blueprint

[long whale]

I'd say 20-30%

[faint pasture]

Just do some sphere traces

you'll hit landscape like 50% of the time, that's plenty

or use Try to Adjust Location in the spawning

depends on how close to a tree you consider "too close"

all up to you bb

[long whale]

I'll give it a try

[long whale]

Another way I can think of with very complicated landscape and various landscape objects is to run a simulation of a large number of capsules falling from the sky, and record their final location, store them in a data file and loads it when the game really begins.

[faint pasture]

That's exactly what a sphere trace is

yeah you can prebake it if you want

A capsule is just a swept sphere

Ye i'd prebake and curate to rule out the gimped spawns like a dude on the peak of a mountain etc

[long whale]

yeah

the simple sphere or capsule trace can place players on slopes where they'll start falling immediately

[faint pasture]

You can filter all that out with normals etc but yeah.

[long whale]

oh sure that's another way

[faint pasture]

It's sorta like a query
select from landscape where normal.z > 0.8 and z < 2500 and etc and etc and etc

[dreamy yacht]

Hi, I am asking for help. Created a simple activator based on on hit event. This is the arcade racing I am working on. I want to make UE4 change "on the fly" the default vehicle pawn Car_Player_Cop to somewhat of crushed vehicle variant Car_Player_Cop_Crushed - for 5 seconds and then back to the default one.

[odd ember]

on even hit > set static mesh

[faint pasture]

@dreamy yachtOr just scale it

that looks hilarious btw

[dreamy yacht]

I have created secondary BP for crushed vehicle version

[faint pasture]

nah

[dreamy yacht]

yeah, it is meant to look as it looks 🙂

[tight pollen]

hello, can anyone boast of how much MS the plot of the game takes?

[faint pasture]

just scale the mesh when crushed

[dreamy yacht]

this will be a game with some humorous vibe

[faint pasture]

You can do it with a timeline.
Event -> Play timeline
Timeline scales the mesh down then back up

[tight pollen]

I don't know if this result is okay: /

[dreamy yacht]

the scale is not the effect I look for

I have rigged the variant, so it looks and works exactly how it's meant to work

[faint pasture]

OK then just swap the mesh out

do not spawn a whole new actor

I'd use scale or animation though, so it can happen over a short time and have bounce etc

[tight pollen]

I know it is hardware dependent too

[dreamy yacht]

hmmm

I don't think this is the way to go in this case

This should work for static, unmovable mesh

[odd ember]

literally lol'd

[dreamy yacht]

but this is the skeletal mesh

[faint pasture]

@dreamy yachtWhy are you casting other actor to cop? Which actor is the pawn and which one should be getting flattened?

Should it be "When the player's pawn hits a cop, the player's pawn gets flattened"?

[dreamy yacht]

i am casting from the test object ( some activator in form of actor, placed in world )

look

maybe, this should be more straightforward

I activate group of rocks, which fall down on the road

[faint pasture]

ok got it. The player's pawn is the cop car. You should check if the other actor is the ROCK, and then flatten itself.

or the rock can check if it hits the COP then flattens the COP

what you showed last is checking if the other actor is the COP, then flattening itself.

[dreamy yacht]

If any of the rocks is hit by player car ( or any other car, but let's keep it simple and limit it to player_cop_car for this moment ), then the code is fired and the car mesh gets swapped to flattened one

[faint pasture]

I would make an Event Flatten that handles all the flattening stuff

Then just call it when it makes sense.

[faint pasture]

You can 100% accomplish this with scaling though.

easy

[unique cloud]

had to move away for the kid, The valid doesn't register, it seems the Character don't want to read the variable

[dreamy yacht]

You can 100% accomplish this with scaling though. - the effect using scalling will be similar, but wheels will stay on their position, so there will be no real difference seen from the top down camera

I have to swap the skeletal mesh tho

[small halo]

https://gyazo.com/2ac826dd00fe6ac313bf48a3c8d31aef?token=e76740868bad6dc09e2c7a2f723e8333
how would i set has seen to false if the ai loses sight?

[earnest tangle]

successfully sensed will be false when sight is lost

[jaunty drum]

How can I plug spherical coordinates into the procedural mesh generator? 🤔

[small halo]

yeah how ?

[earnest tangle]

It... just is?

the perception updated event gets the value as a parameter from the perception system

the value is false if the update was caused by loss of line of sight

[small halo]

yeah i know

but where do i put the code

[earnest tangle]

just connect the value to the set value as bool thing

[small halo]

https://gyazo.com/0cdf41662c316c523b688ecf3873a2eb

yeah i have this

but i dont know where to link it

is what im asking

[earnest tangle]

to the bool value pin

[small halo]

https://gyazo.com/f2996385c05394a3815a037d958b97eb

[trim matrix]

So I have a Boolean that indicates whether the player is jumping or not. I set it when the jump action is pressed. I've linked it in my animation event graph in order to play the jump animation. I'm running into an issue where if you hold it, the character jumps correctly initially and then it loops the animation. Turning off looping causes the character to freeze in pose when holding jump down. I've tried using the Can Jump function but that did not work either.

[dreamy yacht]

hey!

works like a charm when I test it out manually by pressing 1

I need to find out what to cast in order to make rock fire the flattening code

[faint pasture]

Rock casts other actor to car and calls the flatten event

[dreamy yacht]

2 nd question: at the end of the chain I want to add some vertical force to the car, which will make car hop up a bit ( 2-3 meters )

[dreamy yacht]

thanks I'll try

2 nd question: at the end of the chain I want to add some vertical force to the car, which will make car hop up a bit ( 2-3 meters ), how to?

[faint pasture]

How is it moving?

If you're using physics, just add an impulse

[dreamy yacht]

damn

i never know if it's physics or chaos

4.27.2

LOLed so hard !!!

LMAO 🙂

Holy moly! Everything works! Thanks guys 😄

activator ( rock ) falls down on car and flattens it, then after 3 seconds the skeletal mesh comes back to normal one and the pop sound is played, next the little hop works aswell

[onyx token]

okay

is there like a "set multiple booleans" node?

this is probably not healthy.

i'm not feeling happy

[odd ember]

there is node that will uniformly do that for you unless you put them all into a boolean array

[stray island]

Hi i asked this in animation and i guess its related to blueprints too

I want my animation to play a portion of it when i press a button then pause and continue from wheres its paused when i press that button again , and print string if its done

[onyx token]

i guess an array could work but damn would i need some documentation

because sadly all of those booleans are actually needed

[odd ember]

you could try and abstract them into states

using enums

[onyx token]

hm. i could maybe indeed do that...

thanks!

[dreamy yacht]

one more question regarding the flattened and normal cars

I want to temporarily change the controlls and vehicle parametres ( torque, mass, steer angle etc. ) when the flattened mesh is active

can I cast somehow to normal vehicle MovementComp

?

[odd ember]

use states

[faint pasture]

Make a Boolean or enum that represents the state of the car (bIsFlattened, ECarState, whatever) and then make an update event that handles that

So flattening the car would look like

UpdateCarState(ECarState=Flat)

Then the UpdateCarState event would change the mesh, swap stuff around, change the movement component properties etc.

[drowsy folio]

hey guys, would someone be able to point me in the right direction with playerstart? i created this space level, and put a player start on the plattform but it keeps bringing me to 0,0,0 and doesnt spawn in the character

[faint pasture]

Is it outside of the level bounds? What's the position

[drowsy folio]

i have it targeted there on the picture

[odd ember]

those look like some big numbers

[drowsy folio]

they are lol is that too big?

[odd ember]

yeah

so

it's UE5

I'm not sure what the deal is with world partition

but ordinarily

you could rebase the origin

you'd have to do that in the game mode

[drowsy folio]

ah, so if i can do that ill be good? im trying to get to the point where i can add a ship into it and fly it around but i need to get it to spawn correctly first

[odd ember]

it really depends on your setup

you could also fake the earth if you never use it for anything but a backdrop

you could also try world partition and see if that actually works

but other than that, yes you can rebase it, if the option exists in UE5

[long schooner]

maybe you already checked it, but have you set it up in the world settings?

[faint pasture]

Does it quit breaking if you move the spawn point closer? I'm pretty certain there's a level bounds setting somewhere.

[odd ember]

not sure what you mean?

[faint pasture]

We have a system somewhat similar where the player travels from orbit to the surface. We just put the surface toward the bottom of the level bounds and the orbit toward the top and it worked out for us. But we're not doing anything fancy with really big levels.

[odd ember]

level bounds are bound by the bit limit of floats/doubles

[long schooner]

Let me open unreal, but you must set up starting point in the lvl settings

[odd ember]

I've never heard of this before

game mode is responsible for spawning, not level/world settings

[long schooner]

do you have more than one starting point?

