blueprint

[solar bison]

I miss being able to ctrl+shift+f stuff and change something really fast

no I'm actually well aware of everything. I'm using the gameplay framework correctly to my knowledge. still very spaghetti-ish.

[remote meteor]

there is Find in Blueprint

[solar bison]

thanks for this. didn't know ctrl+shift+f works here too. will be useful

[remote meteor]

its like a tab itself

it searches for anything related you type

also on any nodes you see in the graphs

you can right click them, find reference and it will seach on the current graph, then there is a binocular icon on the right side that will search the whole project

kinda more clicks

[solar bison]

hahahha yeah I hate clicking on this stuff. very used to a workflow without a mouse

it's fine though. I can't complain too much. Unreal's APIs are actually solid for the most part

and I love the gameplay framework

[remote meteor]

the only thing about developing in bp that is not mouse dependant is ctrl + p for asset window

😂

[solar bison]

yoo I'm glad this is there too! i was awlays ctrl+spacing to open the file lol

[gentle urchin]

I cant imagine bp'ing without a mouse

[remote meteor]

alt+shift+f while selecting a node to find reference

[opaque blade]

I think there were arrow key /wsad navigations through one of the bp workflow Plugins

But also think it was for exec pins only so when you get to pure nodes you have fun

[solar bison]

but all in all, I think we should figure out how to make this work in our favour
I'm very pro on core systems in C++ and BP for asset referencing. super duper fast workflow!!

[remote meteor]

if you ask me for a few handy things in bp

[gentle urchin]

Iteration should be faster in bp ;p

[remote meteor]

ctrl + left click to move existing pins
alt + left click to instantly disconnect pins

[opaque blade]

But if you dislike visual Scripting and plugging tons of nodes cpp might be your other option

Bp is very readable when you don't do array stuff and a lot of event based flows and async stuff

[gentle urchin]

If its not, either you got serious c++ speed, or i just suck at it

Then again, 5 years of bp vs 3 months if c++..

[remote meteor]

both got its perks 😅

[solar bison]

a lot of my code is event based stuff and arrays 😢

[gentle urchin]

For sure ^^ but iteration is imo slow in cpp :p

Livecoding helps tho

[solar bison]

every time I have to do an array operation in BP I cringe a little inside

it's so painfulyl slow

[solar bison]

why do you think so?

[remote meteor]

also the more you spent time in bp, the more you will think "why the heck dint epic expose these function in bp"

[solar bison]

it should be blazing fast imo

[gentle urchin]

Any header change means closing engine, compiling , and opening again

[remote meteor]

^

[gentle urchin]

While working in bp is just

Smooooth

[solar bison]

what about .cpp files? i'm sure that doesn't involve closing and opening

[solar bison]

and how long does this take realistically? 10 seconds?

[remote meteor]

i dont know if it is a bug

if the cpp you are editing is a plugin

[opaque blade]

Highly depends what you do
Live coding adds a lot to iteration in Cpp
If you change declarative structure you sure are having a bit more fun

But then you may also have in BP because one BP randomly broke because you didn't save all 🙃 and you have to rewire stuff

[gentle urchin]

8 out of 10 times i need to do it on cpp files aswell

[remote meteor]

i have to restart the editor no matter what

[solar bison]

question is how much time?

if it takes 10 secs does it matter?

[remote meteor]

even if hot reload says its updated

depends on your project size

for mine it takes like 40 secs

[opaque blade]

The time I change a BP is mostly equal to a Cpp line if it is code

Asset changes ofcourse are faster in editor

[gentle urchin]

15 sec for compile, 15 sec for opening ?

[solar bison]

unity literally takes 10 seconds too when compiling a script without asmdefs. like 5 second freeze when u save script + 5 second to hit start game

[gentle urchin]

So 30 sec each time ?

[opaque blade]

No one uses hot reload

And if you do you doom yourself

[remote meteor]

i understand that

[gentle urchin]

Yeah, dont use hotreload 😄

[remote meteor]

😅

[gentle urchin]

But 30 sec for each variable i add, or each iterative change i make, is 30 sec wasted

[solar bison]

but why is compiling c++ taking so long

[remote meteor]

i just restart editor when i need to change something

[gentle urchin]

Doing it in bp saves me this

[solar bison]

why is the editor recompiling the whole engine?

