blueprint

[lone eagle]

sorry

i didnt know

thought you was saying it as like

[faint pasture]

You're recording what time you started

[lone eagle]

sudo code

my bad

now i have this setup

[faint pasture]

Is your variable called Set Start Time?

first of all rename those, that's confusing as all hell

[faint pasture]

yeah remove the set part of the names

that's uber confusing. Like www.wwwdotcom.com

[lone eagle]

yeah youre right

set.settime

[faint pasture]

or http://slashdot.com

[lone eagle]

get.settime

its weird

[faint pasture]

OK your start time is good. Now on tick set CurrentTime = GameTimeSeconds - StartTime

[lone eagle]

like so?

[faint pasture]

What you posted is

CurrentTime = GameTime
CurrentTime - StartTime   //is never used

and thats it.

[faint pasture]

Yup

Print CurrentTime after that node and make sure it's going up

print string, just drag CurrentTime into it

[lone eagle]

so here, my event tick does start time - my game time in seconds and my current time is the result

[faint pasture]

Yes

Logically, this is what happens in order
Event Tick is a function.
Event tick sets CurrentTime to be GameTime minus StartTime

[lone eagle]

it works

[faint pasture]

So every time Tick fires, CurrentTime is updated

[lone eagle]

start time remains as 0

[faint pasture]

OK so now at your end level trigger (Begin Overlap probably?)
Set EndTime.

[lone eagle]

so is that to make sure that the counter starts at 0

[faint pasture]

That's fine, to be expected if you intend to start counting time the exact frame the level starts playing.

It might be different depending on loading or whatever or if you wanted to have like 3 seconds countdown before the official Start

[lone eagle]

i could delay it by a second too right?

[faint pasture]

Yeah, you'd just set StartTime sometime later

That's the whole reasoning behind having a StartTime variable.

[lone eagle]

i changed the variable and it didnt change anything

[faint pasture]

You'd want to change WHEN you set it

Try
Begin Play -> Delay -> Set StartTime

[lone eagle]

that also didnt work for some reason

[faint pasture]

Show what you have

[lone eagle]

oh i see

it counts to 4, then resets

[faint pasture]

So it is working, just the math for CurrentTime doesn't work correctly as StartTime defaults to 0

Yeah so you'll want to do this. Make another variable called CountdownTime

[lone eagle]

this is the result

[faint pasture]

Yes, because StartTime is 0 until the set gets hit

So, to make it work out, make a new variable called CountDownTime

make it 4 by default

[lone eagle]

done

[faint pasture]

BeginPlay -> StartTime = CountDownTime x -1 -> Delay for CountDownTime Seconds -> Set StartTime = GameTime

[fickle dune]

Would anyone please help me

[faint pasture]

It's a bit redundant, you could just set start time = GameTime - CountDownTime but this is a better setup for an actual start event.

[lone eagle]

what would be the better setup

the 1st or 2nd?

[faint pasture]

For storing across levels you want to either save/load or store in GameInstance

[faint pasture]

I would do the 1st as it's more robust and you could replace the bit after the delay with a custom event for starting that maybe enables movement and plays a sound and a bunch of other stuff.

[lone eagle]

i dont know where to actually put count down time x -1

when you say = do you mean here

so start time = get game time

[faint pasture]

Begin Play -> Set StartTime = -1 x CountDownTime

[faint pasture]

Do that before the delay

then after delay just set start time = gametime

thats so the start time is negative and the elapsed time calculated on tick is correct. Like a T minus countdown

[lone eagle]

you mean this

?

[faint pasture]

That's delaying twice....

[lone eagle]

genuine mistake, forgot i put that there

timer just starts negative

can i ask also

will i be able to make this into a widget?

[faint pasture]

Don't make the logic in a widget

later, your widget just reads CurrentTime and updates itself with it

[lone eagle]

oh i see

will it not read the negative int

float*

[faint pasture]

It will, but you could clamp it or whatever. Whatever you want to do

[lone eagle]

oh i see

should be fine either way

where do i place the end of it?

[faint pasture]

yup

wait

no, End Time = Game Time Seconds

CurrentTime is what you read anywhere else

Call it ElapsedTime or whatever if that's better

[lone eagle]

but the overlap wont actually pause it?>

oh it does

but i dont understand how it pauses it

[faint pasture]

Wait a second

Yeah you're right, if you want ONE variable to go up until triggered, you'll want to bring a bool into the mix too

[lone eagle]

wait what

oh is this for the negative timer

for the delay

[faint pasture]

So you can do 2 things.

Trigger -> set end time -> calculate ElapsedTime (you'd have CurrentTime and ElapsedTime)

or

Add a boolean named LevelComplete
Tick -> Set CurrentTime = Select(bLevelComplete, EndTime, GameTimeSeconds)
Trigger -> set EndTime -> set bLevelComplete = true

I'd do the latter probably

Select node uses a boolean to pick between 2 inputs

so if the level isn't complete, you choose GameTimeSeconds

if it IS complete, you choose EndTime

either way you set CurrentTime = WhateverOneWasChosen - StartTime, and it'll stop going up as soon as bLevelComplete is true.

[lone eagle]

do you think the latter would be better for setting up the widget

[faint pasture]

Yeah, since it can only worry about CurrentTime

with the first approach you'd have 2 numbers, one of which always goes up, and one that gets set when you finish

[lone eagle]

ill start trying to add that in real quick

ill send a screenshot shortly

Select(bLevelComplete, EndTime, GameTimeSeconds)

im not sure how to translate that visually

[faint pasture]

I'm about to drive home but get this ALL working without the widgets right now. Once CurrentTime is behaving the way you want it to, just go in your widget and do

Construct -> Get Actor of Class (YourTriggerClass) -> store to a variable

Tick or whatever it's called in widgets -> Get CurrentTime off that variable

[lone eagle]

oh, select is a node

[faint pasture]

Just right click and type select, you'll find it

[round moth]

hi this button doesnt work at all.

doesnt even print string when i click it

[faint pasture]

#umg

but check that your input is set to game and UI. Does it visually change when hovered or clicked?

[round moth]

no

[lone eagle]

@faint pasture ill be honest, im unsure how select works

[faint pasture]

It chooses one of the inputs based on the boolean and sends it on the output

pretty simple

[lone eagle]

this is what i got

[faint pasture]

You're turning LevelComplete into a float and using that as one of the choices. Try drag LevelComplete into the wildcard on the bottom

Select can use enums and ints and bools and prolly other stuff too

[lone eagle]

this works

[faint pasture]

yup

[faint pasture]

Almost, why are you setting
EndTime = 0.0?

Shouldn't it be
EndTime = GameTimeSeconds

[lone eagle]

yeah

i copied without that node

my mistake

sorry

[faint pasture]

Also current time = all that select stuff MINUS start time

So when complete
CurrentTime = EndTime - StartTime
and when in progress
CurrentTime = GameTime - StartTime

also you got your select inputs backwards

[lone eagle]

end time should be true?

complete? so on the begin overlap?

[faint pasture]

When the Level is complete, you want to use EndTime for your calculations, not GameTimeSeconds

That makes sense right?

[faint pasture]

yup thats good

[lone eagle]

yeah, when level complete = true then i want end time

and -start time stops the event tick from counting up?

[faint pasture]

using end time stops it from changing

it'll be like
CurrentTime = 5 - 1

that'll never be anything other than 4

so every time it fires it'll be the same number

but GameTimeSeconds goes up forever

[lone eagle]

i dont quite understand the logic properly

oh

so - keeps it at bay

keeps it from changing

but the print stops completely

[faint pasture]

Wait wtf why is this on BeginPlay now?

[lone eagle]

is that because i set game to pause

[faint pasture]

should be tick

Pausing stops GameTime from going up yes

and slowmo makes it slower

Time Dilation

[lone eagle]

it doesnt work now that i put it on event tick

[faint pasture]

Begin Play has the delay and stuff remember?

[lone eagle]

oh

because i have no print

sorry

[faint pasture]

I gotta go but make SURE you understand what all this stuff is doing before proceeding. You don't want to get lost in the weeds just copying people, you want to understand what and why it's doing what it's doing.

[lone eagle]

okay yes it works

yeah, thats the mistake i make sometimes when wanting to get something done

i know you need to go

but is the widget part simple?