[odd ember]

it's not my question 😂

I was trying to answer their question

[long schooner]

Lmao

[long schooner]

I was meaning world settings lol

[odd ember]

I mean I'd still like to know what you mean just out of mere curiosity

[drowsy folio]

yeah it worked once i put him in at 0,0,0 on a new platform lol ill probably just move the earth/moon to a new location and spawn the player in here

thats the inside of the earth there lol

[long schooner]

I was thinking about simple stuff becouse it's usually the problem, like having 2 starting points, not the right game mode in the world settings, or a player character somewhere in the lvl that forces you to possess it

[faint pasture]

Yeah if the Earth and Moon are just backdrops and not used for gameplay, then do that.

[odd ember]

ah the game mode in the world settings. fair enough. that's an override btw, it's only if the game mode needs to be different than it is in your project settings

[long schooner]

try to put the character on the coordinates and possess them at game started on the bp lvl

[drowsy folio]

yeah im making a space game thats going to be pretty simple but some complex things in it. Think galaga but in first person

[long schooner]

Duh, but I meant maybe they changed it for some reason or has a different character

[drowsy folio]

thanks for the help guys 😁

[long schooner]

put this in the lvl bp and add the character at the location you want to start

[drowsy folio]

im def saving that screenshot for later but i already moved the earth and moon, looks decent now

[long schooner]

I am pretty sure you may have a third person character at 0 0 0, that prioritize the possessions, so they do not spawn a new one

[drowsy folio]

i was able to start spawning in once i moved the platform to 0,0,0 and placed the playerstart there

[long schooner]

hard to tell you since I don't have access to the project, but trying to possess the pawn maybe will help, maybe is something that happens because UE cant load that far and can't find the starting point, have you tried what happens in standalone mode? because this may be just an editor error

[vestal acorn]

is there anything that I can use for names to check if anything is inside/its empty/default value?

this?

[odd ember]

you can try right clicking on your Name variable and Convert to Validated Get

maybe that will work

(maybe)

[vestal acorn]

I only get a ,,promote to variable,, option

[odd ember]

then what you have is the next best thing. you can use the != version to branch on true instead of false

[vestal acorn]

thats a relief, thanks for the help

[jovial dirge]

How do I add a variable to a call?

[dawn gazelle]

You have to modify the event dispatcher. When you have it selected you can add inputs:

[jovial dirge]

Where do I find that? Sorry

Actually I think I found it 🙂

Why is it giving this note?

@dawn gazelle

[wicked osprey]

Guys, why doesn't the E button work at all in the crouch? I changed the button in Action to another one and everything works, but it doesn’t want to work with E

[dawn gazelle]

The value passed through it will be a copy, not a reference to the original object - so it's ok to read the values from the structure from anything that is bound to the event dispatcher, but you can't expect to write back to it.

[jovial dirge]

I'm using a for each loop to get a string setting, is this okay?

[dawn gazelle]

Should be fine

[thick marsh]

Ahh! I finally figured out the thing!

...that is all

[mild crystal]

anyone know why i cant select this??

[dawn gazelle]

Not sure what you mean by can't select? You should be able to drag and drop the Enum you want to use into the highlighted box, or select it in the drop down list.

[mild crystal]

i cant

it does not appear there in green space

when i select

[dawn gazelle]

May be a #ue5-general issue then.

[small halo]

what do the 2 for loops exactly do?

[odd ember]

https://tenor.com/view/ken-jeong-community-too-small-to-read-read-reading-gif-5494204

[true valve]

How can I attach a player to a character without moving the player’s camera?

[odd ember]

can you elaborate? you mean possess a character without changing the camera?

[icy dragon]

Grid based spawning 🤔

Okay, maybe not

[small halo]

https://gyazo.com/359b8aa26485d44299c1d778a2a5be92

is this better?

[icy dragon]

So it spawns actors on the spawn points for 10 times?

[icy dragon]

It is worse

[small halo]

it is perfect on my screen when i click on it

[icy dragon]

I'm just kidding

[odd ember]

yes. it seems to spawn different types of actors across different positions up to spawn amount

from what I can read

[small halo]

yeah its a spawner

but i dont understand the first 2 for loops

[icy dragon]

Second for loop is spawning the actors on spawn point actors' location

[odd ember]

the first for loop seems to be based on whatever is in the SpawnerActor array. I would assume they would be different types of actors

but the logic is very error prone

the first array is set to be 0..9 always but the amount of actors could be less than that, causing errors

or more than that, and not be counted

[icy dragon]

It's weird that the first For Loop is not For Each from the Spawner Actor array.
Seems like sloppy translation from C++ code

[small halo]

its a spawner for the same eneimes to spawn in a circle around me

in 9 different locations

[odd ember]

okay but

why the first for loop?

[small halo]

in each of the 9 locations i spawn 5 actors which is spawn amount

[odd ember]

why not use a foreach loop on the array?

[small halo]

this is old code, i coverted it to c++

[icy dragon]

I KNEW IT

[odd ember]

okay so what are you asking?

[small halo]

what the first for loops are essentially doing

[icy dragon]

Use For Each macro instead

[small halo]

because i forgot why i did this

[odd ember]

it's running over the array of SpawnedActors from slot 0 to slot 9 and taking their locations as spawn points

but again, you'd be better off with a foreach loop in this case

[icy dragon]

I suspected it was a sloppy translation from C++ code, I was right lol

[odd ember]

or if you need to spawn exactly 9 locations, have that done mathematically instead of using actor locations

[small halo]

wasnt from c++

i coverted the bp code to c++

[icy dragon]

Oh, whoops

So it was the other way around

[small halo]

so the second for loop is spawning the actors on the spawn point right?

[odd ember]

yes

[small halo]

yeah

i seee

thanks 🙂

[odd ember]

but again, the code is very error prone so I wouldn't consider porting it over

[small halo]

ill show u the C++

ill send it in cpp

[quiet bramble]

i was wondering if someone can help me with something

i'm making a 3d platformer and i'm practically brand new to blueprints but i was wondering if there was a way that i can implement a double jump that carries momentum on the second jump instead of just jumping twice and trying to drift the other way

kinda like banjo kazooie

[torpid mulch]

Guys, can I normalize a vector to make it have a magnitude of 1? I found the "Normalize In Place" node but I'm not sure if it does that.

[jaunty summit]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Math/Vector/Normalize/

[short pawn]

There's a few double jump tutorials on YouTube, have you tried any of those? Goodluck

[long whale]

how to get simple variables stored in the level blueprint?

I tried interface calls ,doesn't work

[torpid mulch]

I'm sorry, my english is not very good, what the tolerance does? Should I modify?

[short pawn]

You should save them to your save game blueprint and then load them when you need tbem

[jaunty summit]

You should be using event dispatchers

[long whale]

Thanks I'll try this.

[jaunty summit]

It's the tolerance that tells if the vector is too small to have a non-zero magnitude or not

So a vector that has a length smaller than the tolerance will have a magnitude of 0

You can leave it as it is

[small halo]

what is VolumetricFog in gpu profiling

[torpid mulch]

Thank you so much Wizard :D

[quiet bramble]

i dont think i could find what i was looking for

literally all it is is carrying momentum in a second double jump

[torpid mulch]

I'm doing this vector with two axis of movement, vertical or horizontal if held alone equals to 1, which can be a problem if I'm walking diagonally with my character, as it gets faster. That is why I asked about the Normalize, so it would normalize both axis if held together, even if walking diagonally. Somehow it is returning this amount, which is smaller than 2 for sure, but still faster than going only on one direction. Shouldn't it return X=0.500 Y=0.500?

Walking horizontally adds 1 to Y and vertically adds 1 to X on the vector

This is the blueprint that I'm testing this situation. 🤔

[jaunty summit]

0.707 is what it should return.
Math time: length of vector = sqrt(1^2 + 1^2 + 0^2) = sqrt(2). To normalize you take the vector and divide it by it's length, so: normalized vector = (1,1,0) / sqrt(2) = (0.707, 0.707, 0)

[true valve]

No not possess, only attaching the player to a character. When I attach the camera snaps to the new attached location.

[torpid mulch]

Thank you so much for showing the math formula, I had understand completely wrong before, I appreciate it!!!

[true valve]

When the player is running in the 3rd person template, if I move the mouse left and right the player moves left and right. How can I prevent that?

[jaunty summit]

While pressing the W key?

[jaunty summit]

What do you mean by attaching a player to a character? This is not an understandable statement

[true valve]

yes

[true valve]

You attach the player to a character using AttachActorToComp to a socket.