[opaque blade]

Only if you know what you do and use assemblies
Otherwise big projects can take like for example 5mins as well

[solar bison]

true

[gentle urchin]

Its not recompiling the entire engine afaik

Just affected stuff

[solar bison]

is this a VS problem? I wonder what compile times are in Rider

[gentle urchin]

Unless you force rebuild

[remote meteor]

compile time is the same

[solar bison]

then why 30-40 seconds? sounds crazy

[opaque blade]

And same applies for ue source
A monolithic module will Link and compile slower

[remote meteor]

it depends on the msbuild thinggy

[thin panther]

Thats about normal for an editor restart and a c++ compile

[gentle urchin]

15 sec for the compile, and 15 sec opening engine ?

[thin panther]

Ive seen way worse

[opaque blade]

Yeah seems reasonable

[gentle urchin]

It gets worse if its a big change, or affects a lot of files 😅 15 sec is like best case

[solar bison]

what is taking 15 sec to compile when the diff is a 1 line change in the header file?

is unreal recompiling the entire source?

[thin panther]

If you think compiling the source takes 15 secinds thats really funny

[solar bison]

well I'm sure it's not

[opaque blade]

Sounds like a lot of stuff in your code is dependant on one singular file

Which is in general a cause for big compile times ..

[thin panther]

The source takes like 9000000 years

[remote meteor]

if you want to know how long you will need to recompile the whole ue4editor module with a modern 16 core cpu i can help 😂

[gentle urchin]

I have not optimized anything about it, so could be some default setting causing more to recompile? I got no clue really

[opaque blade]

I mean don't blame the engine for compile times when you change EngineTypes.h

[gentle urchin]

Hehe

[remote meteor]

header includes

[thin panther]

I think c# is quicker cause like bp, it gets translated to a virtual language

[gentle urchin]

Surely im not changing enginetypes or anything alike

[solar bison]

30-40 seconds sounds insane. i didn't know compilation takes that long. What project size is this?

my project is literally like 7-8 small actors

[opaque blade]

Forward declare as much as possible
Avoid single big defines of lots of structs in one file ( if not used together )

[thin panther]

A 15 secomd code compile is normal on even a console project in native c++ when you start making header files

[opaque blade]

Compiler boot up, windows interruption and also linkage take some time and are all external influences

Windows indexing and security can conflict with compilation
Memory consumption of other stuff can hinder compiler thread boot up

Just some examples

[gentle urchin]

But like

If i reduce it to like 5 sec

Its still a 20 sec total for a compile + restart

[opaque blade]

Restart depends where you restart

[gentle urchin]

20 seconds, where i can instead use 2 seconds to make a bp variable

[thin panther]

Wlecome to unreal engine where projects take time to load

[opaque blade]

Gyms help as well ( minimalistic levels to test a feature )

[remote meteor]

source code says hi 😆

[gentle urchin]

Obv one tries to bulk changes, and not restart every single time you make a variable

[solar bison]

wtf.

[gentle urchin]

Source code hurts my drives !

[thin panther]

What did ya think it was gonna look like :P

[remote meteor]

huuuuge

[opaque blade]

But yeah Cpp takes compile time
But i guess you save that time to not think about very granular BP structure so you are not locking out other team members on BP stuff

[remote meteor]

bp is totally faster if you want to do like delays and timers in a chain for gameplay scripting and such

1 simple node for latent actions

[opaque blade]

Yet you can define custom async nodes in Cpp to use in BP to work even faster

[solar bison]

Are compile times faster with Rider for unreal?