[faint pasture]

Yeah, whatever you were doing before, just get the number from this actor. On construct, get actor of class, save that to a variable. And then on whatever the update method was, get current time from the actor variable

Get it to just display the float before worrying about formatting

[lone eagle]

this is what i have in my widget

im lost when you say. on construct get actor of class

actor of class being my trigger box?

this doesnt update the number

remains at default text

On construct, get actor of class, save that to a variable.

i assume that means this

im unsure what to do next

[unreal marten]

would it be better to A) create hud widget>add to viewport on PB_PlayerBase BeginPlay, or B) create hud widget on PB_PlaterBase BeginPlay then put add to viewport in hud widget OnInit? I feel like it would be better to keep as much of the UI handling in the UI itself but too new to know how much itll affect future stuff

[trim matrix]

What is PB_PlayerBase? Is this the player character?

[unreal marten]

yeah

[trim matrix]

Ok.

Well to answer your question, option A.

You have alot more control over how a widget can be used if you manualy add it to the screen.

Also though, if you are asking questions like this, I would reccomend that you should not create your HUD on the player character.

There is alot of reasons why you should not create/save widgets on the player character. The main reason is that the player character is meant to be switched throughout the game.

[unreal marten]

I knew I should have put C) something else?

[trim matrix]

If you create and save widgets on the player character, you will not be able to easily switch the player character.

It is best practice to create/save widgets on something else.

There is actualy a dedicated peice of the unreal engine framework called the HUD class.

I would reccomend that you create/save widgets on the HUD class.

The HUD class is apart of your gamemode.,

This way, you are able to easily switch the player without affecting the HUD

you are also able to switch the HUD without affecting the player(or any other part of the UE4 framework)

[unreal marten]

awesome I'll work on switching things over now, thanks!

[trim matrix]

You can create a new HUD class by hitting using the add new blueprint window, you have to search for HUD

You can set your gamemode to use the new HUD class by editing its class defaults.

[faint pasture]

AHUD

[trim matrix]

yes

[lone eagle]

@faint pasture im not sure if you have seen my screenshots above

i feel like im becoming quite annoying also

[trim matrix]

That is also how you get a reference to the hud class. Good luck with your project.

[kindred pier]

I feel like I'm missing something here, it successfully toggles the camera on, but won't toggle back

[trim matrix]

Im assuming this custom event executes when you make a keyboard input?

[kindred pier]

on a widget button press

well that button press calls this event

[trim matrix]

I see then, I am not sure.

[unreal marten]

thank you! so I've switched it over mostly but I have a function to update the health value on screen but I'm having a hard time getting the references right, it used to reference the hud widget I was creating in PlayerBase but now that it's made in the HUD class idk

[trim matrix]

Do you mean, you are having a hard time knowing how to make the new widget update?

[unreal marten]

yeah, so this is what I had before but now that it's being made in the hud class that hud widget reference is worthless, but I can't seem to get one that works for the hud class

[trim matrix]

I see.

GetPlayerCharacter -> GetHUD :plug into: CastToMyCustomHUDClass

That will give you a reference to your custom hud class.

You can then get the Widget reference from there.

[last ice]

how can i set the actors level placement pivot point to be the bottom of a collision box? atm it seems to take the center of the collision box for placement in the level:

[trim matrix]

I am unaware of any way to accomplish that easiliy.

[last ice]

its just weird because for example on a character class it automaticaly uses the bottom of the sphere for placement

[trim matrix]

I dont think there is a way unless you edit the mesh. Or unless you create code to accomplish that

[unreal marten]

I had tried something like that when you first mentioned the controller>hud but I can't use it to satisfy the target requirement of the UpdateHealth function

[trim matrix]

You might be getting confused somewhere.

Do you want to hop on call real quick?

[unreal marten]

yeah thatd be great

[gentle urchin]

Have a scenecomponent as root , and offset the collision accordingly

[last ice]

so you think i should set something different as root and offset the collision from the root component upwards then?

using defaultsceneroot as base?

@gentle urchin @tawdry surge @trim matrix ty for the help guys 🙂

[compact anchor]

did they remove the option to multiply and divide vectors by a single float?

[tawdry surge]

Math nodes are universal in ue5

[compact anchor]

wait but then now instead of (vector) / (float) u have to do (vector) / (float, float, float)

[tawdry surge]

Wait what?

Are you in 5?

Just make an add node, plug a vector in the top and a float in the bottom. It'll adjust to accommodate

[hard sigil]

is there anyway to check if the player is in a navmesh volume?

[jaunty summit]

NavMesh has collision, though by default it is set to No Collision

Call GetOverlappingActors to check if you're in the nav mesh

[surreal peak]

The Dynamic Nodes in UE5 are a bit lacking/buggy.

I already reported it (had to re-report it to UDN cause for whatever reason they didn't want me to use the Bug Report form..)

E.g. you can't multiply Vector2D with float at the moment

[undone surge]

is there a way to conditionally edit or chane a mateirial on a mesh in main eventgraph on anything

[paper gate]

Capsule component rotating in z direction also when i move mouse to lookup

[fickle dune]

How do I make my interactor be the inventory component from my third person character without using class? I'm using a save system that works but because it stores info on the gameinstance it thinks the inventorycomponent doesn't exist anymore and can't add anything to it

[sterile fjord]

will someone look at my spaghetti and tell me why the character is launching to the right after moving right for the first time after game starts?

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/fe0d8daf-acb1-42e2-58c3-31007111d571

That's the whole project, but just looking at Player blueprint really

[undone surge]

is there a way to reference how much light there is in the scene? like if i wana do something if its dark or do something when its light

[brazen pike]

The intensity of whatever your scene's light source is could be an option.

[undone surge]

how do i reference the intensity in a blueprint

[brazen pike]

If you have a reference to the light, then you can just get the intensity. And you can get a reference to the light in a bunch of different ways which probably depends on your project

[undone surge]

alright thnx

also

@brazen pike is there a way to get rid of the slopes?

i want the direction animations to run only at 0 speed

[brazen pike]

I'm not 100% sure, somebody else might be able to help you there

[undone surge]

alright

ill ask in animation

thanks

[tight schooner]

If I'm reading you right, you're trying to store a reference into a savegame file or Game Instance... The problem is an object reference isn't the object itself, but a pointer to an object spawned into the world. As soon as the object is despawned, the pointer is invalidated and the data inside is lost. You have to store the data inside of the inventory system rather than a mere reference to the inventory system if you want to save it.

Save games are kind of a deep subject so I can't give any advice there

[tight schooner]

Not sure what you're asking. There are nodes to change materials on meshes, and a Dynamic Material Instance workflow for changing parameters on materials

[undone surge]

yea i managed to get it to work thanks tho

[rain egret]

hey i was wondering how i can have the mouse locked in game and still be able to turn the camera by moving the mouse

[prisma tree]

Sorry i don´t speak math so could you help me pls? or maybe there is a node for this?:
I want to switch the values from 100 -> 1 to 1 -> 100 ie:
98 -> 2
80 -> 20
75 -> 25
20 -> 80
etc

[fiery glen]

subtract 100 and absolute the result

absolute forces the result to be positive

[prisma tree]

Omg so clever! 😉 thanks alot

[fiery glen]

to be clear this will make 100 > 0

[prisma tree]

Thats fine, i didnt even manage to ask my question properly, that is the behaviour i want!

[fiery glen]

so if the result has to be above 0 you need to account for that

honestly just showing a bunch of examples is the easiest way sometimes

especially when you don't know the terminology

[prisma tree]

Well your solution did exactly what I wanted so thanks alot 🙂

[undone surge]

how do i get a friendly AI to differentiate between my character and an enemy AI

[hoary junco]

In your AI you might have some kind of targeting system which follows and shoots at the player. Just change that to follow and shoot at the enemy AI and there you have yourself a friendly AI

If you want multiple targets then I would try to make an array of them

[undone surge]

do i set this logic in the behaviour tree ?

@hoary junco

[hoary junco]

It has been a while since I worked with AI so I don't remember

[undone surge]

ok ill try to find a guide . thanks tho

[covert schooner]

So I was trying to determine if I could put something in a construction script or not, and I ran across this post which is making me worry about something:
(https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/spawn-actor-from-construction-script-loophole/20361)
Now I am not interested in doing any spawning or anything, but the suggestion is leveled in the thread that any changes one makes each tick would cause the constructor to re-run. I'm not sure if this is refering simply to the editor, or whether this is to the runtime in general. The reason I ask, is if I need to better guard or perhaps rethink how I assign initial dynamic material instances to actors. I really like having them in the constructor because it means visuals become immediately apparent in the editor, which helps with level design, but if its going to run everytime a property changes in the game itself, that could be a huge problem.