[jaunty summit]

Ok this is the intended behavior there and in all games

[jaunty summit]

There is no such actor called player. What do you mean by player?

You might wanna show code

[river herald]

is there something like random integer in range that instead gets all integers in range?

[jaunty summit]

You want to return a new random integer each time?

[river herald]

i want to change all element index with one set material

[jaunty summit]

Ah so you want to iterate

Check For Loop

If you want the number of the materials to use it as Last Index, then use this: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Rendering/Material/GetNumMaterials/

Well note that: Last Index = Get Num Materials - 1

[river herald]

it worked thanks! 😄

[plain helm]

drawable/icon_round exists in that folder destination.

but gives this error.

I enabled ads plugin

How to solve this?

[jaunty summit]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53996818/resource-drawable-not-found-but-they-exist-in-drawable-folder

[river herald]

i keep getting accessed none error when trying to use this new player controller reference for multiplayer, anyone know why (this is on event begin play in character bp)

[maiden wadi]

Beginplay runs on every client. Every client only has one single controller and that is their own. So if another player's pawn runs this, controller is null.

Normally for client side information you send game wide things through PlayerState, and pawn related things through the pawn.

[river herald]

so if i made this reference in the player state it should work?

[maiden wadi]

When you start a multiplayer game with three people. Lets assume a dedicated server. There are four machines running the software. Server, Player1, Player2, Player3. On the server, there are three player controllers, and three pawns. As you would expect. One for each player. On each client though. Player 1 has three pawns, but only one controller and that is Player1's controller. Player2 has three pawns but only Player2's controller.

So when you run code in the pawn for Player1, on the machine for Player2. GetController is null.

[jaunty summit]

That's why he should use IsValid node

[jaunty summit]

I think if you use GetPlayerController(0) it would work

[river herald]

when i had that it was only working for client 1

[maiden wadi]

You shouldn't use that node in anything related to networking.

[jaunty summit]

Do a Switch Has Authority and use Remote pin on begin play before you use it

[river herald]

this is for spectating, so its asking which player controller wants to possess the camera, and when i had get player controller (0) it was only working for client 1

[jaunty summit]

Why though

Well yeah, it's a dirty fix

[maiden wadi]

Because of exactly what I said above. GetPlayerController0 gets the local controller. And sometimes on listenservers it can fail and get a client's controller. But even assuming it works correctly, you will not get a controller associated with a pawn. You'll get the local controller. Stuff that requires the local controller already has access to it. UserWidgets have their own call. AHUD has it's. It's all client side only stuff and there's no use for it.

[jaunty summit]

Wait, so when you do this, are there pawns that are not possessed by player controllers?

[maiden wadi]

In networking, trying to use the local controller just confuses the code structure.

[river herald]

i destroy the pawn when i possess the new one

[maiden wadi]

Are you trying to make a death cam where the camera follows another team member after death?

[river herald]

yes

[jaunty summit]

Well I have a similar system already implemented in our game, but it can't be done in BP.

[river herald]

everything works perfectly for client 1, but not the others, im assuming because it's controller id 0, but if i try other things for my controller object reference it does access none

[maiden wadi]

All you have to do is get a list of pawns you can focus. Get the index of the current target. If none use zero, Add one with a wrap around check for max index. SetViewTargetWithBlend

It's probable that you could filter the list of pawns through their playerstates, all contained in the GameState's PlayerArray

[jaunty summit]

^ Also you shouldn't be caring about saving a reference to the PlayerController in your Character BP as you should be using the PlayerState as Authaer noted and you can get the PlayerController from the PlayerState using GetOwner()

[maiden wadi]

Random fun fact. I have no idea why it is not accessible to BP. But Epic already has this entire system in PlayerController.

[jaunty summit]

Haha yeah I had no idea when I first created the system either

Look like they wanna force people to use C++

[maiden wadi]

Would probably be as simple as putting a BlueprintCallable tag on ServerViewNextPlayer, and converting GetNextViewablePlayer to a BlueprintNativeEvent I think.

[jaunty summit]

Yep

[river herald]

making the reference in the playerstate got it working, you guys are heroes

[jaunty summit]

A new pull request in the horizon?

[maiden wadi]

To be honest, I'd be shocked if it went through. They're really pushing hard for the new GameplayAbility stuff. I'd be amazed if it wasn't moved to that.

[jaunty summit]

Yeah probably. I think the system was mads since the early days of ue4 and they barely touched it since then.

The system got some flaws, but overall it's nice how it works out of the box

[maiden wadi]

I haven't used it much yet. It did inspire me to make a small system of my own to make some better organizable code though. They're blueprint async nodes that can pick a blueprint subclass. Basically each node spawns a tiny UObject and runs it. Has tickability and latent access. They're more or less AI Behavior tree tasks, but usable in normal blueprint.

Personal project is all singleplayer though. 😄 GAS is very heavily intended for multiplayer stuff.

[jaunty summit]

I see. It's cool to use the async stuff if you really know what to do with them. I haven't touched them much, neither did I touch GAS. Though 🔜 GAS

[white elbow]

How do I get a boolean of (is the certain button pressed)? Or do I need to make it myself?

[jaunty summit]

By button you mean Button in a widget or a key in the keyboard?

[white elbow]

a key, sorry

[jaunty summit]

Then there is an event just for that

But that's not what you asked

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/BlueprintAPI/Game/Player/IsInputKeyDown/

This is what you want though

[white elbow]

maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but I want to do a function every tick the key is down

[white elbow]

thanks, exactly what I need

[strange urchin]

Hey folks
What is the best way to manage game UMG widgets? should I manage it in character or controller, or should I do it in HUD class? Which one is more standard and does it make any difference in performance?

[maiden wadi]

Performance, no. At least not directly. Generally I advocate for people using AHUD. Gameplay classes should never be aware of UI.

[jaunty summit]

It doesn't make any difference in performance, it's more of a best/bad practices

PlayerController would still have to talk to HUD, so it will have some UI-specific functionality

[maiden wadi]

PlayerController is a networking class. It's already going to have a ton of stuff in it. Cluttering it with UI stuff isn't a good idea. Not to mention it can cause bad practices with UI where networking is concerned.

PlayerPawn/Character is never a good place for UI. For the same reason any other gameplay class is. Gameplay classes should just exist and do their own thing. The framework that uses them and they themselves can use delegates. UI can use these delegates to handle itself.

HUD is local only. There is no networking here and there is one per machine per player. It is also very easily globally accessible from anything that can get world because you can get the local player controller and GetHUD on it. You can make a library function out of that for easy HUD access.

UI should generally always be an abstract layer above your gameplay core and entirely separate for a few differing reasons. One is ease of use. If you've ever modded a game, you'll know what an API is and why that is important. The other reason is asset references. If some gameplay class has a reference to a widget class, it also references all of that widget's assets even if that widget is never used. Which means those assets always stay loaded as a CDO. Bad memory management, and UI can take a decent amount of memory depending on game scale.

[jaunty summit]

In case I wanna show some widget, or change some state in an enum that I have in my AHUD derived class, and I'm the server PC then I would still need to use Client RPCs that are defined in the PC. It's not that the PC doesn't have any UI-functionality at all?

[maiden wadi]

I think that it depends on the state. If it's an authoritive state, you'd usually just have the networked class(PlayerController, Pawn, etc, no matter) replicate, or RPC the state and set it and then call a delegate. It's up to your UI/HUD to set itself and bind those delegates on beginplay/construct and then set up the state of the current game that it knows about.

For network related UI. You'll be doing a ton of GetSomeActor->BindDelegateToMyFunction->CallMyFunctionWithCurrentState

[jaunty summit]

Yes exactly, it only changes a state/calls a delegate in the HUD, and the HUD does the rest

[jaunty summit]

Which is bad?

[maiden wadi]

No, not bad. Just common.

There's usually nothing wrong with gameplay classes calling HUD even to do specific calls. But me personally I'd still have them do that for a code only base class with zero widget references. I hate having references tied to other things that don't need it. C++ base classes with BlueprintImplementableEvents are great for that. Just as long as the actor itself doesn't spawn a widget and use it.

Above point is also the reason I have zero issues with casting to whatever I need and why I advocate regularly for people to NOT avoid casting, but just use it correctly.

[jaunty summit]

Exactly, that's it, storing references to widgets in gameplay classes is bad. I just wanted to make sure they aren't 100% UI agnostic

[jaunty summit]

Agreed. I literally love casting. It makes more sense to me than using interfaces intensively

[white elbow]

I have a problem, I created a player pawn for a FPS project but forward/backward movement speed depends on where you look. How do I disable that? FP character in FPS template doesn't have that but I still can't find the setting

[maiden wadi]

That's not a UE default I don't believe. I'd check Tick or the InputEvents for it

UE default as in I don't think the CMC can do that. At least not that I'm aware of. Usually it's the character handling it based on control rotation versus velocity in a tick function.