[remote meteor]

its the same i believe

[opaque blade]

Both the same fastest is not to have a ide open

[thin panther]

You are missing the point of major time being loading back up

[remote meteor]

the only thing rider differes is the convenience in typing code and such

[solar bison]

Hmmm, does unreal have to load the editor back up? Can't they explore something different?

i heard hot reloading was a fail though

[opaque blade]

But only due to memory and if you have more than say 6 to 8 threads available and only 16/32 gb ram

[thin panther]

I mean ye you can leave the editor open, but you also get to risk corrupting everything irreversably

[opaque blade]

Only when you hot reload

[thin panther]

Ye thats what they said

You can live compile .cpp changes, but header changes need a restart

[opaque blade]

Not entirely but most of the time yeah

[thin panther]

For peace of mind id still do it outside of editor tho

your best workflow imo is gonna be to use bp for all of the more simple things, and then make structs, nodes and large subsystems in c++

[opaque blade]

Ue5 can Reinstance header changes
But i would just follow the deal:

• Bugfix / test .cpp code use live coding

Anything else just close the editor

[thin panther]

and then use your said structs nodes and large subsystems in needed blueprints

also get used to seeing your new favourite terms

UPROPERTY() and UFUNCTION()

[opaque blade]

I think one of the ue streams showcased a good balance between BP and cpp
Think it was something with basic interactions

I mean lyra is also a damn good example

[remote meteor]

subsystem is great

🙏

[gentle urchin]

Combo of bp and cpp is surely the best

But initial iteration is ime best done in bp

Then move functionality to cpp when you wanna optimize etc

[thin panther]

id only start porting things over if performance seriously worsens

[gentle urchin]

It always does :p

[thin panther]

but for really large stuff id say start in c++ so you dont have the pain of rewriting it

cause i hate rewriting big stuff

[gentle urchin]

Well

I guess

[thin panther]

id rather have the editor crashes than to port those things over

[gentle urchin]

If you know the big stuff already

But often you dont

Or atleast, I dont

Thats the iteration part

Sculpting this big system

[opaque blade]

Or core stuff

At least have a base class readily available

Or core systems like quests inventory scores etc

Basically anything you would call system xD

[thin panther]

yeah your stuff like your

MMORPGSubsystem -> DoStuff();

I would just start in c++ as bp doesnt really have a nice alternative

without bloating other classes

plus that stuff would take forever and a day to translate over and im not sure i fancy doing that

[opaque blade]

I just ported a BP only project as I followed what squize said till now
But when you switch you basically break everything
And then switch everything over
I would say when you are new to Ue-Cpp this can go hellish wrong as you don't want to lose data
And this gets tricky or you have to write code in BP to fix / move your BP data into new native data

Like followed the move it later approach
Trust me it is not that easy

[thin panther]

ye im also more used to debugging c++

so for large things i would be more comfortable debugging them in c++

i dont like the bp debugging tools

they feel icky

[opaque blade]

Just to add
It only took me two days though
But still was a fun experience
"Moving some stuff to cpp"
May work well for single functions but once you want to revamp some BP structs and enums and so on ..

[thin panther]

ive heard the horrors of bp structs, although i have never encountered them myslef

i just make mine in c++ now

saves the trouble

[remote meteor]

i hope you never see it

🙏

[opaque blade]

Yeah had some back in 4.16-4.18

[remote meteor]

its horrible

[opaque blade]

Then started to always define structs in cpp xD but it is better as I experienced in jams where we usually do BP only stuff

Maybe some cpp plugins

[thin panther]

can we just call them what they are: CPPlugins

extra p is redundant smh

[remote meteor]

moarr p's

[tame pecan]

CeePlusPlusPlugins

[thin panther]

time to make the best programming language P++

where the start of every word is a p

[remote meteor]

pIsLooping

[thin panther]

enjoy declaring your
pstatic pint x;

[tame pecan]

ö++

[remote meteor]

pint pGetNumberOfPees()

[gentle urchin]

I have great success with this so far, just injecting a new cpp parent to my bp class and go from there

Nothing breaks, i get partial progress, and can stop whenever im staisfied

[gilded venture]

anyone know if it's possible to convert a string to bools/enums? I'm trying to make a map of various values, so I'm converting them to string and then storing them. Now I need to convert them back 👀

[remote meteor]

oh

mmh

you cant

but you can store enum in byte or int

instead

[gaunt ferry]

string to bool just check if string = true or false

[remote meteor]

why not store them as it?

[gaunt ferry]

wym

[gentle urchin]

Why store a bool as something != a bool

You can always make your own parser for it but seems like a lot of extra

[gaunt ferry]

wait i have a question is it possible to download a string from a site with no extra plugins or c++?