[shadow holly]

How would I go about adding hit events to objects created at runtime? For example I'm making a roguelike and I want to add an upgrade that chains lightning on all projectiles fired, I was thinking of just passing variables through like "CanChain" and "ChainChance" etc. but I feel like this would start to get messy when adding lots of different on hit upgrades or is this how it should be done? Thanks

[icy dragon]

You can bind events from an actor reference.

[remote meteor]

to reflect anything in the viewport editor, everytime somethings triggers the recompilation of the blueprint, construction script will run. if it is an actor that already has been placed in the level and you attempt to change values in the details panel, that will trigger the construction script to run again too

[covert schooner]

but is that only in the editor? For instance, if I am playing the game in PIE or packaged, and I translate the vector of an actor using a blueprint, will it run the constructor for the object I just moved again? I mean I would hope not but it sort of reads that way

[remote meteor]

nope, only in editor that the construction runs again

[shadow holly]

Would I be able to get a reference to an actor as the projectiles are created during play?

[remote meteor]

during the runtime, the construction script will only run once when the actor is created

[icy dragon]

Why not? Just store the reference the moment you spawn the projectile actor

[remote meteor]

if you are adding feature to your projectile and planning to only add that after the projectile is spawned

i reccomend not to because if the projectile is block hit based, and you fire it towards a wall, anything after the spawn node is too late as the projectile may already been destroyed

build the features in to the projectiles and decide if you need the feature at the moment you are trying to spawn it

[icy dragon]

Check if dynamic material instance reference already exist.

If yes, don't do anything.
If no, create a dynamic material instance based on the skeletal mesh's default material, store it to the reference variable, then assign the mesh materials in the component to it.

[tight schooner]

You can make variables that are "exposed on spawn" fwiw. Maybe on a projectile parent class.

This will add data input pins to the "spawn actor from class" node

and the newly spawned actors will have that data at the instant of creation

[shadow holly]

So should I just have a list of bools for each on hit effect I add to the game, and then set those when I spawn each actor and just do a branch for each one that checks those bools and runs a custom event for each one that's true?

[tight schooner]

I suppose another way to handle it is through actor tags, and you can "Get All Actors Of Class With Tag" as another way to build a list of chain-able player projectiles in the world for your chain lightning effect. Those are the two options I can think of

Either way it's going to be messy lol. I had a chain explosion mechanic in my current project at one point and it was pulling lists of actors through Sphere Overlap Actors nodes, checking if they had the right flags, sorting and selecting the closest ones...

[remote meteor]

i recommend not to clutter your "exposed on spawn", else you would have a very long spawn node 😂

have a FProjectileBehavior struct

and have the details in it

[tight schooner]

Yeah custom structs are nice

[strange thunder]

Can anyone help me? I placed this dummy to check if I could deal damage with the radial damage and it seems to work sometimes, sometimes it registers the damage and others nope

[covert schooner]

Where do you (typically) launch UI? From the PlayerController or the Pawn or the Level?

[remote meteor]

usually playercontroller, or if you want, playerhud

[covert schooner]

What is playerhud? I have not seen that class mentioned before

[tight schooner]

Not on the pawn unless it's really specific to that pawn. Otherwise if that pawn isn't possessed then the code to launch the UI isn't easily accessible

[covert schooner]

good point

[remote meteor]

from you player controller, you can gethud and return the hud class used from the game mode overrides

[covert schooner]

in this case, what I am considering is a "player select" (where the user selects an avatar to play as), as well as in game dialogs (turn based)

[remote meteor]

mmh input based launching ui would be in player controller

in game dialogues i would let a DialogueComponent or such to handle it for me

[shadow holly]

Yea I feel like it's gonna get quite messy regardless once the effects start piling up haha, yea I'll try passing everything through in a struct as well should help keep things relatively neat, thanks for the help

[remote meteor]

the challenge of dynamically hooking features into a projectile would be racing condition

unless the projectile knows exactly what it can do

things may get messy too

[strange thunder]

Here is a video

[remote meteor]

did you do a linetrace from weapon and spawn the radial origin there?

radial damage does check for collision channel that blocks the view

[strange thunder]

Yes

[remote meteor]

if your radial origin is on the ground

and ur barrel's origin is on the ground too

might get blocked

[strange thunder]

Barrels origin is like, the center of the barrel?

Can I like change it or something?

[remote meteor]

if it in the center then it should be fine

[remote meteor]

just testing, try +1 on the z axis on the origin

[shadow holly]

Yea that's true actually I'm gonna have to put checks in for each upgrade for every projectile, I may just have to convert the bp to c++ depending on how the performance works out

[remote meteor]

oh

if you can do c++

do your struct in c++

🙏

[strange thunder]

Like on the apply radial damage?

[remote meteor]

if that works out

[strange thunder]

Oh it is working now

Thanks !!

[remote meteor]

then change your linetracebychannel to spheretracebychannel

give it some radius of like 5

then use the hit location

that would adjust the position so that it wont be touching on the blocking plane

then you can remove the +1 z axis thing

since that isnt really reliable

[strange thunder]

Im going to try :>

Works super clean now thank you

[mild jacinth]

hi, can anyone help me with this weird fatal error that I started experiencing after packaging the game using UE5?
Here is log: https://pastebin.com/hNKUMZYZ
I cannot see any red colored errors in the output log either.. im out of ideas, any kind of help is appreciated(project is in BP, not C++)

[covert schooner]

when I attempt to add a ui control I wrote (player select screen), I noticed that the "add to viewport" says "not for gameplay, only for cosmetic items" on it. Of course, this is FOR gameplay, so whats the appropriate node for that? Any pointers helpful

[tawdry surge]

Add to viewport puts it on your whole screen
Add to screen puts it on your window in a split screen situation

You can definitely use a widget you added to the viewport during runtime, have buttons, animations and update stuff

[covert schooner]

right, and it works, but that warning concerns me

should I assume its just implying its not authorative?

[tawdry surge]

It is client owned..
I can't say I ever noticed the note on it

[covert schooner]

Yeah, I figured it was client owned, that would be a lot of state otherwise, but my curiousity is whether there is some other reason it may not be usable, or whether I should interpret it simply as "without addition effort, this should not be relied on for gameplay"

[tawdry surge]

You're not really supposed to script gameplay logic in widgets. Just have them communicate with the classes that do.
Like a middle man between the player and the things doing the work

[covert schooner]

Right. The intent was to expose events and handle those events.

[tawdry surge]

It'll work fine

[balmy vessel]

anyone know why this doesnt actually change the colour of my editable text?

the prints come out correct

[remote meteor]

you need to use the SetFont() function instead

[balmy vessel]

set font doesnt exist

it doesnt come up

[mental trellis]

Pretty sure font doesn't include colour anyway, it's just text size, style (bold/italic/etc) and actual font.

[remote meteor]

oh yea

SetColorAndOpacity?

[balmy vessel]

nope

set style was the only thing that comes up

[remote meteor]

choose the

UseRule to Specified Color

[balmy vessel]

huh?

[balmy vessel]

nope

[prisma tree]

Hi, How do I make a image background that scales to always be fullscreen no matter what resolution I am running the game in?

Sorry, nevermind realized i just needed to set anchor to fullscreen 🙂

[remote meteor]

ok so its dumb but you need to wrap your editable text with a border and change the ContentColorAndOpacity there

[remote meteor]

that would squeeze the image if your screen ratio isnt the same as your image

wrap the image with a scale box and scale to fill

[balmy vessel]

yeah someone mentionted that and i thought, theres no way its that stupid

[remote meteor]

😅

[tawdry surge]

If you're trying to set the text content on the text element you need " set text(text)"

[solar bison]

Can I use some built in Unreal thing as a map?
I have cards, I want to map each one to a color. What's the quickest way?

[balmy vessel]

im just trying to change the colour not the text

[tawdry surge]

Oh ok, Color and opacity then

[balmy vessel]

yeah, which isnt an option for the editable text version hence why we've come to the conclusion that we have to wrap it

[solar bison]

Anyone?