[white elbow]

I think I found the problem

yeah lmao I was getting a forward vector of camera instead of capsule component

[earnest tangle]

You'll still need to do some maths on it if you want it to work on slopes

unless you plan on rotating the capsule to match the slope I guess :)

[lone arch]

Hi, I got some data for the mannequin it is in JSON format what i want to know is how to send those values to my skeleton via gamemode and make it move accordingly

[gentle urchin]

dot product absolute up vector would be 1 to -1 , allowing you to have some constant factor to multiply it by

So Speed = Speed + (RateOfChange * (DotProduct * -1))

[earnest tangle]

You can also use map range clamped or such

Eg. you can map angle range -90 to 90 into -1 to 1 with one node :)

[quiet bramble]

i'm trying to implement a camera that makes it so it zooms in on the player's head when the camera is pushing against the wall to prevent it from clipping through, how would i make that blueprint? i can't find a video or anything

[maiden wadi]

Lazy way is a spring arm. If you want something less linear, you need your own system that traces and ticks your camera location.

[quiet bramble]

i know about spring arms but i can't find an option so it does that, it zooms in but it's over the character's head. i think it has something to do with the rotation of the camera but i tried it and it doesn't work

[royal trellis]

can someone explain or send me a link where i can find explanation on what "Consume input" is? I can't find any videos on youtube nor explanation about this in the documentation

[maiden wadi]

All a spring arm does is a trace that lowers it's endpoint based on trace length. If you want it to zoom to the player's head, the start point of the spring arm has to be at the player's head with the camera facing it.

[spark steppe]

consume input does take the input and nothing else can react to the input

but it's kinda pointless as you can't really tell what gets the input first

unless it's UMG where there's a hierarchy

[maiden wadi]

There's a gameplay class hierarchy as well.

[spark steppe]

there is?

well ok, the player controller ticks before the actor, so it could consume an input which the actor then wont get

ah in inheritance there's also a pre defined order, yea

if that's what you meant by gameplay class hierarchy

[royal trellis]

so once that input action is taken inside an actor its consumed and can only be used inside that context..but how do i unconsume it?

[spark steppe]

well, you can't puke it out, so don't consume it in the first place

[maiden wadi]

Nah. Only tick that matters is the PlayerController. Player controller houses an array of UInputComponents. Called the InputStack. PlayerController ticks and builds an array of components to tick through. It organizes these in a particular order. Starting with anything that has had input explicitly enabled like a trigger actor. Then the Level blueprint, Then the Controller's own input component, and last is the controlled Pawn. Input will always be processed in that order. InputEnabledActors->LevelBP->Controller->Pawn. And InputEnabledActors go in order of the latest one to have enabled input.

[spark steppe]

wouldn't the pawn be in the group of inputEnabledActors?

[maiden wadi]

Nah. It's explicitly put last. One sec.

Er, I was backwards on the controller and level. Goes Controller->Level->Pawn

[spark steppe]

until now i wasn't even aware that the levelbp can take input actions

[maiden wadi]

Note that these are functions pushing their components to the top of the stack. So Pawn. Then Level pushes itself above Pawn, Then Controller pushes itself above Level, then starting from the latest to newest enabled actors, they push themselves to the top of the stack.

The third one there is controller's own.

[royal trellis]

when the actor is destroyed...does it unconsume the input?

[maiden wadi]

It's Input component is destroyed, along with all other components.

[earnest tangle]

Non monospace fonts always look so weird in code samples lol

[maiden wadi]

InputComponent on Actors is Transient, so not all of them actually have one. It only gets populated at EnableInput call.

[royal trellis]

im not entirely sure what that means

[spark steppe]

that means that it wont consume input if it doesnt exist

as it wont be pushed on the stack

[maiden wadi]

They have a pointer property for the InputComponent, but it's null until used. It's not used until you call EnableInput on an actor, where it will create an input component on that actor and send it's reference to the controller for storing on the InputStack.

[spark steppe]

however your questions are pretty vague, maybe it's better to explain what you try to archive or what isn't working as expected

[royal trellis]

im just looking at some systems i got from the store

and some of them have consume input on some actors

and i was wondering

like theres a gun

who consumes "fire" action input

because i was confused i didnt find it in the player character itself

[spark steppe]

yea see, if your actor can interact with items on left mouse button, but not while holding a gun (because the player would assume it to fire) then the gun consumes the input

so that the actor won't get the input to interact with something

[royal trellis]

yeah, which is why i was trying to understand when it is "unconsumed" 😄

[spark steppe]

when you unequip the gun it's pretty likely that the gun actor gets destroyed and put to your player inventory

at this point it wont listen for input anymore and the player character can receive the button click again

[royal trellis]

gotcha

thanks for the explanation! much appreciated

now it makes a lot more sense

[gentle urchin]

Consumed is also an equivalent to "handled" in widgets

If you leave a mouse button override unhandled, widgets in the lower layers get a chance to pick it up :)

[dense mica]

Today I discovered a feature introduced in 4.9 and I'm very surprised: (https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/ProgrammingAndScripting/Blueprints/UserGuide/MathNode/)

I've been working with UE for 3 years and never heard of it before

[spark steppe]

i should use that more often^

[dense mica]

Feels like it has a similar implementation of Anim Graph's Fast Path implementation, because you also able to use boolean operators?

Weird tbh

[onyx token]

okay-
Is there any solution to this?

This is because the root motion of my animation drives my character forward - and apparently forces it forward no matter what.
So incase there's a collision - it doesn't care and just forces it forward creating collision bugs.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/847253861403197471/957302078915620894/UE4Editor_fcNNRbg9WN.mp4

is there anything i can do that's not... Creating my entirely custom self made character controller?

(they're both already set to "no" on the "can character step up on")

[odd ember]

where have you been for almost 20 versions? 😂

[dense mica]

Until 4.19 I was in high school

[odd ember]

excuses 😔

[odd ember]

I think you'll have to resolve that on the animation side

[onyx token]

how do you mean? Stop the animation once it comes in contact with something?

[odd ember]

you can ignore collisions but it's just going to be a mess

[onyx token]

Because i still want the animation to go on, i just don't want the collision to be buggy

[odd ember]

yes make the root motion stop

[onyx token]

I want the collision to act as if you just pushed 2 spheres against each other

not into each other

just against

[odd ember]

yeah but it's not a property of the collision

it's a property of the animation

[onyx token]

dangit

so there's no way to convert root motion into like... root... "add force" ?

[odd ember]

the collision just tries its best to make it work

nope

[onyx token]

crap

[odd ember]

I'd ask in #animation to see if there's anything you can do to improve the root motion

also try testing it with e.g. walls etc.

[onyx token]

i already googled up and down the internet...

seems like it bugs out only when 2 root motions meet

[odd ember]

that makes sense

[onyx token]

sadly that's exactly happening when 2 characters try hitting each other

[odd ember]

well

someone, somewhere

has solved this issue

so there's bound to be info on it

[onyx token]

i guess i'll just have to delete root motion then and replace it with some scuffed "add force" node setup that just has the animation lengths hardcoded...

[odd ember]

are you using animBP?

[onyx token]

yea

oh wait no

i'm using character BP

[odd ember]

well maybe now is the time

[onyx token]

and montages

[odd ember]

because maybe it's something to do with how montages work

[onyx token]

i got told tho that for stuff like hitting you're supposed to use montages...

[odd ember]

by whom?

[onyx token]

Problem with animBP is that i can't add events

which i need

[odd ember]

you can

you have more options with animBP than you have with montages

plus it's faster since you're not running animations on the game thread

[onyx token]

oh you don't mean the anim graph, you mean the blueprint editor in the animation thingy

[odd ember]

yes both sides of the animBP are essential

[onyx token]

well in the anim graph i did do it, but i couldn't really use it for much

like for instance - at some point in my animation i set my sword to "activated" so it does damage on overlap - and deactivate it 3 frames later so it doesn't always do damage but only on my swing

[odd ember]

that's why anim notifies exist

I would never handle that outside of animations

but for everything else, the anim notify can bind itself to events in the character BP

so that when a specific player action is invoked the animation automatically follows

[onyx token]

so i don't have to use montages at all?

[odd ember]

you dont

[onyx token]

but i'd have to play the animation in the anim graph right?

and not in the BP editor

[odd ember]

montages are a cheap option but if you're making something like a combat system you really want to build a solid foundation

and montages don't allow for that

[odd ember]

correct

but you want that

you don't want any animation to be played outside of the animgraph ideally

[onyx token]

hmm

that sounds reasonable

i did try to do that, but i remember there was some limitation in the anim graph that kept me

[odd ember]

the way that state machines are build there are going to be some limitations, but if you know what you're doing they're not a problem

[onyx token]

so you're saying i can still use anim notifies while playing animations in the anim graph?