[gilded venture]

because it's an array

[remote meteor]

you can have 3 different maps i think

bool
float
string

[gilded venture]

you can have multiple maps, yes

but it overcomplicates something very simple

I have rooms that have different types of puzzles, and need to store the info for those puzzles as keys and values

i.e., the elegant solution would be storing them as an array, and parsing them back out when loading

like a json object

[remote meteor]

you can use varest json object if you really want

but there is no enum

[gilded venture]

you also can't store a map with an array of ints

which is again, wild to me

[remote meteor]

hm

but you can store a map of a struct consist of an array of ints

[gilded venture]

I'm going full jank

I will now go enum -> int -> string

and string -> int -> enum

😎

lmao it works

this is idiotic but I thank y'all

[pseudo pelican]

can I use a for each loop node on event tick

[remote meteor]

yes

but beware to not perform too much heavy task

[gentle urchin]

If its heavy (and necessary) move it to native tick

Seldom is it really necessary tho

[icy dragon]

https://tenor.com/view/why-huh-but-why-gif-13199396

[thin panther]

Wdym a string is just text

Not to be confused with FText

[icy dragon]

Finally got to use this GIF lol

[thin panther]

Oh god tick array looping

What could possibly need frame by frame array access

Other than a really bad sorting algorithm

[gentle urchin]

movement

[icy dragon]

Event Tick -> Get All Actors of Class -> For Each Loop

[tame pecan]

Read the tool tip of the function

It literally says don't use on tick, there are better ways

[icy dragon]

no u

[tame pecan]

[thin panther]

The joke
✈️
👨

[summer jetty]

Any tips for condensing stupidly big blueprints? I've put what I can into functions and enums to clear a bit of space. But this blueprint is covering multiple scenarios and values so has thicc chains of branches. Or is it just a case of organising everything into neat comment boxes and waiting 5 hours to scroll from one side to the other every time?

[thin panther]

C++

[tame pecan]

@icy dragon

[thin panther]

.

[gentle urchin]

functions, functions, functions, functions

[summer jetty]

My C++ isn't good enough to save the time it would take to finish this blueprint off.

Ok, fair enough. I'm trying to mash as many functions in as I can.

[thin panther]

Pretty sure you can also collapse graphs

[tame pecan]

ah my bad, thought it was @icy dragon asking for the tick thing

sorry

[thin panther]

Nah lol

[summer jetty]

😄

[thin panther]

At least i hope not

[summer jetty]

Yeah, this entire blueprint is one giant tick. Takes an hour to run.

[gentle urchin]

Lol i hope its not 😄

but i suppose with proper flow control

you can get away with it

[summer jetty]

I'm a bit OCD about ticks, so don't have many of those. It's the biggest blueprint in the entire game, but once it's up and running I shouldn't have to tweak it that much. Just a pain to work on due to all the scrolling. Can only zoom out so much. Nvm.

cheers guys

[icy dragon]

Or am I?

[thin panther]

hides event ticks under the desk

[icy dragon]

||nah jk lmao; you gotta know BP to make that joke||

[icy dragon]

Functions and multiple graphs

You can collapse nodes, but personally I found it less intuitive to deal with

[gaunt ferry]

Like I wanna get raw data from a site

[thin panther]

and just feed it into the string

[gaunt ferry]

Yes

[thin panther]

i mean if you can make ur own server and send a request for it, there may be nodes for it

[mental trellis]

Http request exists in the engine.

Whether it's BP accessible or not... Who knows. Someone probably wrote a plug in for it.

[gaunt ferry]

Bc I make mods for games but I can’t add custom c++ or plugins

[thin panther]

if you make game mods, then fetching website data seems a tad unnecessary

[mental trellis]

MOTD?

Totally worth it.

[gaunt ferry]

Well it’s public mods and like I want to do checks for versions and other strings such as news or updates

[gaunt ferry]

Was dat

[mental trellis]

Message of the day.

[gaunt ferry]

Oh ok ok

But so Is what I’m trying to do possible?

With default engine stuff

[mental trellis]

Search for http. If nothing pops up, then no.

[gaunt ferry]

As in ue4 source or internet

[mental trellis]

Search for a BP node, that is.

[gaunt ferry]

Ok

[magic gate]

any way to cancel a delay node?