[tawdry surge]

It should have a "foreground color" for setting the color of the text in an editable one

[balmy vessel]

and that doesnt work

[tawdry surge]

@solar bison you try a map container
Or a struct with 4 arrays

You can't change a struct at runtime you gotta make a new one and assign that
In BP anyway

[formal parcel]

whats the cleanest way to know if something is sitting on the ground? i have distance measuring approach but its kkinda scuffed

[solar bison]

progbably not what I'm looking for

I don't want a data structure

I want something static, akin to scriptable objects in Unity

I think data Table is what I'm looking for

[tawdry surge]

And the "Data"table isn't a data structure.. ok

[formal parcel]

heh

so anyways, - anyone know a clean way to know if something is "touching" another, aka sitting on the ground

[undone surge]

how do i open my current level blueprint in ue5

[formal parcel]

@undone surge Open Level

er double click it in content window

whichever u meant

[undone surge]

but that will load the map right

i want to open the blueprint

to edit stuff in event graph

[formal parcel]

levels dont have blueprints i dont believe

[undone surge]

oh

i saw a video where a guy opened it in ue4

[formal parcel]

you can spawn blueprints (actors and such) in a level

levels dont have execution space, they are just data

i'm pretty sure anyways...

[undone surge]

like this

[formal parcel]

those are other blueprints i think

not like the event graph for the level

use player controller or game instance or something

[undone surge]

ok

[formal parcel]

not sure what ur trying to do but events would be handled somewhere other than the level tho

like if u want something to happen when u hit an object in the level, that even is on the object

[undone surge]

i wana make a day night cycle

[solar bison]

big difference though

[undone surge]

how would i rotate the light

[solar bison]

I have to store a map somewhere in a class or a BP

i can access the data table anywhere

[formal parcel]

not sure off hand, it might be a dynamic light tho

as in, added at runtime

[undone surge]

i see

ill try to look for ue5 vids on this

[formal parcel]

yea good question but either way theres no code "in" the level

[tawdry surge]

You can absolutely script in the level BP
It's just not a good idea unless you're adding level unique logic. Otherwise someplace more re-useable is better

@solar bison struct is the same way

[solar bison]

yeah

[undone surge]

i found the level blueprint

[solar bison]

"I don't want a data structure" my bad -- I didn't mean this
I meant I want something static that never changes, that I can access anywhere. data table works well

[tawdry surge]

You'll pry need both. To keep it clean

@formal parcel physics objects return hit events, or you can add a collision volume and check if it's overlapping something

[formal parcel]

is it overlapping if its just sitting on it?

[fair magnet]

Is it fine to do line plane intersect on tick?

[tawdry surge]

No if it's blocking it'll sit on top and trigger a hit event when it makes contact.
For overlap you'd need a volume. The collision for that can be set to overlap and will trigger begin and end overlap events
Or you can just do a short line trace down on tick(or the axis event to piggy back off its function call)and see if it's hitting anything

[formal parcel]

so i cant do the hit event because this is a triggered action, it could have been at rest for a while, its not overlapping as everything involved is blocking, and the line trace is an issue because the object is a sphere

if it is rolling up/down hill it isn't on the ground, thats kinda the approach i have now that doesns't quite work properly

thats my current approach, it works kinda but is scuffed on angles

[tawdry surge]

You can do a multi-line trace to catch funny angles
Or do the trace based on the "up vector" -1x to get the down and it'll be in relation to the object local rotation

If I flip you upside down up for you is down in the world

[formal parcel]

i dont follow that

[obtuse herald]

I don't know the exact circumstances but there is also Sphere Trace if that helps

[formal parcel]

i basically just trying to know if a sphere is "touching" the ground even if its rolling down a plane or sitting on an actor, wherever it may be

but the roundness makes it kinda tricky

and the fact that it rolls, not sure how i would use local rotation as that can be anything

[tawdry surge]

Sphere trace would work too

[formal parcel]

lemme try that

[obtuse herald]

ahh

slightly larger sphere trace would work I guess?

[formal parcel]

sphghere trace the same size sphere maybe?

[tawdry surge]

Slightly bigger

[formal parcel]

i dont mind a tiny tolerance to deal with very minor bumps

[solar bison]

How do I make a child element of a horizontal box Fill the box?

[formal parcel]

so my sphere is 100

like, 101?

or 100.00001

[obtuse herald]

100.1 is probably enough already

[formal parcel]

i guess thats my tolerance 🙂

ty lemme give it a shot

[obtuse herald]

yeah, radius + tolerance

If you want an alternative, you could also just shoot a line trace down and check if it hits anything with the distance < radius + tolerance

[tawdry surge]

And just to clarify. If you did the line trace (and assuming this is for a car) you wouldn't use the sphere rotation but the actor's rotation for the trace that way it'll adjust to the angle of the whole actor and not the spinning wheels

[balmy vessel]

@remote meteor how do i use a border without seeing it?

cause if i set it to opacity 0, the text also takes that, or is it just something i have to deal with

[formal parcel]

thanks for the help guys, this actually works about perfect:

note that i'm using the exact sphere size and doing the tolerance on the distance of the trace

[remote meteor]

there is brush color for the border

actually

[formal parcel]

also was able to take out the breaking of the result as now just hitting is all i needed

[remote meteor]

there is a function called FindFloor

from the CharacterMovement

[formal parcel]

yea cant use it cuz i'm not using character movement

[balmy vessel]

I have to have the text inherit from the border tho right?

[remote meteor]

then manually trace is the way to go

[remote meteor]

yea

[formal parcel]

yea the approach above seems to functions well

[balmy vessel]

so i cant have the border be transparent without the text also being transparent?

oh wait

i was changing the wrong one

[remote meteor]

theres this

[obtuse herald]

Actually you can also just shoot a line trace down the exact same way

[balmy vessel]

the text is transparent now tho

[formal parcel]

No Toy, read above that, I cant use a line cuz its a sphere 🙂

i had a line originally

[obtuse herald]

End would only be actor location - (radius + tolerance) on z

[formal parcel]

no, cuz rolling down a steep hill the bottom isn't actually touching

that was the issue with my original line based approach

hense, the sphere approach is now working far better

[obtuse herald]

yeah right, I see that

[balmy vessel]

nvm im dumb

uh maybe not

@remote meteor am i doing this wrong? in the widget its fine but when i boot up the game, the text is completly transparent

nvm it randomy started working

[open latch]

When creating UMG for mobile do you need to rotate your buttons etc for portrait or does it automatically rotate?

[formal parcel]

hey MW I think I'm doing something dumb with vector math, I dont quite understand the behavior - got a min to tell me what i'm missing?

[thin panther]

Please dont crosspost, especially in the wrong channels, take it to #mobile or #umg

[tawdry surge]

Yeah go ahead and throw it up

[trim matrix]

Hey guys. I got those 2 questions. Every time I open Unreal Engine 5.0.1 project:

1. One of UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere) setted before closing(saved and compiled and saved). Lose it's connection (like setted value).
2. There is no showing of UPROPERTY(VIsibleAnywhere) of inherited C++ class (BluePrints inherits from C++ class). After I do LiveCode compile. They appear to be visible. Always have to compile to see them. Why ? Can I avoid that?

If someone is intrested in helping me by answering one or those two. Please DM.

[lone eagle]

i am unsure if this is the right place to ask this question. But is there a way to clean out a project folder by removing all unused assets and components within select levels?

[spark steppe]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/assets-cleaner-project-cleaning-tool

[tame pecan]

Do you live compile changes to a header file?

[lone eagle]

is there a free version?

[blissful grail]

It's honestly fairly easy to build one yourself.

I did it last night. You can see the main thing you need in #editor-scripting.

All in all - a handful of nodes.

[lone eagle]

i decided to buy it

it will help me in the future

[undone surge]

how do i eject out of character after pressing play

[blissful grail]

F8

[lone eagle]

do you know how to use the plugin?

[blissful grail]

Not a clue. I literally just built my own version of it myself last night.

[trim matrix]

I do not know... How to check it ?

[tame pecan]

Do you live compile after making changes to a header file

[trim matrix]

yes. I tried to save and compile every step.

[tame pecan]

don't do that

Every time you make changes to a header file or the constructor, ALWAYS restart the editor

or weird things will happen

[blissful grail]

With UE5 - I don't think I've had to restart the editor other than deleting a class; with the improved live++.

Restarting the editor is a safe bet, yes; but I wouldn't go as far as to say to never use live++.

[tame pecan]

it can handle some header changes sometimes.