[odd ember]

I've on a few occassions seen anim programmers do masterful animBP state machines and I hold that as the gold standard for how you should setup animations generally

[onyx token]

i see

[odd ember]

whether the animation is played from animgraph or eventgraph doesn't matter - the animation is still played, so the anim notify still triggers

[onyx token]

are there any ressources to get like... yknow, to the next level in terms of blueprints?

So many tutorials on youtube are for beginners...

there's hardly any ressources where people talk about actually indepth stuff

[odd ember]

not really. what I can recommend is that you setup an enum for anim states, and use blend pose by enum

let me show you my current animgraph

[onyx token]

or do you think it would be best to just get a budget and hire a mentor?

or idk... give favors

or something

[odd ember]

it's not going to be easy to find someone who has this kind of knowledge

[onyx token]

dangit

[odd ember]

even among people who work in the industry I've seen it done wrong more times than I've seen it done right

[onyx token]

i guess there really is a divide between professionals and hobbyists...

[odd ember]

this is my current state machine

[onyx token]

smol

[odd ember]

exactly

it handles everything by blendposes

so the way to think about it is to understand where poses can come together

e.g. running mostly requires the lower part of the body

so you can blend that with anything that requires the upper part of the body

[onyx token]

sure, i started doing that too

[sly loom]

Is the Interface for GameplayTags built in or is there an interface i need to add to my BP's? Things like "Get Owned Gameplay Tags" Show a message but i can't see an actual interface for them

[odd ember]

and basically this also ensures you get the best performance, as this is 100% on the anim thread instead of running on the game thread

[onyx token]

okay so in principle - when i hit someone, i change the enum to "is hitting"
And you take that and set your anim graph enum to the same value-
And then you just blend between a bunch of animations

[odd ember]

note the lightning bolt

[odd ember]

yep

but think about it more from the pose

[onyx token]

yea till now the most i've done was use the animgraph to rotate my characters body in order to look at stuff while still doing animations

[odd ember]

christ

I have some extra stuff outside of the state machine itself, but that's just to do with IK and nothing else

[onyx token]

ey- it wörks ok?

i'm taking every spine bone and rotate it a lil bit around the z axis

since i only need a z axis rotation

[odd ember]

note again

lightning bolts everywhere

[onyx token]

lightning bolts = animation thread right?

[odd ember]

yes

so the best way to do this is to understand what basic stances you have, and then do poses based on. any time the stance changes. e.g. if you're having something like climbing, flying etc. (no longer just standing), you'll want to add another animation state

in the end, you'll have a starburst pattern

which then may have nested starbursts inside of it

[onyx token]

i see
so like the basic one is "idle / walk / run"
And from those i get
"hitting"
or
"dodge rolling"
or
"interacting with a thing"

And in the character blueprint i do shit like "if blocking is true - disable damage"

or "if dodge rolling is true- enum can't change into hitting or interacting"

[odd ember]

idle walk run is all the same pose right

you're still standing on the ground

[onyx token]

yea

[odd ember]

it's just a blendspace of how you're standing at most

[onyx token]

exactly

okay so

When i leftclick - i wanna hit with my sword.
Or when i press R - i wanna draw my sword.

How do i do it so when an animation is finished, my anim graph send a signal to my character BP saying "Yo, the animation is done, you can change the enum now"

[odd ember]

animnotifies

[onyx token]

for everything?

[odd ember]

yes

[onyx token]

oof

i hadn't thought of that...

that's the main reason why i moved to montages

because i started doing some dumb shit like delays...

[odd ember]

well consider it like this

no matter where you put it

it's always the animation controlling when it's finished

so it should be the animation telling when it's finished

[onyx token]

ooooh i get it
you mean i have 1 animation notify that just says "animation done"

and sends it to the owner
and then i can do stuff with that in the owner

[odd ember]

it doesn't send

it just says "I'm done"

[onyx token]

no?

[odd ember]

to whomever listens

[onyx token]

with an event dispatcher?

[odd ember]

really important distinction

yes

[onyx token]

hmm

big brain territory

[odd ember]

the idea is indirection

[onyx token]

[odd ember]

the animation doesn't care about who is listening

[onyx token]

right because you don't want the animation doing shit

you just want it to animate

[odd ember]

exactly

[onyx token]

that's smart

god damnit who the hell came up with the term "code monkey" and why does anyone ever think it's "not a big deal" to learn this stuff

[odd ember]

I mean this is kind of like the tip of the iceberg

but to be fair this is more code architecture than anything else

setting up solid architecture before you start doing anything is key to making good systems

[onyx token]

so having this kinda stuff inside an animation notify is big poop and it should be an event dispatcher

[odd ember]

I have no idea what you're doing there tbh

[onyx token]

activating and deactivating my weapon

[odd ember]

I don't know what that means

perhaps explain it in game actions

[onyx token]

basically in order to do damage, i do an overlay event.
But if i do that overlay event all the time, and i just walk by an NPC - i would do damage.

I only wanna do damage in the 3 frames where i'm actually hitting

so i thought to myself "alright, gonna make an anim notify in my montage - and cast it to my weapon, neato"

[odd ember]

yeah so you have a window you can do

you start the window with a notify

and end the window with a notify

[onyx token]

exactly

beginning activates it, end deactivates it

But i didn't know that anim notifies can be used outside of montages

which is very neat

[odd ember]

there's also other things that you can do to minimize that code

for instance if you set it up correctly you can assert that the animation can only trigger if you have a weapon

and save the weapon variable early on

[odd ember]

they're based on the animation. the montage is just a wrapper for an animation

[onyx token]

well i kinda did that in my character blueprint, which i started guessing already was probably a dumb thing to do in general...

Because after a while i ended up having to do this kinda shit every time i wanted to add a feature

yknow, like make sure it's not doing this... or this... or this... or this... before running something

[odd ember]

all of that could probably be handled by delegates in some form

and automated that way

[onyx token]

delegates?

oh that's outside of blueprints

[odd ember]

event dispatchers

are delegates

[onyx token]

oh

[gentle urchin]

Thats one way of reseting bools.. 😅

[onyx token]

suffer

[odd ember]

it's not pretty 😔

[onyx token]

i feel like i'm at the stage of unreal engine - where people are when they learn blender and they have a bunch of vertices layering above each other and they don't know why the shading is scuffed

but there's no tutorials really anymore, and the only way forward is to be lucky and find awesome big brains who have some free time and are willing to help

So for that- thank you so much! @odd ember

[odd ember]

If you have the time, look into OOP architecture

if you learn that well you'll have a much easier time programming

[onyx token]

i wish i didn't have adhd that i have to fight every single time i see these kinds of graphs

adhd just goes NOOOO

[odd ember]

oh yeah UML is hell

but think of it more like "who is responsible for what"

most of the time you'll want classes to be responsible for themselves

with some exceptions, when a class is being managed by another class

but even that management is more directive based than implementation based

for instance I have an AI director that gives my AIs high level directions (e.g. this is your task now). but it doesn't care about how that AI implements the task

[onyx token]

yeah... so like the perfect example of how not to do OOP is if someone puts literally all their code into the level blueprint or the character blueprint?

[odd ember]

correct

[onyx token]

right.

not me. of course. nuh uh.

no sir, not here.

[odd ember]

welp

yeah god classes are frowned upon

it's too much responsibility for a single class

think of it like this: if you built a car, you wouldn't put the steering of the car directly on the engine

[onyx token]

that is... a very nice way of visualizing it

[odd ember]

once you understand the mindset of "everything is a system" you'll have an easier time too

because you can always break the system down into components

and understand how they need to interact

[onyx token]

another question - So every time i show my spaghettio - people say i should use functions and i'm a big noob.

Problem is - a ton of my shit is stuff like this, where i'm slowly changing something over time (like this is for example my character transitioning from walking speed to running speed smoothly once i've drawn my weapon)

but i can't put time stuff into functions

[odd ember]

when you're steering a car, you don't need intimate knowledge of how the engine works for instance. you just know that rotating the wheel left or right is going to turn the car, and pressing the brake is going to brake for you

[odd ember]

I mean as long as it's pertaining to the character it's fine. you could handle it inside a component on the character if you plan to use that logic elsewhere, but otherwise that's fine. I see that in this case you use bools, but really what you would want to use here is states

[onyx token]

states as in enum?