[gentle urchin]

by using a timer

instead

[magic gate]

i have a self destruct delay, but i would like to cancel it if i call the initialize event for example

hmm

[gentle urchin]

or

you simply let it missfire

with a branch/bool

[magic gate]

like elapsedSeconds float and maxSeconds float and do it manually?

[mental trellis]

You could add a bool and check if that bool is still true when the delay ends.

shrug

[gentle urchin]

😄

[magic gate]

yeah i thought about that, but it is possible to be reset multiple times in the delay's time

[gentle urchin]

ofcourse,

but that wouldnt matter

[magic gate]

wanted to know if there was any other way 😄

sadge

[gentle urchin]

when you try to destroy it initially you just set a bool "ToBeDestroyed" to true

then after the delay you check if its still true

on init, you set that bool to false

The other way is as i mentioned a timer

instead

Which you can clear on init

[magic gate]

thanks for the help 😄

i also just remember that i have to be able to reinitialize during the destroy animation as well, so simply interrupting the delay won't even work

[gentle urchin]

you can also use lifespan

[magic gate]

damn you using shit i haven't seen yet 😄

[gentle urchin]

setting lifespan to 0 resets the kill timer

lifespan is basically a kill timer

this will call DestroyActor() tho, so nothing you can react to there, specifically

so you'd call this

and instantly call the DestroyWithAnimation

then if you init, the destroy anim will still play along, but the actor will remain alive (unless you explicitly destroy it)

how you want to display this (cancelling animation, instantly hiding the mesh etc etc) is up to you 😛

[magic gate]

i'm still watching 😄 figuring out what i want to do

if you play a new animation, the one that is already playing just gets cancelled right?

[icy dragon]

Depends. If you're just playing anim sequence, it'll overwrite the entire anim instance the skelmesh is running.
If it's a montage, I think it only cancel out any montage in the same slot

[magic gate]

wait shit i said it wrong

widget animation

😄

yes this is all a fucking widget haha

but thanks for the answer 👀

[mild kestrel]

Does root motion work for characters only or for pawns as well?

[gaunt ferry]

sooo

it does not have it

but i think i might have a work around

[fleet cobalt]

how can i fix this, the ai sould play the sound once it sees me but it just spams the sound instead of playing it once, maybe i can somehow make it that once it plays the sound it deletes or stops it?

[gaunt ferry]

create sound and then off of that do play

you can do a play with loop to

nvm ig

weird

[magic gate]

have you tried using a 'Do Once' node?

[magic gate]

any idea where i can find documentation/explanation of what this timer handle structure can do?

right now i think this will work (if the clear and invalidate node cancels the timer and makes me able to reuse the set timer node at least)

[gentle urchin]

It executes the event after the given Time.(and initial delay etc)

Clearing it will simply stop it from executing

[magic gate]

i think you can't use the node if the timer is already active?

so that means invalidate should hopefully make the node recallable 😄

[gentle urchin]

I believe you can but have not tested this

[earnest tangle]

Set Timer clears any previous timer from the handle you use

iirc

So calling it again essentially resets the timer

[magic gate]

https://tenor.com/view/fine-nothing-to-worry-grace-and-frankie-season1-netflix-gif-16104247

[gentle urchin]

So that means it starts going from 0 again i guess

[earnest tangle]

Yep

[gentle urchin]

You cant simply extend or shorten a timer then ^^ nice to know

[earnest tangle]

You can if you get remaining time from the handle before you change it :)

[magic gate]

so basically i can leave the handle stuff then?

and go like this

[earnest tangle]

Yeah you don't need the handle unless you need to cancel the timer or do something else with it

[gentle urchin]

Right, but then youd need to do remaining time once, and then update it to the new rate 😄

Using this for a auto-fire on a gun

Where you can get upgrades in the level increasing rate of fire

[idle trout]

That's what we do alot but in C++. Shall be fine.

[shrewd oar]

Hello im trying to make my AI while on air (getting K.B) to stop going forword my character. tried to disable movment or set movement mod but all it does it making my AI freeze in air. any other solutions?

