition per frame then using that later to drive aiming.

[rose elbow]

could you share it?

[faint pasture]

I just did. Line plane intersection

The line is camera position + mouse direction x somebignumber like 2 x cameraposition.X

[astral estuary]

This ain't working, am I missing something? It is meant to do this:

        n1 = texture2D(base_map,   uv).xyz*vec3( 2,  2, 2) + vec3(-1, -1,  0);
        n2 = texture2D(detail_map, uv).xyz*vec3(-2, -2, 2) + vec3( 1,  1, -1);
        n  = n1*dot(n1, n2)/n1.z - n2;
        color = n*0.5 + 0.5;

[faint pasture]

Plane is at 0,0,0 and your plane normal would be 1,0,0

[astral estuary]

this is supposed to add two normal maps... and what you said sounds like it should make a lot of sense but I don't understand what you mean 😰

[winged thicket]

i have a problem where when i hold left mouse button is hovering/hover event doesnt work

[tawdry surge]

They have a built in node for combining normals

[winged thicket]

i just want to know if the mouse is hovering above something

[tawdry surge]

Did you turn on hovering events in the player controller?

[winged thicket]

its working if i wasnt holding left click so ig yes?

[tawdry surge]

Pry switches from a hovering event to a click event while clicking

[astral estuary]

found my problem combining normals:
the texture sampler for normals in unreal by default makes them between -1 and 1. For my code to work I need to turn them back to 0 to 1

[winged thicket]

wdym, i cant.. click if im holding left click xd?

[boreal marsh]

What is X and Y in this. The cords for in the tile map or world position?

[tawdry surge]

I mean by clicking you aren't hovering anymore you're clicking. Try turning click events off and see if it works

[winged thicket]

i dont understand

i need the player to hold a button and hover above something

[tawdry surge]

The input event "left mouse button" will still work, it's the built in event call "on click" you want to disable from the player controller

[winged thicket]

ok how do i do that?

[odd ember]

perhaps ask in #paper-2d

[boreal marsh]

ok

[gentle urchin]

Not world position

Target is Tile component, so the coords are in its local space

[tawdry surge]

Open the player controller and its a box in the details panel

[odd ember]

it's probably screen space but I don't know how paper 2D works. I don't want to make assumptions

because assumptions are dangerous 🔪

[gentle urchin]

I make assumptions all the time

but i've played with the tilemap

[odd ember]

🔪 danger zone 🗡️

[gentle urchin]

true , it has more than once bitten me in the ass

[odd ember]

anyway screenspace resolution is the only place I've seen ints being used instead of floats

but what do I know

[gentle urchin]

I believe the tilemap just contains an array of tiles, and the XY input is basicly converted to an index

used it many moons ago

[odd ember]

could be as well

[gentle urchin]

for a not so ambitious project

[boreal marsh]

oh ok. Also that Y value makes it more confusing as the tile map uses X and Z

[gentle urchin]

You can have multiple layers

[odd ember]

but it has x, y, and layers

[boreal marsh]

^

[odd ember]

I suppose they look at it from a sidescroller perspective

[winged thicket]

i cant find it

[onyx marsh]

is there a good video explaining blueprints

[boreal marsh]

i also wish layers can be more easier to understanding. Layer 0 starts from the top then the bottom

[odd ember]

learn.unrealengine.com

@onyx marsh

[onyx marsh]

thank you

[odd ember]

well if it's meant to be a sidescroller perspective, then top would be the most forward

[boreal marsh]

true

[gentle urchin]

Layer 2 is above layer 1 ? is that not expected

[odd ember]

🤷

[onyx marsh]

is this made officialy by epic games?

[odd ember]

yes

or I would think so

read the fine print

[outer pewter]

how can i send the info of a transform variable to another transform variable ?

[boreal marsh]

the thing is its starts from the top down

layer 2 is layer 0

according to get Tile

[gentle urchin]

Interesting.

[glossy bane]

Can someone clear up some confusion regarding the behind the scenes of event dispatchers, is it correct to assume that calling an event dispatcher will call absolutely all other actors in the level, looking for the ones that have the bindings?

[gentle urchin]

I would think the dispatcher keeps an internal list of who wants to listen to it

"caling" everyone sounds wastefull

[glossy bane]

Is exactly what I'm thinking aswell but I cant find any concrete info, like how would it have that internal list of who is listening without iterating trough all actors to see in the first place?

[gentle urchin]

thats the "bind" part

[odd ember]

a dispatcher calls whoever is subscribed to it

the bind is the subscription

[glossy bane]

So every actor that creates the binding is essentially added to an internal list of subscribers, so when the call does come its only those that get called

[odd ember]

yes

that is also why you can unsubscribe from them

[glossy bane]

right so its literally the observer pattern

thank you

[gentle urchin]

both singular and clearing all bindings

[odd ember]

well yeah. you could have started with that

[glossy bane]

yeah I was just unsure how unreal handles it and wanted to make sure I was on the right page

[odd ember]

it's observer made easy for BPs

they correspond to delegates behind the scenes

[glossy bane]

I understand that clears it up

[stiff raptor]

I want to change the value of an element of an array. Which node to use?

[gentle urchin]

SetArrayElement

[boreal marsh]

Is there any better way to getting a tile in tile map then this?

The tile map will always be at 0,0 in world space

[stiff raptor]

I don't think there it. But it is a function so you don't need to worry too much

[gentle urchin]

It can atleast easily be optimized later if it is a problem. It being a function by itself doesnt mean its nothing to worry about imo 😛

[ember oracle]

Hey, anyone know why the linetrace doesnt always hit the center of the screen? https://i.imgur.com/tVip65t.png

https://i.imgur.com/a1UX6Pn.png

[winged thicket]

you need to set "start" to the camera location

and not to the weapon

[stiff raptor]

use "ConvertMouseLocationToWorldSpace"

[ember oracle]

I tried that but it still isn't centred on the crosshair

this is the closest i managed to get

[winged thicket]

can you show me what happens when you set it to camera location

[ember oracle]

You mean like this, right? https://i.imgur.com/rTR8AH0.png

[stiff raptor]

if I use "make array" will it create a blank array?

[ember oracle]

it goes this high instead https://i.imgur.com/7gl5VZ9.png

[stiff raptor]

first person camera location is different I believe

[winged thicket]

uhh.. its bcs the default hud is a bit down xd
try making a new widget and you'll see

[maiden wadi]

@ember oracle Your issue is that you need two traces.

[ember oracle]

Just tried that and its still off centred 😦

[ember oracle]

What do you mean?