[odd ember]

then you could also make those states be events that are delegated

[odd ember]

for instance enums

a state is an abstraction

it could be anything, but the concept of a state machine is that you switch between different states

[onyx token]

wait i'm confused.
So i delegate the state of my character speed? To what?

you mean stuff like my sword has the state of "i'm drawn" and shoots an event dispatcher into space

And my character picks it up?

[odd ember]

your character could say "entering state X now" and have everyone listening to that adjust based on that

[onyx token]

I didn't think event dispatchers were this often used, i always thought they were kinda expensive

[odd ember]

they're fairly cheap and cost isn't something you should be concerned about at this stage anyway

[onyx token]

fair

[odd ember]

if you would use enums for states (which BP is kind of skewed towards), you can use switch on enum for functionality and select nodes for data

[onyx token]

i see... Well maybe the character speed is a bad example.
For instance, when looting something, i do it via an Interface

like i shoot a line trace towards my chest and send an interface to it as in "i'm looting you now"

And the chest opens and gives me a UI for it

[odd ember]

interfaces are sadly also overabused in BP due to misinformation

[onyx token]

should i instead send an event and the chest should listen in?

[odd ember]

in the case of interaction, who is interacting?

[onyx token]

my character or well- me is looking at the chest, and i'm clicking to interact with it.

[odd ember]

your character is

[onyx token]

sure

[odd ember]

so who should have the interaction logic?

[onyx token]

i guess my character should have the interaction logic?

[odd ember]

correct

[onyx token]

with looting and everything? Like pulling whatevers in the chest into my character inventory?

[odd ember]

well the chest has the data of what's inside the chest

it also has the data of what kind of interaction it is

all of which can be used by the character to propagate the correct response

[onyx token]

Well right now i'm sending an "i'm looting you" signal to the chest

The chest contains an inventory component, and that component has code that say "i'm getting looted, here's my stuff, i'm putting it into your inventory"

[odd ember]

who is doing the looting?

again keep asking yourself questions like these

because the location of the logic matters

[onyx token]

i see... So the character should have the "i'm taking items and putting it in" - because the character is acting

[balmy parcel]

Hey! Learning Blueprints and have the following question: Currently looking around in third person is controlled by X and Y mouse input. What i'm trying to achieve is something like Runescape, if Middle mouse button is being hold, execute x/y mouse tracking to rotate camera accordingly. In my mind it should look like this but don't know how to make it work exactly. Had a look around on YouTube but not much luck. any pointers would be great 😄

[odd ember]

correct

for every class you have

interacting with another class

find out what the relationship is

the only thing the chest has to do is "exist"

or maybe, at worst tell the player "I'm here" within a certain radius

[onyx token]

i personally would add a boolean saying "camera rotation active" - but idk if CE would agree, all my knowledge is getting crumbled right now

i used to think i had stuff figured out-

big mistake

Right, so it's not necessarily a bad thing to have A TON OF CODE inside a class like the character class-

It's just bad if it's code that's not supposed to be in there

[odd ember]

just copy the events and hook them into your axis?

sorry not events, the functions

[odd ember]

as long as it is relevant for that calss, technically no. the character movement component has 12k lines of code for instance

because it has to account for every single case that it can be used in

[onyx token]

alright then. Welp, time to rewrite a whole bunch of stuff

[thin panther]

Wow 12k, damn didnt know it was that complex lol

[onyx token]

but this is really nice, thank you so much for taking the time and teaching me @odd ember

[odd ember]

but generally if a class gets too full of stuff, it's worth considering putting stuff into smaller components. e.g. interaction could be handled by a component

inventory can be handled by a component

[onyx token]

ooh that's smart.

true

[odd ember]

have a look in the code. I can't vouch for how well it's written, but it does what it says on the tin

[onyx token]

say, would you be super mega annoyed when in the future i ping you incase i have questions?

[odd ember]

only if it's high level stuff

or if you're prepared to rewrite a bunch of code

[onyx token]

i'm doing this project to learn, i'll rewrite it 10 times if it means i'll get better at it

[odd ember]

perhaps it's worth starting over in a new project, and slowly copy code over tbh

but first, figure out how to lay down the foundation

[onyx token]

i literally decided to not use any new ideas and just "make a skyrim prototype" because that way i know what i'm trying to do is possible and i know it has been done in the past.

And then i can just do it a bunch of times until it's at a level where it's clean and works and is nice

atleast that was my idea of how i could learn ue4 efficiently

[odd ember]

keep in mind this goes beyond UE4

these are general programming principles

it doesn't matter which engine you use

or even what language

you'll always be able to use this in some capacity

[balmy parcel]

Did so. But sadly that doesn't seem to work (camera locks in place) currently heading out but will fool around with it + try @onyx token suggestion, thanks :)

[odd ember]

there should be a default mouse event for camera movement if you're using the third person template, perhaps try and copy that logic?

[dusk ember]

i accidentally deleted a level and i was wondering if i could get it back using the built data?

[odd ember]

unless it's in your recycle bin

no

the built data isn't the level, it's just some lighting data

[dusk ember]

ah

damn

[faint pasture]

Yes, use version control and roll back. You ARE using version control, right?

[dusk ember]

not using it as its not a big deal

and i thought you could only use like 1gb with github? and ik about git lfs but i didnt think that it would be enough

[faint pasture]

Idk, I use plastic and you can go to 5gb for free

[astral epoch]

Its important to use if you're part of a team. A solo dev could maybe get away without it.

That said; my PC fried itself when I was at University and I lost a lot of files because I didn't have any good backups.

If you aren't routinely backing your stuff up manually to another storage device then using Source Control works amazingly just for that purpose.

Also kinda amused at the "help I lost important data" followed by "I do nothing to prevent this loss from being reversible".
Use source control, if only to correct your own mistakes.

[odd ember]

sour grapes

[dusk ember]

yeah thats my bad, i just assumed that ue projects were too big even with git lfs

[astral epoch]

I don't know about larger games but I've never had an issue with LFS.

[odd ember]

there are other types of VC than git

[astral epoch]

^

[dusk ember]

ik thats just the one that im familar with

[astral epoch]

I think its everyone's go to thought when they hear about VC to be fair.

[odd ember]

perhaps

[dusk ember]

thankfully the map was just a whitebox testing map for different features but this was probably the sign to start using version control

[odd ember]

but it's certainly not the best tradeoff for something like gamedev IMO

[dusk ember]

ik that we should bein the source control channel but which VCs would you recommend?

i saw plastic earlier

[odd ember]

depends on what you have available

anything that has decent hosting, does checksums, and allows large file commits without timeouts is good

[dusk ember]

do you think that git would do the job for now?

[odd ember]

possibly?

you won't know until you try

I can't give you an answer to that

[dusk ember]

mk

[astral epoch]

Okay quick question, the linetrace for objects can have objects specified. Is this an expensive operation because to me that sounds like its basically just casting for each hit?

[odd ember]

casting isn't expensive per se

but line traces are generally expensive because of the computations

not because of what they look for

[astral epoch]

For context; constant linetracing in front of player camera to determine if what they're looking at can be interacted.

Aah right.

[odd ember]

I personally wouldn't do it like that

I'd gate that off behind interaction availability first

[astral epoch]

What do you mean?

[odd ember]

only trace like that when you know there's an interaction nearby

[astral epoch]

Aah

Okay I think I got an idea there

Trigger volume around the interactable object that will tell an overlapped player they have something nearby they can use.

[odd ember]

basically

you can then decide when you want to give the prompt

[astral epoch]

Righto.

Still worth using the Linetrace for Objects, or should I go with something else in that case?

[odd ember]

I'd just do visibility

check if the interaction is behind a wall or not

basically

[astral epoch]

Right

[odd ember]

you could even gate all of that behind a dot check

and on interaction input only

optimization isn't always about finding the cheapest solution, it's about making the expensive solutions only when necessary

[astral epoch]

That makes sense.

Wouldn't a linetrace on visibility fail if an interactable was invisible?

[odd ember]

correct

[astral epoch]

Hypothetically. I'm trying to make an abstract here so I can make a variety of different objects that could be interacted with this.

[dusk ember]

i went to connect git to my project but for some reason i cant find my git install folder, only git lfs

[astral epoch]

Any way to get around that?

[odd ember]

use another trace channel?

make your own trace channel?

[astral epoch]

oh right

That'd be under project settings right?

[odd ember]

I'd generally use visibility because it's preconfigured

but if you have special needs you'll have to make bespoke solutions

[astral epoch]

Naturally

[odd ember]

yes it's under collisions I believe in project settings

[astral epoch]

Oh, there's an "InvisibleWall" trace that is described as "WorldStatic object that is invisible"

That could work instead

Or InvisibleWallDynamic

I'll try a few see what works

[odd ember]

just out of interest, what are you trying to do in terms of gameplay?

because generally you'd want interactions to be visible

[astral epoch]

Third Person Shooter, though the interactables isn't necessarily unique to that genre. I just thought at some point an invisible interactable might be of use.