[valid bolt]

Hello ive been trying to use a mesh from one of my datatables to attach to a socket. but i cant since its a static mesh and it says it needs to be an actor or component. and i cant change my datatable as that would stop me from pre selecting what mesh should be used. Is there Any way around this?

[magic gate]

it works perfectly as far as i can test it 😄

[tawdry surge]

Add a static mesh component and assign the static mesh from the datatable to it

[valid bolt]

do u mean inside the datatable?

[tawdry surge]

No

You need a static mesh component to assign the static mesh to. Then you can attach the component to whatever. "Create component"->"set static mesh"-> "attach"

[fleet cobalt]

yeah my ai doesnt work if i put in in

[trim matrix]

I'd like a mouse click to start a ray trace but if the player moves the mouse before they release it, then cancel the function. Is there a simple way to check the player hasn't moved the mouse after its been clicked?

or do I have to get world mouse location and verify

[tawdry surge]

Bool and a branch. Check the axis value for the mouse x/y are 0

[trim matrix]

okay

[tawdry surge]

I'd do between .1 and -.1 so that a slight twitch won't cancel it but that depends on your use case

[trim matrix]

oh okay

I was going to do near equals

but that works

[gentle urchin]

On click, save the current location?

Compare to actual location , and act accordingly?

[mental trellis]

That being?

[magic gate]

sequence [1] -- Do Once -- Play Sound
         [2] -- 'the rest of the code'

try something like this

[mild valve]

Has anyone worked with a procedural mesh component? I'm trying to generate n-gon plane, but triangles facing the opposite way, is there any way to flip them?

[mental trellis]

What I did when I did this was pre-check the normal of the first triangle. If it pointed the wrong way, I would flip the index order of every triangle.

ACB instead of ABC.

You can check that with AB cross product AC

Assuming all your triangles use the same winding direction.

[mild valve]

Thank you, will try that

[serene crown]

Hi all! I'm sorry to bother you all... But I need some help 🙂
I started to develop games in unreal about 1Month ago and I'm now making a mini game where you control a ball that breaks cubes for points.
I made most of the things work but now I'm stuck at a mechanic I want to make, I want to create a semi random cube placement... basically I created an invisible object that would act at a set location where the cube could spawn, I duplicated that object and placed it everywhere I want my cubes to spawn, I managed to make the spawn randomly on those spots which is what I want... the problem I have is that on occasions 2 cubes would spawn at the same place and be inside each other... is there a way to prevent this to happen? I just need a name, word or video to put me on the right direction... I don't want or expect you to write the code for me since my goal is to learn... but I'm simply stuck :/

Cheers

[faint pasture]

Right now are all of your CubeSpawners independently choosing whether or not to spawn? How are you getting overlaps, are the spawners close together?

[serene crown]

Well I have a seperate actor for the spawner than the cubes and I make the cubes chose a random spawner to spawn at... and sometimes the little sh*ts decide to spawn at the same one 😛

I pull the spawners from an array, how do I make it so that the cubes don't chose the same one?

[balmy vessel]

is there an easy way to find all the children of a widget with a certain class or does it have to go through every child and cast?

[stuck folio]

hello,
Is there any way for BPs to inherit visual components from a parent?
As in, I want to have a button prompt to appear when player gets near an interactable object. I am using Billboard Component for that. I just want to know if I can make this inheritable which I can use in all the BPs which need this Billboard Component.

[balmy vessel]

is doing GetAllChildren > ForEachLoop > Cast To X better than GetAllWidgetsOfClass with top level only disapled?>

[balmy vessel]

you can make a blueprint inherit from another but any visual aspects from the parent can't be changed on the child is what i found

[tight schooner]

Oh, if the locations come from a pre-determined list, you just remove them from the list as you pick them. You start by duplicating the primary array into a working copy of that array (e.g. a local variable in a function) and then use that copy to pick from, and remove the chosen element from the working array as you go. The choices narrow as more locations are picked from the array.

[stuck folio]

hmm, I was afraid that was the case, Guess, I'll have to make the functionality inheritable and put the component separately on each BP

[serene crown]

So I basically destroy the spawner after it has spawned something?
the would solve the problem... but since I want the cubes to respawn indefinitely I need the spawner location to still be active and not destroyed

[tight schooner]

oh, so after a cube is destroyed, it can re-add its location to the pool of possible spawn locations?

it seems like you need a manager actor

that manages lists of free vs occupied locations, and the cubes talk to the manager as they're created and destroyed

[balmy vessel]

aye

you want a blueprint that handles the logic behind the spawning

[serene crown]

I will do research about Manager actors and come back if I'm still stuck!
Thanks a lot!