[maiden wadi]

When you try to shoot from a gun that is not the center of camera, but want to shoot what is the center of camera, you require two traces. The first is from center of camera straight forward. It should start from the camera, and end straight in front of the camera. The second trace should use the first trace's hit result if there was a blocking hit, or it's end point if there was not. Then do a second trace from your shooting point to that newfound vector.

[ember oracle]

ooooh okay! I'll give that a try thank you

[winged thicket]

isnt that if you want the bullets to come from your gun?
i mean if the first trace impact location was wrong then wouldnt the second one also be wrong?

[remote meteor]

you want to get where is your center of the screen pointing at first

then only you trace from your muzzle to that point

[winged thicket]

ya, that if you want the bullets to come from your gun
but if the first point is wrong so would be the other one aswell

[remote meteor]

🤔 why would the first point be wrong

[winged thicket]

https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/external/0xG65fzhG9hJZXBBOh8RclvpE7MAC5Ny2v9nJdcQShA/https/i.imgur.com/7gl5VZ9.png
that was the problem

yo authaer are you here?

[maiden wadi]

Nope.

[winged thicket]

whats the diff if you make a second trace
it will end in the same point but from his gun

[odd ember]

not necessarily?

[maiden wadi]

It's entirely possible his crosshair could be off center. But you still require two traces for an accurate weapon shot.

[remote meteor]

because duh?

[maiden wadi]

If you have a weapon held at the hip, and you shoot, but your view is a foot and a half higher, and you trace in the same direction as the view, you'll never hit the center of view.

[winged thicket]

if you want to shot from your gun to that point
the problem that first trace isnt working from the start

[odd ember]

branch on false

[ember oracle]

OH WOW

[odd ember]

https://tenor.com/view/losing-it-snapped-mr-krabs-eye-twitch-gif-4376164

[ember oracle]

i'm so dumb

sorry for that

thank you so much @remote meteor

[remote meteor]

ask unreal template maker

haha

[odd ember]

not a programmer

for sure

[winged thicket]

was the problem from the crosshair?

[maiden wadi]

Also another easy way to make crosshairs is to make a Userwidget. Add it to viewport and change it's anchors and offsets by 0.5.

[winged thicket]

that what i was saying from the start!

[maiden wadi]

Much prettier than HUD's drawing.

[remote meteor]

and you can recoil move it

[winged thicket]

just make a new widget

[remote meteor]

anyway ye

the problem was

the crosshair in the template project

is offset'd by 20 in the y axis

ha

[winged thicket]

when you say a joke and someone say it louder :(

[maiden wadi]

Oh, that's what you meant by default hud. That's not the hud being off, that's someone not accounting their math correctly. 😄

[stiff raptor]

I'm using delay but still why is it printing at once?

[maiden wadi]

First, your print is on the wrong side of the delay. You're printing before calling the delay. But also even if you put it on the right side of the delay, you're only going to call that delay eleven times instantly, and then it'll just print 10 once after two seconds.

[odd ember]

loops happen at instant speed

you cannot slow down a loop

if you want repeated behavior use a timeline or a timer

[stiff raptor]

oh ok

[brazen merlin]

or put a delay in the loop😈

[odd ember]

https://tenor.com/view/kendo-shinai-bonk-doge-horny-gif-20995284

[remote meteor]

well technically you can just duplicate the macro and add the delay

😂

[brazen merlin]

not for the faint of heart

[odd ember]

true, I guess loops in BP aren't true loops

but I would generally avoid that type of behavior

[remote meteor]

i usually do make another foreach macro but with get(ref) instead

[odd ember]

if only for debugging reasons

[terse elm]

what would be the cleanest way to reverse add movement input in a game where the player only goes right/left when chars switch sides? i thought about adding an isFlipped variable and changing input D from pressRight to pressLeft and then in the movement input, add a second addmoveinput if ifFlipped+isLeft but seems convoluted. wondering if theres something cleaner

[remote meteor]

isFlipped is fine

but you can always just straight multiply the axis scale by -1

[terse elm]

true yea hmmm...

i have a move_forward and move_backwards input (which are D and A respectively), which do set the axis to 1.0 and -1.0.

[remote meteor]

something like this i guess

[terse elm]

the issue im running into is that the movement part isnt too tricky i suppose but playing the appropriate states. since right now moveForward plays walk forward state etc. so on right side (when char switches) hes walking backwards (with the original 1.0 axis of course cause i havent changed it), but playing the walk forward state.

[odd ember]

if the movement scale goes from -1..1 you don't need to flip it

[remote meteor]

🤔

2d?

[terse elm]

yea

its just a little fighting game demo. so side by side

[odd ember]

it's already flipped with the scale value

if you need the character to rotate on its axis that's different

[terse elm]

so that forward on left side = left? instead of right?

maybe im rotating it wrong then hmm

[odd ember]

well flip it on its axis

but that's not movement

that's just rotation

[terse elm]

yea

[odd ember]

or scale even

[terse elm]

yea maybe im flipping them incorrectly

thats what im using at the moment

other versions i tried had my root motion roll continue going right. this version allows the roll to switch directions once on other side

and run etc

[odd ember]

yep scale is clean

also how UE handles flipping stuff internally

[terse elm]

so theres really 2 things i have to solve. 1 is getting the right states to play (as mentioned, right pressed = "forward" states right now, no matter the side), and 2 is just swapping the movement amount if flipped. since walkback is like .85 or .8 of primary walk speed

guess theres a few ways to do it actually

[odd ember]

state should be a product of facing direction

which is what you have done

so far so good

[terse elm]

hmm ok im missing something then in there for the facing. its just taking the button pressed atm

[odd ember]

where are you using SetPlayerFacing?

[terse elm]

im actually not at the moment. so that could be a prob lol

[sturdy loom]

Hey everyone, I have a quick question

[terse elm]

im just flipping the guy on the right side

[sturdy loom]

I wanted to make a Blutility to move all the actors in the scene at the same time

What should the SupportedClass be ?

[terse elm]

wasnt sure if setplayerfacing would have an effect or if that was just another way to rotate the char

[odd ember]

try it then? you'll also need a callback for when the other player switches side

[terse elm]

hrm do i need that? i ask because my guys already flip if they are considered on the right side, and default back if on left

[odd ember]

ah fair

[terse elm]

so i wasnt sure if playerfacing did anything there or what really

[odd ember]

I suppose if set facing is used on both it makes sense

but this looks right

so what's the issue?

[terse elm]

would isfacing change what my actual forward is in that case?

well the prob right now is that when the male robot gets on right side, and you hold RIGHT, he will play the walk forward, and dash forward states, yet move to his right (his new "back")

[odd ember]

only while holding?

or if you press as well?