[odd ember]

I'd personally never use invisible interactions

[astral epoch]

Keep the option open so I don't have to go back and adjust stuff later down the line ya know

But yeah, probably wouldn't get used

[slow pewter]

Mhh i got a Trouble my Game Crashes, And my Crash,Text file have not Important Information in it, is there an other way to find the Problem?

[wintry pike]

I need help
im the Unreal Engine 5 Blueprints - First Person Shooter (FPS) tutorial
I cant find a certain section

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/277180820484259840/957345687115280545/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/277180820484259840/957345886344716358/unknown.png

mine doesnt have that

[odd ember]

#ue5-general

[wintry pike]

but isnt that the general chat?

am I allowed to post in there

[odd ember]

what do you think a general chat is?

[wintry pike]

talking about random things

[jaunty summit]

I give you the privilege to do so

[odd ember]

maybe take a look

[wintry pike]

well ok thanks

[thin panther]

You are on the sky atmosphere, not the sky sphere bp

[wintry pike]

its the same thing

[thin panther]

No it isnt

[wintry pike]

oh

[thin panther]

You literally have sky sphere above it

[wintry pike]

ohh wait

bruh

[odd ember]

B R U H

[wintry pike]

well thanks

[jaunty summit]

There's nothing like that. When it crashes? The crash log/dump should pretty much tell what happened. Send it here so we can take a look

[slow pewter]

Yes u mean the last thing Or?, Well i tried soo much, to avoid everything, it Just shows any Event what Happens now, but the Last event isnt The Crash, because, When i add New, they show them as "the Last " One, but no Error or Warning.

[jaunty summit]

Again this doesn't help, send files/pics so we can take a look

[slow pewter]

I just had it runs, ALl 10 Secs its Capping the FPS to 25, just because If u Press F11, its Like its Uncapp everything again, so thats my Easy Way for it

[slow pewter]

good luck bro

[slow pewter]

Its just the Same Thing, and not an Error or Warning, its just, Runs a amount of Time and doo nothing just, be outfocused Window, and coming back like in some Mins, it Crashes.

And if i would remove that Cap Function, it Crashes again, and just show the Other Same Stuff, but nothing what is like pointing to an Crash, or Error.

[jaunty summit]

This isn't not the crash dump

The crash dump is called UE4Minidump.dmp

[slow pewter]

how i can Open it?

[jaunty summit]

Visual Studio

[slow pewter]

ok, i didnt see anything helpfull there..

[rough jungle]

hi I'm new to unreal engine so can anybody tell me what I type to get this

[thin panther]

Thats a 3 vector it seems

Also a material question not bp

Just hold 3 nand click and you get one

[rough jungle]

ok

thanks for your help

[thin panther]

Np

[slow pewter]

ive looked again and a gain theres no Information for what, made it to Crash. and doesnt matter if PIE,Standalone or Packaged.

[solar sequoia]

Aside from just getting the rotation of the sequencer camera and setting the controller's rotation to match it?

I'm not well-versed in how the sequencer works, but I'm sure that's possible

[faint pasture]

Set view target with blend

So the camera goes from End of playback -> Beginning of playback -> pawn?

IDK much about sequencer, maybe it treats cameras differently. We just directly control the viewpoint in PlayerCameraManager and don't even use camera components.

[thorn trellis]

Aaack, need some smart people help. I am soft referencing a data table of widget animations that are inside the same widget as this bp graph. When I run in editor everything works fine. When I run in a Launch or Packaged build the soft reference fails to load the object.

The black circle below returns valid on every pin, the blue circle successfully casts in editor and fails cast in package, the red circle always completes load, but produces a null object in packaged build (it returns the correct object in-editor). There are no errors in the log or build logs for this asset.

What causes Async Load Asset to not load the soft reference?

[faint pasture]

Assuming you can get the sequencer camera's transform at the end of playback, you need to move the player's camera to that then do the target swap

or close to that, at least match the orientation or whatever

Might be as simple as get sequencer camera rotation -> set control rotation on pawn, whatever. IDK how you're driving your pawn camera.

[faint pasture]

That looks super fucky. Why are you binding events etc? But anyways if it works it works lol

Maybe that's a sequencer thing, I'd think it'd already have an on finished delegate

[orchid geode]

Question: I got a couple of colisión boxes/spheres components that stops the player on their tracks, the player has to release the key/thumbstick and press it again to continue, it seems to happen only once per actor through the Level.

Any idea of why this happens? And how to Solve it?

*Colissions are set to Overlap only with pawn too, can't Remember about "can affect navMesh" wich i don't use at all for player (no enemies either un gameplay...)

[thorn trellis]

Show the bp and we can probably help

[orchid geode]

Wich part? Colissions settings?

[thorn trellis]

If it works once I would assume you have a do once or a set collision off somewhere in your overlap

so the actual execution pins for overlap

[orchid geode]

At no point the actors takes the player control, only when interacting: sets the input to UI only, but you have to see it and interct with it to happen.

Overlap only sets a boolean on the player 🤔

[thorn trellis]

Show the collision execution pin for one of your overlap boxes, if you set it to ui you might not be setting it back to something useable

[orchid geode]

There are 3 collisions:
1 on the area fot a notification to show
2 a reachable área that sets a boolean only, this Is the One the stops the player.
3 a collision for the camera to ease the interacción.

All collisions are set to Overlap only...

[orchid geode]

On my phone at the moment, Let me turn on the PC....

Here we go, just a sec

[remote belfry]

I'm creating a widget from class, and then adding it to the viewport and having its position follow the mouse in viewport. It works, but as soon as I click in the viewport the widget disappears. I should be able to figure this out, but apparently, I took my stupid pills today. Any ideas?

Z Order is set to 1000 too lol

[orchid geode]

Here is how the 3 spheres are set, all children of a static Mesh (Dynamic in nature)

[thorn trellis]

If you don't have an on-click event anywhere that destroys the widget or removes it from the screen, does it have something to do with the mouse disappearing when you click? Like does it set the widget as vis false? Shot in the dark, I use world widgets cuz vr

[orchid geode]

This is the second circle, only sets a boolean...

Collision presets, custom with overlap only..

[remote belfry]

You know what that makes sense. I was thinking about it like it was working when in reality its not. the fact I'm seeing it at all is actually an error. Okay i'm doing everythign wrong. I can work with that. Thanks.

[thorn trellis]

So which overlap only happens once per actor?

[orchid geode]

Second: if you run and the player happens to collide with it, player stops running and begins to walk, and if you are walking you stops.

Is a minor bug, since you can continue walking if you release the directional keys and start again, but it could be frustrating if you have several NPC you can talk to arround...

[remote belfry]

@thorn trellis I had forgotten to attach it to my player controller.Thanks for the duck. lol.

[thorn trellis]

you should add a print statement and see if those two are firing exactly once like you're thinking @orchid geode

[thorn trellis]

quaaack

[orchid geode]

Oddly enough, it doesn't create Error/warning either... just stops the player for a moment for no reason 🤷🏼‍♂️

[thorn trellis]

you added a print statement to your overlap and it didnt fire?

[orchid geode]

it fires all right

[thorn trellis]

just once?

[orchid geode]

Yup, I removed it since the systems it uses are working just fine except for that minor bug 😅

I readd it again, and it doesn't seem to fire, but sstitll works somehow? 😳

UE4 is weird hahaha

[thorn trellis]

It really is lol

[thorn trellis]

bumping this again, need help with soft references failing

[orchid geode]

Could it be something about being a collission insde a coslission?

[thorn trellis]

You could try moving them apart and seeing if they function like you think they should

[orchid geode]

I just play tested it and the Print string doesn't fire, but the dialogue system still works fine, if you collide by walking it doesn't stops you but if you run it can either stop you i your tracks completely or put you to walk (depending if you use a controller or a keyboard)

For example, running with W, it completely disables W until you release it and press it again

[solemn bramble]

Hello. Have you tried the "Resolve Soft Reference" function?

[thorn trellis]

try turning off character can step up on

[orchid geode]

Putting actors side to side breaks the interaction system, witch makes sense since you can only set 1 interactible item on the player 🤔

[thorn trellis]

nope! googling now

[orchid geode]

Step on, on it...

[thorn trellis]

I lied

[thorn trellis]

That's how I was originally using it, it retunrs None "when not loaded into memory"

So I've tried loading it into memory too but that doesnt return a useable object

And that's the weirdness of this problem: It should already be in memory because the animations are part of the widget that this bp code is in

[solemn bramble]

I've never tried to use UMG animations this way, so perhaps it's a very specific problem with this particular use case.