[mild jacinth]

You don't need to restart editor. however livecompile sometimes does not catch up the changes made. so you are better off closing editor and then pressing CTRL + Shift + B(or you can disable livecoding so you don't need to exit the editor always)

also #cpp

[trim matrix]

sorry tought issue lays in blueprint

[blissful grail]

Haven't hit an issue yet. I've added classes, added/removed functions, add/remove UMACROs, changed values...short of flat out removing classes; I've done practically everything. Takes it like a champ. Just don't have any BP's opened.

[trim matrix]

what about 1 problem I described. One of BluePrint references loses its value after project restart...

I wonder if that somehow connected to Visual Studio 2022

[mild jacinth]

I've had it happen personally where the UPROPERTY variable is missing, it's like you basically typed it 30 seconds ago and compiled and closed .sln + opened, and it's gone. but I avoided it by File -> Save All, close the UE5 Editor and compile from inside the .sln, thats about as far as I know myself

this is why I said livecompile does not catch up sometimes

[trim matrix]

because I just started project (with earlier deleted Visual Studio 2022) and made connection reference value set. And reopen it and it works

THANKS guys

[compact anchor]

no problem just copied from "find all"->"vector * float" or "vector / float"

[cedar cave]

I'm having the worst experiences ever 😪... everytime I try to copy my heth bar and paste it in my User widget my system crashes ... is there a way to fix that?

Health**

Not to mention I'm trying to have my character take damage, show in Hud, damage loss, and player death once health is drained.

[vale pasture]

Hello everyone !
I migrated my project from Windows 11 to my MacOS computer (version Monterey) in order to able to pack and build IPA apps for iPhone.
I using the SocketIOClient package for websocket connections. When I create the connection on localhost or on external server (http, not https), it does not works inside the Editor. And the strange thing is it works when I install the app on iPhone.

I thought Unreal Engine was blocked by MacOS for creating http connections (in/out), but the firewall is inactive, so ...

Any suggestions (instead of migrating back to windows 🤓 ) ?
Thanks in advance !

PS : I'm on Unreal Engine 5

[rugged wigeon]

Hey, stupidest question, but I'm upgrading to ue5, and the the blueprint names are now, very slightly, darker grey

This looks terrible to me, in contrast to the bright white. It's not indicating anything is it? Is there a way to make it white

[blissful grail]

You can customize a lot of the theme now in the editor settings. Maybe check there to see if it is a field.

[icy dragon]

#macos

[vale pasture]

Thanks @icy dragon , i didn't there is a macos section, sorry !

[icy dragon]

I'm suprised they still went with the "3D" look of the BP in UE5

[rugged wigeon]

I like that part tbh

[icy dragon]

I guess it works the first time around in UE4, and it reflects contemporary design in the early 2010s, but personally I'd have flatter look of it

[rugged wigeon]

@blissful grail thanks. The answer was the "Foreground" color setting. I lament that I prefer the darker color for other fonts, but it looks much nicer for the blueprints

[oak crane]

What do you mean 3d look? the bubble like texture of the nodes?

[icy dragon]

Yes.

[oak crane]

I like it but I would bet that it wouldn't be very difficult to change with a plugin or something.

[ionic crescent]

Hello, I am setting the text on above my flowers to a random letter in this array, and then removing that letter so it isnt used again but it is using the same letter multiple times, can anyone give me a hand?

if i print the length of the array it goes down each iteration =.

[tight schooner]

If you attach multiple executed nodes to a "pure" function (i.e. no execution pin), the pure function will be called for every executed node it's attached to

In other words I think your BP is choosing two different random elements in that array

One for the Set Text and another for the Remove Index

Basically you have to cache your rolled index to a variable (local variables are useful for this) and then use that variable to drive the rest

[ionic crescent]

Thank you i will give that a try and report back. I appreciate the in depth answer +D

[undone surge]

im trying to spawn actor from class which is an AI actor but when it spawns in it doesnt do the AI stuff

[ionic crescent]

Does the actor have the ai controller as the default controller for it

[undone surge]

ai controller

yes

i did spawn ai from class

is that right

its working

but asking just in case

[peak summit]

Where can i see the order of things firing up to see when an AI Controller would be available for ref compared to the pawn in the scene and BeginPlay etc?

[ionic crescent]

i tried to make this event and call it every time to pick the letter but it is still doing duplicates

[tight schooner]

You still got "Random" connected to two different nodes. It might make more sense to store the index instead, and then use that index to do the rest

[trim matrix]

Anyone can point me the right direction to check if mouse have been moved to certain distance?

[faint pasture]

Give more specifics, what are you trying to do?

[trim matrix]

@faint pasture https://youtu.be/Kcn0LWS7OcM?t=165

[icy dragon]

What

[faint pasture]

Wut

[trim matrix]

Just need to know how to detect how far the mouse have moved from it's last position

This should illustrate

oof sry

re-taking the video

@ionic crescent You want 0 Duplicate? why not just have letter A - Z

then shuffle the array

Try the shuffle node

[faint pasture]

Just turn the input values into a vector and get its length. But I'm not 100% sure that's what you want

The engine already gives you how far it moved an X and Y every frame, make a vector out of that, get its length, that's how far it moved

[trim matrix]

hmmmm

So compare previous length with current one?

[faint pasture]

No, the length of the vector is how far it moved since last frame. Are you 100% sure that's what you want?

What mechanic are you trying to make

[tight schooner]

I am also deep in thought pondering a proper waifu-petting system

[trim matrix]

The video illustrate the mechanic I wanted to replicate. So the player Brush the Subject by moving the mouse left and right

[tight schooner]

like do you want mouse velocity, or distance from the initially clicked starting position, or...

[trim matrix]

which drove the value of the radial button

well this is what i got atm, what do u guys think I should do in this case?

[tight schooner]

she seems displeased

[trim matrix]

no animation yet X_X

[icy dragon]

Get the screen position of the mouse from the last frame, add the distance to a float var, while making sure the mouse didn't get out of area

The only catch is that you might want to consider screen resolution as part of the math

[trim matrix]

Cool, how would you prevent the mouse from getting out of the area?

[faint pasture]

It sounds like he's trying to do it in 3d, so I would probably run some line traces and compare the positions. I would also accumulate them over the last x amount of time

[tight schooner]

jeez... maybe you have some, like... running "distance traveled" metric. As long as the mouse is moving over the hotspot, the delta adds up to some threshold = happy waifu

[ionic crescent]

I didn't realize there was a shuffle node thank you

[trim matrix]

[trim matrix]

Good luck

[icy dragon]

Simple 2D vector check from the center of the area would do

[ionic crescent]

Oh I see what you mean thank you

[trim matrix]

Thanks for the suggestion guys, I will try to compare Vector every frame and see how it goes

[icy dragon]

So the idea is to check if mouse position is larger than box area from the centre. If yes, then accumulate the distance.

[trim matrix]

Right but what if we move the position a little from the centre / hot spot then remain static

[ionic crescent]

The array is letter a thru z

[icy dragon]

Though, again, with screen space calculation, you need to take into account the screen resolution.

[trim matrix]

@ionic crescent in that case try shuffle and print them, you should get the letters shuffled. Once u confirm the letter have been shuffled you can just do the For each loop and go from index 0 to the last index to set the letter

[icy dragon]

Just update the centre vector every frame.

[cobalt gulch]

how can I set the play speed/rate of a timeline?

So for example i want to set the ak47 speed to faster than that of a aug

[trim matrix]

That's the thing, I am afraid fps and screen resolution might be a problem

@cobalt gulch

[cobalt gulch]

How could I change the target since it only shows a mesh

[trim matrix]

What mesh sry? I don;t think mesh has anything to do with the timeline?

[icy dragon]

Framerate shouldn't be too much of a worry, since you're calculating the distance. But the resolution normalising could be a pain to deal with
A slightly better idea would to project screen space to world space and use a box collision to limit the area

[trim matrix]

After u create a timeline, you can see the variable on the variable tab. Drag Auto Fire Time line then set the play rate

[cobalt gulch]

Ah k got it thx

[tight schooner]

Another idea is you could do it in 3D. Line trace to a collision plane placed on the character's head, and keep a running distance metric for each line trace hit location projected from the cursor.