[terse elm]

was trying to come up with a good way to just flip those. because as it stands now, "move right" is really just... add movement input in that direction, and "move left" is .8 of the walk value in the left direction. (so when hes on right side, he walks away from center at 1.0 speed, and walks towards at .8 speed, and also plays the "im still moving forward" anims while walking to the right)

2 issues but one i know how to fix pretty easily, which is the movement speed variable

[odd ember]

.

really important question here

[terse elm]

no, right is right. like actual right all the time

[odd ember]

that sounds correct?

[cold sinew]

Guys if anyone got this issue before i can't save when i call Macro in graph

[terse elm]

movement wise absolutely yes (and i can fix the values so when going backwards hes always .8, and when going forwards hes always 1.0). the issue is the states being played

[sturdy loom]

it's a private object, see if you can make it public

[terse elm]

since "am i pressing right" just says "im gonna play walk forward". but if you are on the right side, right = walk away from opponent, and should be playing "walk backwards" states

[odd ember]

the states should be a product of your facing direction

[terse elm]

hmm

[odd ember]

you should not set the states manually

ever

[terse elm]

hm not sure how to do that. right now im rotating the mesh. capsule still probably facing to the right then

[odd ember]

where are you setting your states?

[terse elm]

in an event tick. a chain of events, which is basically CHECK TO SEE IF BOTH BUTTONS ARE PRESSED > RETURN TO IDLE > RUN > DASH > WALK in that order. goes down the line

based on input pressed, current state, what tags are valid/invalid etc

[odd ember]

that doesn't sound right

generally you'd want states called on callbacks

can you show code?

[cold sinew]

there is nothing talking about private or public in the function

[terse elm]

well movement wise, when im on the left it works properly. so its really about just flipping what forward means when on the right side. movement wise the char moves and dashes and rolls and runs and runstops well. i just have to figure out how to change what his "forward" is when on right side of opponent

does facing actually change what your relation to Y is ?

or is it just making me turn around and face the char, but add movement input 1.0 would still be in the direction it was originally

then again i guess i can just try that

[odd ember]

look I can only help you if you're willing to listen. feel free to use breakpoints and the debugger otherwise

[sturdy loom]

where is your macro graph stored ?

[cold sinew]

in Macro Library

[terse elm]

ce is that to me? not sure what you mean

[odd ember]

it was yeah

[terse elm]

no idea what that is in reference to. breakpoints for what? listening ? i am listening

[odd ember]

doesn't seem that way

[terse elm]

uh ok

[odd ember]

the breakpoints would tell you when you switch your states

[terse elm]

im asking a question and you are saying you cant help me if i dont listen wtf

[odd ember]

I tried

[terse elm]

seems pretty random

tried what? i asked a question and you replied with "i can only help you if you're willing to listen".

that doesnt seem like helping. that seems like a misunderstanding

[odd ember]

if you read what I said before that

[terse elm]

because im literally sitting here listening

and asking questions based on the replies

[odd ember]

this is not a reply I can do anything about

you've set your mind to what you think the problem is

[terse elm]

wrong

completely

im telling you the current outcome

and im also explaining what the goal is

thus trying to give you more information

[odd ember]

certainly not how it reads

[terse elm]

quite an interesting interaction lol

[maiden wadi]

@terse elm I'm curious. If you camera always faces the same direction, like a traditional fighting game or side scroller, why not just use basic hard coded values? Right on keyboard/controller is +Y, left is -Y, rotation could be as simple as orienting rotation to movement in the character movement component, or being set by the last axis input that wasn't zero.

[terse elm]

@maiden wadithats what im trying to do yea. right is -y in this case cause of the way the level is positioned, left is +y. they are both inputs that set max axis to -1 or +1 respectively.

so regardless of what side they are on, they play the appropriate y movement based on the button pressed (regardless of them moving 1.0 speed or .8 speed when walking back, easily fixable based on is flipped or not)

[maiden wadi]

I would just base it on some simple math from the camera. Get whether the right vector of the camera is more + or - Y.

[terse elm]

interesting

thats a cool idea yea. the real problem for me atm is just figuring out the best/cleanest way to flip the states that are being driven, so it knows that when you are on the right side, pressing right (which moves you -y to the right) should be playing "walk back" and not "walk forward" as it currently does on the left side. i had some ideas how to do it but they felt extra clunky so wasnt sure if there was a better way

[maiden wadi]

What you just pointed out has nothing to do with the movment code. That's rotation stuff and should be handled seperately.

[terse elm]

yea definitely its two diff probs that im trying to solve. the actual movement direction stuff does work as is, though walking towards player when on right side is .8 speed just due to how the char is setup but thats easily fixable

ah let me look

[maiden wadi]

This will move your pawn along Y axis based on your camera's vague direction.

[verbal bobcat]

Is there a node that can toggle use input as touch?

[flat coral]

Is there a better way to get a reference to an event delegate, other than dragging the red line all the way over? This graph is going to get GROSS if I keep at this

[maiden wadi]

CreateEvent

[odd ember]

also allows you to use functions instead of events

so you can use local vars

[maiden wadi]

You'll love that in widgets. Bindings. Everywhere.

Oh, Destruct. That is a Widget. 😄 See?

[flat coral]

Wait wait wait you can CreateEvent on an event that already exists?!

[odd ember]

yes

[flat coral]

🔥

[maiden wadi]

As long as it shares the signature.

[maiden wadi]

But handle the movement first. This is in world space, not relative. So this won't change based on where the character is facing. After this, you can do something as simple as a Tick, get the other character you're fighting against to decide if the character should face world 90 or -90 yaw.

[odd ember]

it is relative to the other character. you walk away from other character > your character slows down

otherwise you can use axis values and leave it at that

[maiden wadi]

Sounds like something you'd handle with velocity dot to forward vector. Can be handled after the rotation.

[odd ember]

were you meant to post this in #cpp ?

[small oracle]

Lol yes, sorry

[terse elm]

ok ill give it a try, ty

[fair spoke]

how do i get the spring arm to follow the car and still be controllable with the mouse

[odd ember]

a camera system, presumably

it's not an easy task

I did mine using behavior trees

[fair spoke]

ill see what i can do

[odd ember]

the basic idea is to have something running per frame to check if user has moved the mouse

and if so, stop the automatic camera

[fair spoke]

wouldnt that just do this

[odd ember]

it would snap back to the direction you're going in

[fair spoke]

what i meant is if i do that
wouldnt that camera move like this when i look around while the car is turning or something

[odd ember]

so you dont want the camera to move at all?

[fair spoke]

no move mouse
camera follow car
yes move mouse while car is turning in circles
camera stops following car and does this weird free move thing as car moves until the cool down finishes and the camera goes back to following the car

[odd ember]

so those are complex behaviors

and you would need something like I said

[tawdry mural]

how to stop this looping montage?