[solemn bramble]

I'll think about it. : )

[thorn trellis]

tyty, just dumping all the info to show how it's been all linked up

[solemn bramble]

yeah, I've imagined it more or less that way

🙂

[thorn trellis]

data table has path to widget animation, all the bp stuff is inside the TextAnimation widget along with the animations.

[orchid geode]

Same, it still stops the player on its tracks, once but it stops it...

[thorn trellis]

I think you need to track down what is stopping it. If it's not the overlaps you thought it was then you're setting your bool somewhere on accident

[orchid geode]

I think I will re-write the notification and interacting system... it works per item if they are separated but if they collide with each other it breaks.... The bug that stops the player on Overlaping might be because the input is on the player instead of in the object....

I will try to enable the input on the object by approach and compare actors the player looks at to set the notification and enable the interaction... if done correctly, it should not distrrupt player movement and clean the Player Blueprint in the process

[coral lance]

I bought an weapon pack and how it is held does not conform to the current socket I have set up for my skeleton. Can I change their rotation and how they are situated so they can conform to the current socket I have?

[odd ember]

yes

how is it setup?

[thorn trellis]

when you attach to actor/component socket you can change the keep world to keep relative and whatever initial transform you set will attach in relative space to your socket.

[thick marsh]

Hello, does anyone know how I may manually feed certain controller inputs to a non-player character in an FPS game? (the overall goal is to record and replay the player's actions on a different character) Right now, I can spawn a new AI character with a blank decision tree, and call onMoveForward and that function works well, but trying to use the "aiming" functions, like turn and aim up/down, throw an error on trying to call "Add Controller Yaw Input" or "Add Controller Pitch input". For Yaw, I can sort of work around it using SetActorRotation instead, but for pitch this literally flips the whole character upward.

[odd ember]

you can possess that character

[coral lance]

I am trying to get that first pistol to conform like this second pistol

[odd ember]

are the weapons actors or meshes?

[coral lance]

skeletal meshes

[odd ember]

then I'd advise that you make them into actors anyway

in which case you can just rotate the skeletal mesh within the actor anyway

but if you're hellbent on not doing this for some reason

[thick marsh]

If I would like to manually move a character in the game (from a blueprint program instead of actual player input), should it be possessed by AI controller or player controller?

[odd ember]

you can spawn a scene component rotated 180 and attach it to that socket, then attach your guns to that components

[odd ember]

right okay so what you're asking is how another character can be moved in general?

[coral lance]

i just realized that they are spawning in as actors how would I fix this then

[thick marsh]

I have right now a completely working player character that responds correctly to button presses from a real player. What I would like to do is spawn a separate character in the scene, and provide it with "button presses" from the blueprint tick, instead of an actual second player.

[odd ember]

you can rotate them inside of their actor instead then

[odd ember]

is this other character going to copy the moves from the first character?

[coral lance]

would I be able to use a static mesh rather than a skeletal mesh?

[thick marsh]

yes. I have written a thing which will record inputs from the real player. And then at some later time I spawn in the copy into the map where the real player spawned, and would like them to copy the actions.

[odd ember]

you can but guns are skeletal meshes because it's easier to deal with e.g. reloading and animations

[odd ember]

you don't need to do it on tick, just have the first character spawn the second character, and the second character setup delegates to the first

[coral lance]

okay thank you

[thick marsh]

It's not a real-time copy. It's recorded and replayed.

[odd ember]

you still have to code it in

I mean it won't magically appear

[thick marsh]

The recording is not actually per-frame, it's per delta time since spawn, so some frames will naturally have more than one input

[odd ember]

delta time is frame time

so it is per frame

in either case you don't need to concern yourself with per frame input in this csae

[thick marsh]

At the moment I am able to call onMoveForward and onMoveRight, with my replay program, on an AI character, and these work successfully.

I'm just trying to fix the aiming and turning

But I'm not sure if I should even be using an 'ai' character or not

[odd ember]

like I said

if you, during a replay, ensure that the other character is spawned by the first character and creates event dispatchers to the first character for its input, that's all you need to do

or if it's in the player controller that you have the inputs, that the player controller spawns it

[thick marsh]

@odd ember Let me try to explain again the actual sequence of events: for 10 seconds, player 1 moved forward, spins around, jumps, then goes off to continue playing the game for 10 more minutes doing whatever. At 5 minutes of game time, I'd like to spawn in a second character, not at all controlled by player 1, which will repeat the actions that they did for those first 10 seconds. Maybe the real player 1 will even be standing there looking at them replay all of the prior actions, while not touching their inputs at all.

So I don't want to copy actions to two characters in real time, which is what it sounds like you are suggesting.

[odd ember]

in that case you'll need to create an input buffer

[thick marsh]

yes, I've done that part, I'm just having trouble getting it to replay certain actions.

because there is no "controller" assigned to the spawned character

[odd ember]

which actions? and how does your input buffer work?

[thick marsh]

jump, moveforward, move left/right, crouch work

[odd ember]

and what class is the second character?

[thick marsh]

Aim and turn so not, because they give an error trying to call the function "Add controller yaw input"

It's the same class

[odd ember]

as you can probably understand this all goes through controllers. I'm just checking if the AI controller has that function

so no, the AI controller does not have a direct equivalent. how have you setup your input buffer? how are you buffering mouse movement?

[thick marsh]

@odd ember I'm sort of new at unreal tbh, but it seems like if I use an AI controller instead it doesn't have a "real" controller behind it. So it feels like what I need is some kind of "fake player controller" instead, because really I don't want any actual AI either.

[odd ember]

well you said you had setup an input buffer

which is a fairly advanced thing to setup

so I'm asking how you've set it up

[thick marsh]

So I have events for all inputs, onMoveForward, inputAxisTurn, etc. And if these are called, then the inputs are sent to the player character as well as pushed to an array with their timestamp.

[odd ember]

are you storing them in a struct?

[thick marsh]

And then on the replay characters, if the timestamp is above, it calls the "onMoveForward" that would have been called like the player character.

yes, I've actually written a c++ function for that part which I verified worked well already with debug strings and tests with basic movement etc.

[odd ember]

can you show the code for what exactly you're adding to the buffer? just so I'm clear with what you have to work with

that's fine you can copy the cpp code here if you want

[thick marsh]

@odd ember https://bpa.st/BHWQ

This only works with one action per frame atm I still need to fix that

but it's not related to this current issue

[odd ember]

I think you'll have a hard time getting more than one action per frame btw

input controls only execute once per frame afaik

[odd ember]

okay first things first, it's probably wiser to use the built in UE4 functionality for this. try with TArray instead of making your own

[thick marsh]

This is the replay tick function

so all that's being added to the actual buffer is an "action ID" like 0, 1,2 ,3 whatever for jump, moveforward, whatever, and the axis value as a float.

[odd ember]

your actionIDs are all ints, it'd be a bit easier to understand what they are if you used enums, as well

[thick marsh]

none of that matters for the current error the problem is that I can't tell a spawned character to turn, say, 10 degrees to the left , manually

[odd ember]

that's true but it makes your code more readable

right now it's not

which doesn't help me trying to debug it

[thick marsh]

indeed. This is for a class so maintainability wasn't yet top priority >.>

but I might try to take it beyond that (if it's fun) so I understand the suggestion.

[odd ember]

I mean it'd be minor changes just to make it readable

anyway yeah I can see where you are coming from

what I'd try to do is probably make a new type of controller

derived from a player controller

that has those inputs, but does not automatically assign a player

the other option you have is trying to translate your input values via the controller functions to an AI controller

void APlayerController::AddYawInput(float Val)
{
    RotationInput.Yaw += !IsLookInputIgnored() ? Val * InputYawScale : 0.f;
}```

e.g. rewriting these functions for the AI controller

[thick marsh]

which of these two options would you recommend? It sounds like the former is a little less work for the time being?

It seems like in most documented things I only have the options to possess as AI or Player

[odd ember]

the former is potentially less work but more risk, the latter is definitely more work but you run less of a risk of unreal not accepting the approach. I haven't looked into how player input would work if no player is assigned, and we may be in crash territory if it doesn't work out

[odd ember]

correct, because third party possession isn't a thing

to be clear, neither approach is impossible

[blissful grail]

Is there a way in BP to determine if we are in a shipped build or not? (I know I can go into C++ and do a custom function. Just want to know if there is an option out of the box)

[odd ember]

nope

even IsPIE has to be made custom

[blissful grail]

Womp womp. Thanks.

[vale pasture]

Hello everyone

[thorn trellis]

Hello