Framerate shouldn't have much of an effect if you're just adding the distance between previous and current hit locations... But if you're trying to get a mouse cursor velocity type thing

you'll have to divide the distance in any given frame (tick) by World Delta Seconds = velocity

if velocity somehow factors into the waifu happiness mechanic

this is my favorite BP question all week btw

[icy dragon]

Sometimes I play those kind of anime games in speedrun pace, and most of the time velocity isn't a factor

I have yet to see such game (even NSFW ones) where how fast you rub actually matters

[tight schooner]

room for innovation

[icy dragon]

If only I didn't put gamepads into consideration, then yes

[cobalt gulch]

When I use the attach emitter node to put the muzzle flash onto the muzzle socket on the gun, it spawns very far away from the character

[icy dragon]

DualShock 4 and DualSense are only console controllers that has touch screen functionality

[trim matrix]

👉 👈

@cobalt gulch Show your blueprint

[hexed glade]

Finally got around to packaging my game for a test version and got an unknown structure error on this event. Do I need to attach the structure or is it the fact that it must have a value at all times?

[cobalt gulch]

I tried it this way

[tight schooner]

use "Spawn emitter attached"

[trim matrix]

@hexed glade I got unknown structure error all the time... basically if you have already have use some of the struct somewhere and at some point you modify the file or add new things, the game just won't package anymore.

[cobalt gulch]

Yeah

[cobalt gulch]

I tried it that way

Neither attach it

[sinful gust]

Is there any way of calling a rep notify variable (or calling a function on variable update) for standalone?

[trim matrix]

Try to save a backup for your game before following my advice, but basically what you need to do is, rename your struct. Then save all, after that the game should package just fine

[tight schooner]

the location & rotation when attached become relative. Try using 0,0,0 for location & rotation and see if the emitter is any closer to where it should be

[hexed glade]

Okay. Will try after backing up 🙂

[trim matrix]

@cobalt gulch You probably have to change the location type from relative to snap to world? I can't remember the wording exactly

If you spawn relative then it will be relative to what ever it is attached to

[cobalt gulch]

Hmm none of the options work

[trim matrix]

U want to spawn something on your muzzle socket, correct?

[cobalt gulch]

Yea

But attach it

[tight schooner]

In your screenshot there's no emitter template selected...

[cobalt gulch]

It does spawn but its not attaching

[cobalt gulch]

I've updated it since then dw

[tight schooner]

Spawn Emitter Attached
Location: 0,0,0
Rotation: 0,0,0
Scale: 1,1,1
Location type: Keep relative

[trim matrix]

Oh u are doing spawn emmiter attached, have u tried spawn emmiter at location

[onyx token]

if i have a bunch of material instances
each having a variable that i need to edit

how do i access those in a blueprint?

[cobalt gulch]

Yeah but it doesent attach

[trim matrix]

nvm u can do spawn emmiter attached, keep it that way

Try to change type to keep world position tho?

[sinful gust]

Nvm, when the var updates, I'm calling the onrep function if it's standalone xd

[tight schooner]

With nodes. If you have a static mesh component or whatever, there are lots of material-related nodes that have material slot inputs

[cobalt gulch]

When I put it to that i cant see it spawning

[trim matrix]

wat do u want to access? the specific material? You can get the slot name I suppose

[trim matrix]

Can U eject from the character and see where it is being spawned at?

[onyx token]

to be specific i wanna access this variable in the instance

not the parent material

[trim matrix]

Ohh yeah one sec

[cobalt gulch]

how can i eject

[trim matrix]

@onyx token

This will do?

[onyx token]

ooh that did the trick, thank you!

[trim matrix]

actually can u print string the location of the muzzle first?

print that value and see what u get

[wicked lava]

For some reason setting keyboard focus on my pause menu isnt working, is there something im missing?

I have it set up the exact same way I did my other menus but it wont register

[cobalt gulch]

Ok so

When my gun is firing, recoil is added, how can I make it so when I stop firing it goes back to where you were aiming

[cobalt gulch]

How can i print the loc?

[tight schooner]

probably need a layer of abstraction... where you want to aim + recoil offset = where you're actually aiming

and then you animate the recoil offset in some fashion, whether via math or with timelines etc., and have the offset return to 0 eventually

[ionic crescent]

worked great thank you

[wicked osprey]

Hi everybody. I wanted to ask you for advice, how can I make it so that at the end of one timer another one is called, but at the same time, in the function that is called from the first timer, do not call the second timer?

[marsh oak]

can you explain in more detail what you are trying to do?

[cobalt gulch]

Would there be a way to set the start and end keyframes to a variable which I can change?

[proven plover]

Hi guys! How can I get a blend mode on material instance if it is overridden?

[tight schooner]

Is that a timeline? I'm afraid this might be a hare-brained scheme, but... you could have an event track in the timeline that sets play rate on the timeline component as it's playing, lol.

[cobalt gulch]

Wouldn't that only set the speed?

[tight schooner]

oh, you want the output values to change? hmm

I mean, you can scale the whole output with math, but...

[cobalt gulch]

Should I just create another timeline for seperate guns?

[tight schooner]

Probably. Curve assets are another option. But whichever makes more sense to you

multiple timelines and/or multiple curve assets for your arsenal

[wicked osprey]

I have two functions equip and unequip and in these functions have timers that fire after a certain amount of time. I also have a switch function in which the unequip function must first be executed and, at the end of the timer, the equip function must be executed in it. I could just add a timer with the Equip function at the end of the Unequip function, but then how can I use Unequip without the Equip function and vice versa, and creating a new function will not work

[gentle urchin]

You could set start time, and use a given duration to define the end time

[tight schooner]

Maybe set a variable representing the thing being switched to, and the unequip function checks if that variable has something in it or not

[marsh oak]

Leave your equip and unequip functions separate, so you can use them independently, and then create 2 new functions - EquipSequential that uses the equip function and then the unequip function after the timer like you said. And then do the same for an UnequipSequential. So when you need to use JUST the equip function, call equip. And when you need to use both call equipSequential.

[cobalt gulch]

I cant seem to find it when referencing the timeline

[marsh oak]

do you think that would work for your needs, @wicked osprey ? It should let you call them separately and together like you describe

[wicked osprey]

Thank you❤

[marsh oak]

👍

[wicked osprey]

I had the same idea, but I was thinking to find out if there are more ways)

[marsh oak]

I mean that is how I would structure it in code. It is the most straightforward way.

This is my main sticking point with blueprints so far. They're great for non programmers, but they are soooooo cumbersome for programmers. On the flip side, c++ is too low level for my c# and java accustomed human readable tastes. So its basically a lose/lose no matter what I use lol.

[faint pasture]

Blueprints are programming tho

[marsh oak]

I mean sure, but you have limited access to the api and even the simplest operations take longer than they should. IE hooking up a for loop or whatever. That's what i mean by cumbersome.

[cobalt gulch]

If there was a button to remove the widget from the player, how could I do this only for the player that pressed the button rather than all the players in the lobby

[earnest tangle]

Just do C++. It's not that much different from C# or whatever in UE since the engine deals with most of the nonsense... main downside is compilation time

[zealous moth]

overwrite it in the MI under general material properties? Not sur what you mean by "get a blend mode"

[zealous moth]

There isn't that much discrepancy and even if you do not have access to something in BP, you can easily make a C++ class that does it.

[zealous moth]

get player at index 0 since that is always the main player

[tawdry surge]

Loops are an exception case. In general BP is as performant as c#

[blissful grail]

Gonna need some sources on that claim.

(Not saying performance in a gameplay scripting manner is the end all be all though)

[blissful grail]

I'd say C++ compile errors are some of the most obtuse things in the world. Have very little issues in other languages though.

[earnest tangle]

Yeah although the real weird ones are usually caused by the same specific things so once you recognize them you know what it is lol

[tawdry surge]

Sjorde from epic claimed it. had a graph and everything during one of his BP talks.

[blissful grail]

I know I've seen them say that the slow part of BP is the connection lines, so going from one node to another; but I don't recall ever actually seeing/hearing comparison to C#.

[tawdry surge]

It was in the 2 part BP deep dive talk iirc

[faint pasture]

Yeah there's an overhead per node. Just keep it sane, and move your slow stuff to C++ when needed.

[icy dragon]

UFUNCTION(BlueprintCallable) go brrrr

[trim matrix]

I'm trying to create a night scene, I can rotate the lgiht source and increase star brightness, but the region surrounding my plane is still very bright an dI'm not sure how to make that dark.

[icy dragon]

[context needed]

[trim matrix]

I guess I'mt rying to change the skybox? So this is the the view looking up.

You can see the sky is darker and star is visible.

But looking straight ahead

There's this complete brightness.

And I don't know what that's from.