[fair spoke]

theres a thing called stop montage

[tawdry mural]

its from anim instance

this one called from char bp

its not stopping if called anim instance stop montage

[odd ember]

char bp > get anim instance?

hm ok

[fair spoke]

is there an end montage

[tawdry mural]

i tried

[odd ember]

you haven't set the montage to stop

anyway why not just use the animBP instead of trying to wing it through montages?

[tawdry mural]

nah i need it that way

[odd ember]

it also allows you to use the anim thread so it's faster

[tawdry mural]

my anim bp

[odd ember]

that looks very wrong

[brazen merlin]

yeah, there's a lot of empty space at the bottom, you totally have space for more

[tawdry mural]

;D

so that montage is unstoppable

right

[odd ember]

who knows

[vivid swan]

is there a good tutorial out there for specifically character movement and animation blueprints if you could dm me the link to those resources it would be appreciated

[odd ember]

like I said you didn't specify the montage variable

[tawdry mural]

still doesnt work

[odd ember]

🤷

anyway I'd still work on consolidating and blending your anim states properly so you don't end up with a massive starburst issue

[tawdry mural]

those anim states are ok

[odd ember]

just a suggestion

[tawdry mural]

works that way

[brazen merlin]

i would think you would stop the loop based on notify event

[tawdry mural]

eh same thing

anim bp has to be involved

[odd ember]

didn't I say that you needed to set the montage to stop?

[tawdry mural]

i changed play montage to montage play 😄

but now i tried and it works with both lol

ill go hide in the corner

[flat coral]

BE NOT AFRAID

[agile wren]

LMFAO

[flat coral]

Is there a good way to trigger some other action when a widget animation COMPLETES?

[flat coral]

Niiiiiice

[zealous fog]

You can also create an animnotify

[gentle urchin]

For user widgets?

[digital ember]

I am following this tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRggTwhiew) to create a procedural scene

Just the first node is instantiated, for some reason all the others are invalid and don't get instantiated.

What can I do to fix this?

[gentle urchin]

Need unique name ?

Not sure

[digital ember]

Thaanks 🙂

I thought that was purely to differentiate nodes by name

[onyx marsh]

how do i get these orange lines to work?

mine never fire

in ue5 and ue4

even if everything is working

[gusty shuttle]

Is the actor/thing you want to use in the world?

[onyx marsh]

nvm

figured it out

i ahd this set to none at first

but i set it to my bp

and now it works

[gusty shuttle]

Cool cool

[zealous moth]

@onyx marsh wait how?

[gusty shuttle]

Question, when walking up stairs, my anim loop gets stuck on Jump Start. Any tips on how to not have it be stuck?

[odd ember]

#animation

[onyx marsh]

in debug filter

its at the top

[gusty shuttle]

Cool, you can help me there ;P

[zealous moth]

Ty

Always wondered

[odd ember]

do you want answers or do you want to troll?

[gusty shuttle]

Answers would be faster. You trolled first technically

By the time I ask a question on here, It's usually because I checked forums, videos and tried multiple things. Plus I posed on Animation first but most channels other than Blueprint or cpp is slow at getting back.

So yeah, I posted here

Plus there is an off chance you have someone that dealt with this problem already and knows a quick solution

Might as well take the shot and posting in a different category channel.

I can understand if I was a spammy dude, but I am not

[maiden wadi]

Just needs a way to exit. Your only exit is Fist_Jump_loop. You either need a direction out of that for quicker falling transitions, or you need your IsFalling to be changed to something more deliberate for jumping so it doesn't transition on falling. Maybe an "InAirTime" check as well as the IsFalling.

[gusty shuttle]

Cool, I'll try that, thanks!

[onyx marsh]

np

i did as well

[gusty shuttle]

@maiden wadi That fixed it, just needed a simple return to walking if not falling

Thanks man

I swear I tried something like that but it didn't work haha

But it does now so ima run with it!

[maiden wadi]

Literally, instead of flying up stairs.

[gusty shuttle]

Legit was doing some Casper the Ghost flying up them haha

[odd ember]

I don't have the answers. I'm pointing you to the channel that does

not every issue you have is going to be a blueprint issue

[gusty shuttle]

All good, someone helped and was usefull

[umbral ginkgo]

what does accessed none trying to read property mean?

[odd ember]

means whatever variable you have is a null pointer

which means it's empty

[umbral ginkgo]

Oh ok

thank you

[umbral ginkgo]

Any ideas as to why the AIChosenOne variable is coming up as null with more than one ai?

[odd ember]

try without removing it from the array

shouldn't make a difference but you never know

[uncut lark]

So for a savegame system like half life, I want to save map data, player location, and variables, right?

[flat coral]

What's the right way to get the current game time that WORKS while paused

[icy dragon]

Get Real Time Seconds

[hexed barn]

Hi is there a way to redirect the velocity? Basicly if I apply a force to the left while the character move to the right I want it to go to the left lose no speed AND have the new force too (so it go faster)

[tawdry surge]

Add them

[flat coral]

What happens if they're moving forward and you apply the force to the left? Do they move left with the full velocity, or do they move forward and left?

[hexed barn]

So to be more clear my character have almost no friction, and I push him where I want with my mouse it's top down and so if I apply an opposite force it slow down

[hexed barn]

My character move forward and left

[flat coral]

So what you want is it to bounce

You want elasticity on the impacts so that hitting a surface in the direction of your motion doesn't stop you, it redirects you

[hexed barn]

No it already bounce on wall etc, I just want that If I move on the opposite direction it change the velocity angle and then apply the new impulse

SO let's say all my "push" are at 500 speed, if I push 3 time to the right and one to the left it will go at 1000 to the right

But I want it to go at 2000 to the left

The problem is if I add the velocity to the new push it don't work since the velocity is not in the same direction

[flat coral]

But what i mean is you want it to simulate the same effect as if it was bouncing

Essentially, if you push left with force of 0, you want it to go 1500 left (in your example)

[hexed barn]

yes

I though you were talking about bouncing of wall and stuff

[flat coral]

In a sense I am, that's the point. What's the difference between the object encountering a directional force with 0 magnitude, and it hitting a wall in that direction?

And I bring all this up because adding them, as was suggested, won't work. You're trying to simulate impacting a moving object with 100% elasticity (meaning that the impact absorbs zero momentum). So first, see if Unreal has some tools to help simulate bounces, it just might. But, failing that, it should set you on the right track

[hexed barn]

For the bounce of the wall I just put a physics material

And I think I know what I have to do, I need to angle the velocity to the new vector but that's the problem all rotate vector things I tried don't work

[unique yoke]

This is a loaded question but I’m trying to better understand OOP and encapsulation. I have a health component that I want to attach to characters to handle taking damage. I’m still confused on best practices to have the component communicate with other systems.

The component needs to communicate state changes to its owning actor so I figure event dispatchers on the actor can handle that. What I’m less clear on is 1.) how communication should be handled in determining if the character is player controlled for the purposes of accessing their hud 2.) the path of updating the health widget on the hud in this case and 3.) how communication should be handled for talking to the component to attempt to apply damage.

Where im getting caught up is what should be pushing and pulling data and what should be using interfaces vs dispatchers.

[flat coral]

Basically your options are either to find a way to get Unreal engine to do it for you, or do a lot of fuckin vector math. Like find the component of one vector along the direction of another and add it to the inverse of... some shit like that. You'll probably have to use a dot product at some point. It'll be nasty

[hexed barn]

Well im pretty sure im gonna do some math for the next few hours

just to know what dot product do?

[flat coral]

I have to google it literally every time lol

[hexed barn]

I used it once in a tutorial but I wasn't really understanding what it does

[hexed barn]

then I will google it don't bother thanks ^^

[flat coral]

Have you considered instead of making a component for the health, making an abstract parent class that handles functionality like health which all your characters will need?

[unique yoke]

I haven't. Would you be able to explain that a little bit more? Still new to a lot of blueprints so I get the idea behind attaching components and inheritance with classes, but not familiar with how a separate parent class would handle this and be used in this case. Thanks 🙂

[flat coral]

these are actually just coding principles, it's the same in blueprints or anything else pretty much

If you get inheritance with classes, this is just that. The only thing special is the idea of an Abstract class, which is simply a class that cannot be directly instantiated as-is. This restriction that it can't be instantiated frees it up to declare functions that are not implemented - After all, what does the implementation matter, if you can't have an instance of the class?

To use an abstract class you need to create a "concrete" subclass of that abstract class. Most languages (but NOT blueprints, to my frustration) will insist that you implement all declared functions in the child class, assuming the abstract class didn't do so

Compared with interfaces, Abstract classes are nice because where an Interface simply declares a bunch of functions with no implementations, you CAN implement stuff in an abstract class

[umbral ginkgo]

It didn't help 😦

Are there any ways I could try to debug it?

[odd ember]

breakpoints. do a youtube tutorial

[odd ember]

an abstract parent class WITH a health component*

[flat coral]

Oh I like that

[odd ember]

actors should be considered managers for their components

is a good way of thinking about it

and keep the responsibility of a class within itself

[umbral ginkgo]

Breakpoints are awesome

[odd ember]

they are, and nobody knows about them

sadly

[tawdry surge]

@hexed barn dot product returns a value of -1 to 1. 1 if both vectors are pointing the same way. -1 if they are pointing opposite directions. Some value in between if the vectors are perpendicular

[odd ember]

0 if perpendicular

(but you can't tell which side)

[hexed barn]

Well I will surely have to use it, tho I still have a LOT of math to do 😅

[flat coral]

My shitty advice: When it comes to vector math in UE, it takes far less time to just plug in some operators and test it to see if it works how you want, than to actually understand vector math

[tawdry surge]

0 is perfectly perpendicular.. usually you use it to check if the value is between .8 and 1 and that will tell you if you're facing something.
And that is shitty advice

[flat coral]

Yes. But also, in another way, it's very good advice

[odd ember]

all of the dot values can be converted to degrees of separation between the two vectors

[hexed barn]

Yeah that's why im doing ^^

[tawdry surge]

No. Purposely not understanding what your doing is always bad

[hexed barn]

Well I understand it

but after I made it

[flat coral]

There are many levels of understanding

I just prefer to operate on the level which makes the game do the thing, and no further

[tawdry surge]

Then you can't modify or scale your code very well and after a few months won't really even understand your own work..
You don't need to learn things that don't apply but basic algebra from middle school is pretty essential

[odd ember]

pretty sure vector math is in calculus... 🤔

[flat coral]

Isn't vector math linear algebra?

[odd ember]

I guess 2d

or no, not really

you don't learn about vectors until you learn about the unit circle

and that's trig, which is calculus

[flat coral]

I mean I already don't understand my own work but that's never stopped me from modifying or scaling it

[tawdry surge]

Vectors are algebra

They can be used in calc and trig

[flat coral]

I could swear I didn't hear about a dot product until college at least, but I could be wrong

I mean, we've already established I don't know shit about stuff

[odd ember]

it's pointless to learn about vectors when you don't understand that vectors carry direction and magnitude

and to do vector direction you need the unit circle

if you're talking about drawing a XY point or a line between two points, sure, but that's not vector math. even if some of it applies

[umbral ginkgo]

Should this trigger work with multiple ai? It works with one so far

[hexed barn]

Well I never learn things about vector, just like really basic stuff in math that's all

[odd ember]

well now you know: vectors are a combination of a direction and a magnitude

[odd ember]

potentially. you're not sanitizing your inputs

GetActorOfClass is a really bad way of doing things

in general

use a cast instead

[umbral ginkgo]

So cast to other actor?

[odd ember]

you're already using a cast later

use that instead of the first branch

[umbral ginkgo]

K

[odd ember]

just remove both of those GetActorOfClass nodes and their branches

you don't need them

[umbral ginkgo]

But without the branch, how will it check to see if its the correct actor?

[odd ember]

the cast node does that already

it has a cast failed pin

[zealous moth]

@umbral ginkgo use either "isActorOfClass" or cast

[flat coral]

though in UE that's a little confusing because vectors are really just 3 floats that can be INTERPRETED as having a direction and magnitude. In other cases they're used in other ways as everything from a position on a grid, in the case of a location, to a fucking color

[odd ember]

all vectors are floats

whether in unreal or otherwise

[umbral ginkgo]

Ok, my code is sort of working now

except ive discovered the issue was actually multiple issues

but hey at least im not getting errors anymore 😐

Well, thanks for the help as always

[flat coral]

But outside of unreal you can express a vector as an angle and a float, OR as 3 floats, whereas Unreal only really does it the one way

[hexed barn]

in Unreal you can convert in angle (I think) using vector heading angle

[odd ember]

you can do that in unreal too

math used in unreal isn't different

there are functions that do exactly what you ask

[hexed barn]

I think I sort of get it work

actually when I go right and apply a left force the character go up

without loosing speed

so that mean I just need to correct the rotation

I just need to do another adjustement to the velocity rotation

and I think im good

Well the direction is fixed but not the speed

[little escarp]

I did it

[flat coral]

I know I'm a bad person, but I kinda love it when you end up doing stuff like this

[coarse forge]

Hmm in the level blueprint.. any reason I wouldn't be able to promote things to variables?