I can get rid of the clounds, rotate the light source, but I'm not sure where that blinding light around the map is coming from.

Or how do I change the colour of it so it matches the sky.

[tight schooner]

@trim matrix auto exposure? Sounds like a question for #graphics

[trim matrix]

Oh I'll post there.

[fickle dune]

Hey guys so on a level I have I turned down the brightness to 0.0001 on the sky_sphere to make it dark (its a cave level) and when I travel to that level from another one and exit, it gives me an error about the Skysphere not being able to be accessed.
The lighting works as intended but that only happens when exiting, has anyone ever come across this issue?

[tight schooner]

Are you by any chance storing a reference to your sky sphere object on Game Instance or loading it out of a savegame?

Any references to stuff in the world are invalidated when you load a new level, because it (almost) all gets destroyed

[fickle dune]

Not at all

[tight schooner]

Dunno, sry

[fickle dune]

damn lol

well it doesn't really break the game as it works as intended but just pops that error

[cobalt gulch]

My game is crashing when I click play, even though it worked last time i had opened the project

[fleet cobalt]

so i have this ai that once this blueprint activates it plays jumpscare sound and it just spams the sound instead of doing it once, how can i fix this?

[buoyant citrus]

It looks like you're just looping this 10 times a second, maybe add a Sequence node with the sound behind a DoOnce node?

[cobalt gulch]

pls help

[earnest tangle]

You're going to need to provide a lot more details if you expect anyone to be able to solve that

[zealous moth]

@cobalt gulch make a copy and see if it crashes

[fleet cobalt]

sound stops looping but it messes up ai

[elfin arch]

Hi, I overrode the Destroyed function on my character and want to undo that but deleting it doesn't make the function show back up in the list of overridable functions. Is overriding a function irreversible?

[covert schooner]

Im trying to add an event dispatcher to a gameinstance subclass, but I am unable to add inputs to it, as all those things are greyed out. What gives?

[zealous moth]

@pseudo wedge easiest way is to make the camera a separate actor that follows or doesnt

What is your pov? Third person is?

Iso

[pseudo wedge]

third person @zealous moth

[zealous moth]

Isometric or just free moving

[pseudo wedge]

free moving

currently the actor moves with the camera

[zealous moth]

Then yeah separate actor

Like a new one with spring arm and camera

Make a new actor. Equip it with a spring arm and a camera. Set up controls. Declare it on begin play to your player controller and in the player controller create free movement or follow swapping. In your camera actor create inputs when needed.

[lusty shard]

Anything I should be aware of that makes dragging wires super laggy in blueprints event graph?

Im working in 5.0.1

I have had the issues since 5.0 ea in august

runs super smoothly if I run ccleaner and delete a bunch of files but not sure which files are causing the issue. the lagginess comes back fairly quickly too

ping me if anyone has input or ideas. would really like to solve this.

[covert schooner]

Do you have like a ton of wires going? If so try subdividing them into macros and functions a bit, that usually helps me if things get a lil laggy.

[bitter plover]

How can i set a static mesh which is a child of my character blueprint to invisible?

Idk why I am having so much trouble finding a solution to this syntactical problem

[lusty shard]

I am in a clean project and have maybe 4 events, very few wires.

[brazen pike]

....set visibility?

[covert schooner]

No idea then, normally it does not lag at all for me until ive got about 200 on screen.

[lusty shard]

heres an example. This is the most populated event graph in this project within the character

but I have the same lag issue even in empty event graphs

[bitter plover]

set visibility seems to target the character itself, i reckon it works on an actor itself. My character is holding a gun and i am trying to set that gun's static mesh to invisible

[covert schooner]

do you have enough hard drive space, ram, and a nice sized page file?

[brazen pike]

yeah if you drag out the static mesh component from the left side into your blueprint then you can make it target the mesh specifically

[lusty shard]

page file?

[covert schooner]

Your windows page file

[lusty shard]

Where do I see that?

[bitter plover]

i did that just now

thanks

[covert schooner]

System Properties->Performance->VirtualMemory I think

its your OS not unreal

How much ram do you have, how much hard drive space do you have left, and do you have an SSD?

[lusty shard]

I have a 2TB M.2 and 32GB RAM

I have 218GB left on the M.2

[covert schooner]

Well that should be plenty, perhaps make sure that windows defender is excluding the engine and your project?

[dusky cape]

i have my interaction set up here, however, with my line trace, it's behind my player from where i look and press the interact key rather than in front where i should see it

idk if its bc of something in my PlayerController BP or if it's something else

i am using a custom player tho

[remote meteor]

hm it uses camera as the reference though

[dusky cape]

yeah exactly

[remote meteor]

what kind of in game view is that?

FPS or TPS

[dusky cape]

fps

[remote meteor]

it goes backwards?

[dusky cape]

yes

[remote meteor]

can you click on the camera and see where the red arrow is facing?

oh

i saw the problem

[dusky cape]

whats the problem?

[remote meteor]

this needs to be +

not *

[dusky cape]

oh

THANK YOU

[remote meteor]

👍

since we are offsetting 500 units forward from the start point, it should be addition

[dusk nymph]

how to add image to grid panel in blueprint ?

[jaunty jolt]

I have two big cubes colliding. When they collide i want to spawn a sparks there. How do i get the exact point of collision between the 2 cubes? The event begin overlap doesnt seem to have an "hit location". Pls help.

[unique harness]

Use the overlap between the two mesh components instead of the actors

It gives you a FHitResult

But that'll only fire if they can actually overlap, otherwise, you need at Hit delegate

[peak summit]

Why is a newly created DataAsset not castable to when iterating Get Assets by Class?

[jaunty jolt]

I dont see it. It looks the same as the overlap for the normal collision?

[gentle urchin]

Set new time, its an input on the timeline node

[jaunty jolt]

Can i access separate parts of an instanced static mesh?
I have an instanced static mesh of a character, its just a rabbit sprite in a plane. Then i intend to include in the same instanced static mesh, another plane with a texture of the weapon.

This is so that i can move the weapon independently in the instances.
Can the original instanced static mesh of the character (the rabbit), also include a weapon,
that can be moved separetely? Or i must create a new instanced static mesh just for the weapon?

[blissful grail]

They should be two separate meshes.

It's pretty easy to do. Add a socket to your rabbit, then to equip the weapon, just attach the weapon to the socket.

[tight schooner]

Hard to think of a way where they can be the same ISM. You could maybe animate the spear in the material graph with World Position Offset, but then every instance of the HISM would share that animation state I think. The way around that maybe is by doing it as a Niagara system with material inputs.

I assume your use case is wanting hundreds of rabbits on screen without creating hundreds of draw calls. I assume Niagara could be part of the solution but I've never done anything like that personally.

If you're animating just a handful of rabbits then just do it as two static mesh components

Or one skinned mesh, or a mesh with morph targets

UE auto-instances static mesh components behind the scenes in cases where they share the same mesh and material instance

[drifting peak]

anyone know how to get an actors location to make a vertex spawn spawn there? Currently the vertex is spawning in the general direction but never close enough

[marsh oak]

is your capsule offset from its scene root that you need to subtract the positions? Could you test with a simpler example first where you could just gets the actors position? Thats the only thing I see here that could be affecting your vertex location.

[drifting peak]

it is not the offset that affects the issue

the referenced position is used in many other bps and it works normally

when generating mesh it's very abnormal so I am probably thinking about it the wrong way

in this example, direct input of world location causes this infinite mesh

red is where the it's suppose to go

[solar bison]

How do I "select" a child widget. Want to do 2 things:

• highlight the selected widget,
• update a list in the parent to know it's selected

[lament ginkgo]

Probably a stupid question, but if I have variables on the level blueprint, where can I see those in the editor at runtime?

[drifting peak]

@lament ginkgo you cant get variables from the level blueprint

[lament ginkgo]

Oh, like you can't even see them in the inspector?

[drifting peak]

if you are trying to use it in other bps

are you trying to print it to your screen?

[lament ginkgo]

I'm not, just trying to actually verify they're being set properly

[marsh oak]

he wants to inspect their values at runtime I think

[lament ginkgo]

Yeah

[drifting peak]

print string node

[solar bison]

anyone?

[lament ginkgo]

Thanks, I'll try

[drifting peak]

@solar bison did you create your widget and store it in a variable in your parent yet?