[odd ember]

if they are actor references from your level you can't?

but otherwise it should work

[coarse forge]

They are UObjects

[odd ember]

show code?

[coarse forge]

class BIBLE_NOAHSARK_API UQuest : public UObject
{
    GENERATED_BODY()

public: ```

[odd ember]

don't you have to drag it out? right now you're selecting the pin, not the variable

[coarse forge]

most of the time i guess if its an actor I can right click and promote to variable

not a big deal

just wondered

[odd ember]

you can if you drag out the wire

you're still selecting the pin

@coarse forge

[tawdry surge]

Promote to variable is still an option if you right click the pin. His is just grayed out for some reason

[spring kayak]

I'm trying to make a dialogue system that plays sounds and subtitles one after the other, but it's only playing the last structure in the array. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong here?

[timber berry]

I need help implementing a mining system. Where you can automatically mine a rock/minerals etc when near it for mobile

[tawdry surge]

Well off top it's a little odd you're using the timer variable b4 you set it

[spring kayak]

Just so the first one plays with 0 seconds of delay, then increments up for the following dialogue

[muted dust]

Okay so I'm having a hell of a time here with something really basic. For whatever reason, no matter what I do, the variable just...doesn't set on the spawned object, and I have no idea what I could be doing differently here.

[tired geyser]

Hey so im having trouble making a cloud spawner and its just not spawning anything.

This is the game mode (top) which spawns it, and the bottom is the actual spawn box

oh no

i got it nvm

lmao

[tawdry surge]

@spring kayak wouldn't you want it to set the delay to the specific time of each dialog track?
This looks like it is gonna end up making the delay very long after the first few lines

[spring kayak]

Yeah, I thought I was by getting the duration of the sound and adding it to the timer, no?

[tawdry surge]

Yeah so if the first one is 3 seconds and the second is 5 seconds when it gets to line 3 it'll wait 8 seconds b4 starting

[spring kayak]

You can select a custom resolution from the "Fill Screen" button on the top right, if you're developing for a specific resolution.

[spring kayak]

Yeah, that's what I want

[tawdry surge]

I think you just want the timer to be the duration

Doesn't make sense to accumulate the durations unless they're running concurrently.

[spring kayak]

The idea is that I have an array of dialogue sentences on a trigger, then when the player walks through it, to play each bit one after the other until completed. I want the array to work with any size

My main issue is it just seems to be firing off once, and not delaying at all

Even through I have 3 array elements at the moment

[muted dust]

How is it set up within the BP? is it set to only access a specific index?

[spring kayak]

I've tested that it's going through all of them by printing the index, and the index prints out 0,1,2 so they're all firing pretty much at the same time

[tawdry surge]

Hmm that's odd. Id understand if they didn't all fire. Skipping the delay and firing the rest is weird tho

[muted dust]

What do the nodes that activate it look like?

[spring kayak]

Yeah, it's confusing me a bit

All the nodes light up once (or maybe 3 times very quickly) and ignore the delay

[compact anchor]

what's the longest y'all had to wait for shaders?

[spring kayak]

So, I tried it this way and it's working, but the last strings don't get updated, but the sound does??

Same if I add more array elements, the sound updates, but not the strings...

[tawdry surge]

That was actually gonna be my next suggestion. Set up a manual loop like that.
Try using a break point and step through it to see what happens

[spring kayak]

This is the play event if it helps

It seems to be running through the nodes fine when I simulate it, just not sure why the strings fail after the first two :\

[tawdry surge]

Thats why I'd step through and watch it go node by node and you'll see exactly when it starts to skip

[spring kayak]

Ahh, I fixed it. I added some extra time to the delay node after Play, it seemed to be overlapping a little bit

Thanks so much for your help MW!

[flat coral]

How do I make an EXISTING function on a BP the implementation of an interface function which as the same signature?

I cannot delete this function and remake it, it's used everywhere

[brazen merlin]

OnUsed is defined in a bpi?

[flat coral]

Basically, OnUsed was first defined in this object. I need to move it to an interface, so that other objects can also do this

Shit I guess I could sneaky add an abstract class layer and remove the.. .fuck this is gonna be gross

[tawdry surge]

I feel like there's a way to find and replace

[unique yoke]

Is there a good general rule for when to use Is Valid? I know conceptually it's when you don't know if an actor exists - should I just get used to checking that anytime an event is passing around actors where there's any chance of the actor not existing?
The random example I ran into is I called apply damage and didn't feed the instigator into it, so the binded events elsewhere threw up a runtime error for being None.

[tawdry surge]

Yes, basically

[split orbit]

I've made a struct that has a Subclass field

The SubclassID is based on the ClassID so how do I make something like

Class ID 0
Subclass ID 0
Subclass = Consumable

Class ID Id 1
Subclass Id 0
Subclass = Bag

Like this

I have the Struct, and a ClassID Enumeration

Do I just need to make an Enumeration for each Subclass or is there an easier way to do this with Arrays or something

[maiden wadi]

@split orbit I strongly recommend you take a look into GameplayTags.

[split orbit]

Sent you a discord PM

[maiden wadi]

I generally don't do PMs

[split orbit]

Oh well, I have a rough idea how to use GameplayTags, but don't think they will end up doing what I want

Considering I need to be able to take the data generated and export it to the database

[maiden wadi]

Possibly. What is the data in the datatable? Just integers?

[split orbit]

Uhh Integers, Floats, Bitmasks, Strings

I am attempting to create my ItemDatabase for my game XD

Trying to get it to work in engine before writing to the DB

[vast lion]

FDateTime will only use my time zone? It won't let me use UTC?

[maiden wadi]

Judging from what I can see, I'd still use tags. All a GameplayTag is, is a glorified FName with a system in place that lets it tier. I don't fully follow the use of your ClassID and SubclassID, but you could keep the identical use with just writing "0.0.Consumable", "1.0.Container", "1.0.Bag". You can convert these to FNames, and then to Strings, or you can break them down by their categories and store them that way by getting parent tags. Getting parent tag on "1.0.Bag" for instance would return you a tag of "1.0"

[trim matrix]

so why my music stops when there are sfx playing same time?

[tawdry mural]

your music is very polite

badumtss

[gentle urchin]

When in doubt -> Use GameplayTags

[tight schooner]

Is it sharing a concurrency group?

In any case, try #audio

[pearl swallow]

I'm not really sure which channel this question pertains to, so here it is:

I'm having trouble understanding what player controllers are for and what their bigger picture is in a game's framework. Unreal Engine documentation says very little about it so I only have a very loose idea of what it is(it's an interface between the player and the pawn, whatever that means). I need some concrete examples that are explained step by step to really understand what they're for but I couldn't find any satisfactory videos or articles about the topic online. Can someone point me in the right direction?

[worldly pasture]

Hey guys. I have a Text3D component in a blank project and performing a multiline trace on it, which works as expected in PIE and standalone. But the trace goes through the Text3D component in the packaged build. Would love to know if anything can be done about it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks 🙂

[opaque blade]

They are used for pawn independant controls and functionality

Also in MP they are replicated and are present, for every player, on the server

They have some more use for control rotation etc which is useful in camera setups
PlayerControllers also decide which Pawn is controlled by the specific player
And can come useful for stuff like implementing RTS controls

Also a PlayerController is the player dependant alternative to AIController

Also sometimes PC can be used for more generalized input shared between multiple pawns
Rather than implement it for every subclass

[fiery swallow]

Less relevant but important. don't get into the habit of putting controller related things into your character

[vital prism]

Just found UE4 does not support nested sublevels....
Have been transitioning between levels using steaming, an empty persistent level that loads/unloads levels.
This of course broke when dividing individual levels into sub-levels - Only the persistent level is loaded.
Is there a good solution to this? it seems like main options are to
-Try and load/unload each "subsub" level manually, feels like it could work, but suspect it may cause trouble in actor references...
-Drop the main level streaming.
Neither of these sound like great options, is there a better way I'm not aware of?

[uncut lark]

Is leaving the persistent level empty and loading/unloading via streamjng an issue?

Im curious too because I was under the impression that method was the way to do it

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/BuildingWorlds/LevelStreaming/WorldBrowser/

Look into this

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/Basics/Levels/LevelsWindow/

Also this. Not too sure what youre doing but maybe this will be helpful

[vital prism]

This is what I have been doing, and is fine- so long as the levels you are loading don't have sublevels of their own.

[uncut lark]

Sorry, but what do you mean by sub levels?

[vital prism]

Levels inside levels, that can be streamed or set to always loaded

As mentioned in 2nd doc you linked: https://i.imgur.com/1UbJLFB.png

[uncut lark]

Well like give me an example

Im not 100 percent sure the implementation youre aiming for

[onyx token]

idk where to ask this...
is there a way to reset the rotation of a socket?

[vital prism]

So, I have a level
FirstLevel which is a just about an empty level, it contains FirstLevelLandscape, FirstLevelActors, FirstLevelCinematics - all set to "always loaded"
This is fine if I open the level directly
But I also have another level LevelStreamingController - that attempts to stream FirstLevel, then later load SecondLevel
However, streaming FirstLevel does not pull in FirstLevelLandscape, FirstLevelActors, FirstLevelCinematics

[uncut lark]

OH

I see what you mean

Hmmmm

[uncut lark]

Probably animation

[vital prism]

in what context? if you are in SK asset window, you can close and open it again

[onyx token]

well i'm using the socket to attach my weapon to my hand.
The problem is, if it's rotated, the weapon will be rotated and i can't animate it predictably...

[vital prism]

Right - It seems "nested sublevels" aren't supported, but docs even mention "level Hierarchy" - feels like I am missing something

[onyx token]

since i can't see the socket in my 3d animation program

[uncut lark]

I mean it looks like maybe it is something hierarchical, what it sounds like to me is maybe theres something wrong with where the player is spawning? Like with the streaming volumes?

[uncut lark]

You could try just importing the rigs and models into UE4 and just animate within? Might be easier to do that?

[onyx token]

LOL

[uncut lark]

It's 1 AM Im trying lmao

[vital prism]

You can probably get the socket into your 3d anim program, and do it that way, or work out relative angle for gun and set bones to match
Check out content examples for one method, blends two aimoffset anims

[vital prism]

Not even getting to issues with player spawning yet, most of the level does not stream in (due to being in sublevels)

[uncut lark]

Yeah that, to me, sounds like something fucky with level streaming volumes

[vital prism]

or, subsublevels as they would be once loaded in

Not touching streaming volumes - just making a bp call

Don't think its a bug, so much as a feature (nested levels) that does not exist

[uncut lark]

Ah. Okay

Yeah thats beyond my understanding unfortunately 😕

I thought I knew, but I dont

[vital prism]

oh well, thanks for the discussion anyhow! given me some more food for thought

[uncut lark]

Ofc

Maybe take a break from it for a little bit and come back to it

I cant get a simple save system to work so I just finished a couple other things, and Ill try to mess with saving tomorrow. Dunno if Ill get it but heyo

[vital prism]

Whats not working with your saving system? UE's save class and slots seems a bit weird at first, but will probably make sense after it is working

[uncut lark]

So I tried doing ryan Laleys newest save tutorials and I got the UI system working, but the game wouldnt save the slot and would spit out errors. Im just gonna start from scratch.

I just need the engine to save location, health, what weapons the player is carrying and ammo.

Like it should be fairly straight forward, but Its the UI part thats sort of tripping me up

[vital prism]

Could be worth seperating logic from ui, have a couple of keybinds to test save/load - get that working, then link it to a UI

[uncut lark]

Yeah. Im gonna try that tomorrow. From what I understand, one savegame blueprint is for the actual stats and another stores the actual save slots

[vital prism]

I'd say one blueprint is the data that you save (inherits from SaveGame object)
Another will control saving/loading that to a name+slot

[uncut lark]

Yeahxexactly

[tacit maple]

If anyone has some knowledge on navmesh generation pls dm me! I really need some help with dynamic generation. Thanks so much! 🙂

[zealous fog]

I have a bit of a broad question, but I don't need a specific answer just something to get me started. How do you handle the flow of the game? Like I have basic enemies, AI and I have combat, now I need to set up objectives/goals and script the order of the game. And a system so if you finish the goal the next things happens. Where/how would you do this? Where would I start learning about this

[proper vale]

Hi, guys!
Is anybody know how to write 8 as a below index in chemical formula?
for example NaAlSi₃O₈

Number 3 work perfectly as a below index, but number 8 have some problem and is written as a cube in text or string variable

[unreal token]

I'm sorry can someone help me with this error? I downlaoded this marketplace asset and got this error when i put it in my project

[spark steppe]

i would look for a font which supports those and ship it with your project

[maiden wadi]

@unreal tokenDisconnect the red line.

Then right click and refresh the node.

[spark steppe]

does that also get rid of the metal index? otherwise rightclick the metal index and pick "reset to default value"

[unreal token]

the metal?