[marsh oak]

you sure the world location vector is coming out ok? did you debug the vertice array? There is literally nothing else wrong with that mesh section

[solar bison]

did that just now

now what.. how do I propagate state up from child to parent?

[marsh oak]

world position or not, it shouldnt matter where the numbers come from. The only explanation is that the numbers are wrong somehow 🤷

[drifting peak]

i can check again

[drifting peak]

what are you trying to send from child to parent?

[solar bison]

@drifting peak so when I click on the child, it gets "seletcted". i.e

1. I flip a boolean to highlight it in the UI
2. parent should know how many cards are selected, and which ones

so I guess both are implicitly taken care of, I want a clean way to handle this. Should I fire an event from the child whenever it is selected/deselected? and then on the parent I listen for that event and run appropriate logic

[drifting peak]

are you using flip flop node to flip the boolean?

[solar bison]

don't worry about me flipping the boolean, what's the best way to respond to a boolean being flipped?

is it only thru events?

[drifting peak]

@marsh oak i reset both back to world origin, the vertex still goes further than the spider's location

[solar bison]

also is it better to use a button versus an iamge to respond to click events?

[drifting peak]

it doesnt matter if you use a button or an image, because your image is just an overlay in your widget

[solar bison]

Explain this then? Button event handlers don't ask me to return anything

[drifting peak]

if you dont want to make it activate from the widget itself then do it in your game instance

or your level bp

[solar bison]

what?

[drifting peak]

are you clicking on your widget then it does something?

[solar bison]

Why does OnMouseButtonDown expect me to to pass something in the Return Node?

What's wrong with Unreal...?

[jaunty jolt]

Yup. I thought about that. i could in theory change the position of the weapon. So that would work. But you are saying that will change all the weapons in all instances? What if i create dynamic material? And change it per instance?

[tight schooner]

I don't think you can give individual instances their own material. I haven't looked deeply into it but...

And every dynamic material instance is a new draw call

So you're losing the ostensible benefit of instanced meshes

How many rabbits do you intend to have on the screen at most?

If it's just a few dozen then BP actors and static mesh components might be ok

[jaunty jolt]

it starts with 1000 rabbits. then they reproduce to 100.000

[tight schooner]

I guess you'd need something clever like a Niagara particle system... That goes well beyond my knowledge

I think there are crowd systems on the marketplace as well

as far as draw calls go, UE does actually do mesh auto-instancing https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/ProgrammingAndScripting/Rendering/MeshDrawingPipeline/

which reduces the need to do clever HISMC tricks as people did in earlier versions of UE4

[jaunty jolt]

so that means i dont need to do all this that im doing? and that now it does automatically??

[tight schooner]

yeah if you spawn 100 of the same actor with the same static mesh component & material

UE4 will batch all those draw calls automatically

[jaunty jolt]

ah i see. but what im doing is actually i have 1 actor, with like 100's of rabbits and they move all together, those are instanced static meshes inside 1 actor character. is this good?

[solar bison]

does dividing an integer (eg: 9/4) return the floor value?) i.e 2?

[tight schooner]

yeah integer division throws away the remainder

[solar bison]

ok so it's always floored

[tight schooner]

I guess the actor part is unimportant... If the engine sees a bunch of identical-ish static meshes, it'll batch them

[solar bison]

i.e 9/2 = 4, and 8/2 = 4 too right

[tight schooner]

yeah

[jaunty jolt]

ok thanks so much

[gentle urchin]

Isnt that the handled/unhandled reply?

[solar bison]

what does that mean

[gentle urchin]

If you reply handled it consumes the click if im not mistaken

While unhandled allows it to traverse down the widget z order

[solar bison]

no idea what that means, could you break it down for a ue5 dummy

there's nothing documented about it

like, this is if there are widgets overlaid on top of each other?

all responding to click events?

[gentle urchin]

I believe so

Yes

[solar bison]

one with the highest z order's click gets registered?

ok

I must say, coming from unity background, unreal does a poor job documenting this stuff

[gentle urchin]

If the top one returns handled, all is fine and nothing else happens

[solar bison]

I don't expect random returns like that in simple event listeners

[gentle urchin]

While unhandled allows another one to react to the same click

Its a practical return imo^^

[remote meteor]

ui input works in hierarchy

if someone handled it, it doesnt get passed down

its a legit useful feature

[solar bison]

yes but small things like these are what creates barriers to get started with unreal

[solar bison]

not documented + something that could be optionally handled instead of a return

[icy dragon]

Not really a barrier

[remote meteor]

and thats is what this channel is for 🙂

[solar bison]

Disagree. This is what good documentation should handle

not a discord channel

i'm sure there are collectively 50+ people over the last couple years who've askde the same question 🙂

[remote meteor]

a simple "ue4 return handle" result is all you need

and some effort to figure out stuffs

[solar bison]

I don't want to argue. But if you think this is documentation that is sufficient for somebody who doesn't understand "bubble up/down", "widget hierarchy" and "event reply" (coming from Unity background), then all I can say is there is room for improvement

[remote meteor]

also im not joking, the best documentation you have in unreal is the source code itself

its well documented within the source code

[solar bison]

I agree. unfortunately I am using blueprints for this project

[remote meteor]

you still can look at source code

[solar bison]

Since we are on this topic, si there nothing I can use to destroy a widget? I don't want to "remove from parent", because the next time I use it, I want the state to be clean.

[remote meteor]

you remove from parent and dereference it

and GC will clean up for you

[solar bison]

what;s the associated bp function?

[remote meteor]

not really a function

when you remove from parent, the viewport slate is gone

if there are no reference holding the widget

it will be cleaned up by GC

so if you did not store a reference of the widget created, after you called "remove from parent" (aka remove from viewport)

then it will soon be cleared by GC

if you however stored the reference of the widget created, you can use back the widget and add it back to the viewport(or panelslots), constructs will execute whenever a widget is added to viewport(or panelslot)

[solar bison]

along with the constructs executing

does it also start with a clean slate in terms of state/

I don't want lingering state in the widget

[remote meteor]

mmh nope

[solar bison]

..

[remote meteor]

if you want clean slate its either you clean it yourself

or you create another one

[solar bison]

I don't mind creating another one. Just tell me how to destroy the previous one

[remote meteor]

remove from parent

[icy dragon]

Remove From Parent

[remote meteor]

and it will destroy itself

provided you did not store its reference as a variable

[solar bison]

I did not

[icy dragon]

The ever so hard working Unreal janitors will take it away once there's nothing else referencing it

[remote meteor]

poor janitors have to work on tight schedule

[solar bison]

I must say...blueprints are so painful to do UI stuff. Wow

I was writing react at my day job yesterday...got complicated UI with 4 different states done in like, 4 hours. Maybe I'm just not used to Unreal. at all.

[remote meteor]

its not the best way but its ok once you get the hang of it

there are a bunch of useful stuff

[icy dragon]

You can sideload it into a C++ function if you want to, provided that you inherit from UserWidget.h and include both UMG and Slate + SlateCore modules.

Maybe that could lessen the pain to some degree

[solar bison]

I am actually thinking of rewriting this entire project in C++ lol

not really sure what I'm doing, with everything in blueprints

game logic is absurdly different to handle. have like 7-8 core actors now with a lot of functions. I miss my IDE so much

[icy dragon]

You're still going to need a bit of BP if you want pain free asset referencing.

[solar bison]

I will 100% use BP for assets

I don't want to create static references in C++ with file paths, that's the worst

blueprints will be exactly how I use them in Unity for Gameobjects/prefabs, to change static/skeletal meshes, small scripting stuff (event dispatchers + handelrs for particles/sound) etc

[remote meteor]

hmm in c++ you ask the packagemanager to find the asset for you, you just need to know its relative path but yeah, quite pain in the ass compared to drop down list in bp

[solar bison]

but I am just very disappointed with visual scripting in general. I really thought it'll be pain free when building an entire game

I thought of writing a couple unit tests since logic for board games boils down to just arithmetic for the most part. I don't even know how to get started in blueprints. eek

[remote meteor]

i will say bp excels in fast iteration and testing stuff, but you cannot go into unreal blindly

unlike unity where freedom is almost literally a feature

[icy dragon]

Personally I do things in BP to get things going. Only then I port things to C++ once performance had a concerning hit

[remote meteor]

unreal follows a strict models of stuffs that you first need to understand before you can do things without everything goes sphegetti in 2 days

[solar bison]

performance is the least of my concerns. code readability is

I'm not getting good code readability in blueprints