[odd ember]

remove the wire from the red pin, and clear the reference of the other red pin

[unreal token]

the index?

[odd ember]

paste/metal

[spark steppe]

just do what CE said

[unreal token]

"input action crouchinput unknown"

[odd ember]

that's a different issue

[unreal token]

it popped up after doing that

i'm not trying to trick you or anything

[spark steppe]

no, it was already on your other screenshot

[unreal token]

i'm a nub

[odd ember]

sure but it's a different issue

it has nothing to do with what you posted

[maiden wadi]

It didn't show up after that, you already had that.

[unreal token]

it's not allowing me to compile

[odd ember]

calm down and add an input in your project settings for crouch

[spark steppe]

yea, because you reference things that don't exist

[odd ember]

problem solved

[proper vale]

It happens before text get the specific font.
It happens when I am writing below index 8 inside input field of text or string variable in data table

[spark steppe]

that's because the Unreal UI's font doesn't support those characters, however if your font does have them they should show up fine in the designer and on runtime

[unreal token]

ok so i added crouch, with the keyboard command left ctrl

right

[spark steppe]

and you named it exactly like the one which showed up in the error, right?

CrouchInput

[unreal token]

oh no

ok

crouchinput instead of just crouch?

[spark steppe]

CrouchInput

with capitals

[unreal token]

ok uh error went away.

not i test it right?

[spark steppe]

up to you, you can also save and call it a day

[unreal token]

testing streaming pool over 271.800

[spark steppe]

texture streaming pool

[unreal token]

aren't I supposed to be afraid of you?

yes texture

but i have a mega computer

[spark steppe]

depends, it will just use lower res textures

[unreal token]

how do i increase it?

i have no idea what it means

[spark steppe]

r.streaming.poolsize 4096 in the console

to give it 4GB

it's the amount of vram which unreal reserves for textures

if your textures exceed it, it will show the warning

[unreal token]

everything came into view

i have 64gb of ram and 8gb of vram, does that help?

i mean can i crease it more?

[zealous fog]

Thanks, you use this plugin? What's the general standard method of doing it, level blueprints? Or it depends heavily on the project?

[unreal token]

NEW QUESTION: i have been trying to fix the animation to go straight and turn, by shuffling the feet, but no one I ask that helps me does it correctly, so i'm walking around with the mannequin body turned 90 degrees to either the left or right, and occassionally it's forward. This was after doing a staming / sprint system

I assume since you all are blueprint experts you can help?

[unreal token]

thank you sir

[unreal token]

thank you sir

[sturdy herald]

Hello! I have a rotation problem in Control rig, but i ask it here too, because its happening in every BP. So rotation around Y axis has a bug, when it reach the -90 or 90 degrees then it start to back in this intervalum and the X,Z axises get a +-180 value. How can i solve this? This little video shows the problem.

[odd ember]

what is the replacement?

[storm vigil]

Do you think the physical animation component of UE needs more exposure or improvement? Not sure if it is at par with the physics animation and ragdoll from unity.
I tried to approach some devs here and on fiverr for contract work improving my zombie physics animation to be blended with hit reactions or death animations and even ragdoll but it seems a few only have delved on it so much. I am not saying they are not good but probably it just needs more exposure or needs an updated tutorial from Epic itself. Even the youtube tutorials about it seems few and old or some are only showcases. I have not polished it to my liking given my noob knowledge.

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

One message removed from a suspended account.

[storm vigil]

Yeah I mean I was comparing it with the equivalent from unity. 🙂

[hexed loom]

One message removed from a suspended account.

One message removed from a suspended account.

One message removed from a suspended account.

One message removed from a suspended account.

[zealous fog]

Idk man ragdoll seems fine to me

[odd ember]

as in, no standardized solution then?

as in, we cannot quickly reference actors and delegates through the level BP anymore?

yeah that's exceptionally terrible

whole point of level BP is easy hookup in a centralized place for level unique events

now you're forced to deal with weird actor managers

I see

yeah I was thinking WP wasn't optional

sounds terrible

I mean the level blueprint solves problems that can't be solved by actor managers is my biggest gripe

[zealous fog]

I've heard someone say they also gave post processes less functionality and more focused on realism, is that true too?

[odd ember]

sure but you cannot place refs in regular actors

[zealous fog]

For ue5

[odd ember]

you cannot have delegates show up autobound

that stuff has to be done manually

[maiden wadi]

Not personally that sad to see the level blueprint gone.

[odd ember]

you can if you expose the variables

you don't need that level of exposition if you use the level BP is my point

level unique things

should stay in the level BP

the entire point is having a manager that works

the fact that they have issues separating that from the levels is IMO the big issue here

I can't imagine doing stuff like patrol points in a details panel

let alone sift through 30 instances of this

it's just one of those things where if 🍴 doesn't use it, it's not well thought out

[proper vale]

Thank you!
You're right! I've changed font from roboto to another one, and the index 8 showed up

[dim robin]

i need to be able to connect to server http rest api. the server i need to connect requests apikey, timestamp and a signature for authentication.
I need to:
1- concatenate all the public parameters in the query string format
2 - use hmac_sha256 algorithm to sign the query string and convert it to hex string to obtain the sign parameter
3- append the sign parameter to the end of the parameters string and send http request.
any way to do this through blueprints?

[spark steppe]

is there any difference between those two when forwarding an event from my character to a component? should one method be prefered?

[swift pewter]

When should I use a DatatTable vs a PrimaryDataAsset for e.g. storing weapon variables to display in the UI? Or should storing data in general

[maiden wadi]

Realistically, it doesn't matter so much. Consider that a Datatable is functionally the same as a TMap of FName and SomeStruct. You can also put that in a DataAsset. The only real bonus that a Datatable has is it's UI. Some might find it nicer to input data into a Datatable. But they do require a struct made for them. Datatables are just more primitive. DataAssets allow you to add code in them as well which can be great for filtering out information on more complex data. At work we use a combination of both. On personal projects I tend to pretty much just go with DataAssets.

[swift pewter]

So if it's just a very simple set of data then a DataTable will suffice? As there isn't really a difference functionality-wise between the two

[maiden wadi]

Sure. Either would work just as easily.

[swift pewter]

Got it, thank you

[zealous fog]

Found a cleaner way btw (easier to scale): I put a servicer on the behaviour tree that will pick that task if the random int is between 2 values, the values can be read from a blackboard key which can be set per enemy

It's not in the blueprints but it works

[gentle urchin]

looks very manual to me

not sure how that's more scalable

[zealous fog]

If I want to add more attacks I don't need to adjust the macro

[gentle urchin]

No, you now have to add more checks 😛

just like the macro is doing really

you could stuff them all in a float array

all tresholds