[balmy vessel]

it has a list of all the spawn locations, and a seperate list with all the spawn locations that are valid spawn locations

[tight schooner]

I'm not referring to a particular class btw... I'm just saying an actor that behaves like a manager

[balmy vessel]

when you want to spawn a cube, you tell the manager to do it, it handles spawning the cube at the location and then removing that specific location from the list of valid locations

and when you destroy that cube, another call is made to the manager telling it to add that specific location back in

yeah as seanny said, a manager actor isnt a specific actor you can inherit from in unreal, its just a way to classify an actor with a cetain job of managing other actors

[serene crown]

I will try to make it work then... 🙂

thanks

[balmy vessel]

no worries, I'm not super experienced with unreal myself but i went to uni and work with the engines still, so a lot of the base theory of how to build systems is still there haha

[valid bolt]

so ive been trying to attach this static mesh to a "Attach Component To Component" node, but cant because its a Static mesh and i cant change the static mesh from the datatable as that wouldnt allow me to preselect what mesh should be used. is there a way to convert the mesh to fit in with "attach component to component"

[remote meteor]

hmm if you only have 1 mesh

you can SetStaticMesh() on the mesh component with the mesh asset you have from the data table

[tight schooner]

I haven't used data tables before, but I assume that the "out row" from that node doesn't contain a reference to an actual, spawned component?

if that's the case, you can't attach something that doesn't physically exist, so it has to be spawned first. Maybe "Add Component by Class" node with your player character as the target; idk.

[wispy coral]

anyone know where is the config file located ? it says Engine but the project/Config/ folder has no Engine.ini there is a Project/Saved/Config/WindowsEditor/Engine.ini file but that doesnt have any lines that would look like my variable

[mossy vessel]

Is there something different about the animations notifies in UE5? I tried to create on montage and in the animation blueprint it cant find it?

[valid bolt]

i was able to do it with this

[remote meteor]

hmm yeah that works

the reference in your data table is an asset reference

so you are updating the mesh component on which asset to show

by default it will also use the material assigned to the static mesh asset

you can also modify that in blueprint if seems fit

[cobalt gulch]

How can i make a copy?

[zealous moth]

In the ue4 launcher clone it

[shadow holly]

Does anyone know if it's bad to have a switch with a lot of cases? Like 20+? I'm making an upgrade system atm and you can pass in a String:Float map with a stat name and an amount to increase the stat by, and I've got about 23 cases so far and that doesn't include if I add more stats later on, it's only called when the player selects an upgrade on the level up screen but I'm just wondering if I'm going about this the complete wrong way haha

[faint pasture]

Shuffle array, use X% of the Items

For loop on array.length/2 or whatever

[faint pasture]

Just copy paste the project folder. Delete intermediate and saved

[gentle urchin]

Switches are cool :) no worries about a small number of cases like that

Generally not much to worry about anyways

[shadow holly]

Okay nice one thanks, I was hoping that was the case saves me having to redo loads haha

[faint pasture]

In the future I'd parametrize it, the stat to modify is just a parameter as much as the amount to modify it by

[earnest tangle]

Anyone happen to know if there's a way to see if any subclass of a particular blueprint have changed a variable's value in their defaults without having to open each individual subclass and looking at it?

[faint pasture]

Maybe property matrix if you can get the subclasses easily

[earnest tangle]

Ah good point

I can just do ParentClass=Whatever to get them

[gentle urchin]

How would parameterizing this change it tho? The parameter ends up in the switch , and the amount is.. well.. amount

[hollow inlet]

you could do something clever with inheritance, add a check method to the parent class

[earnest tangle]

Yep, prop matrix works great :) I can select all of the ones I want, prop matrix them, then pin the value column

[faint pasture]

If you had a map of Names or Enums to Floats or Ints

Key = Strength
Value = 20

[earnest tangle]

it'll then show each individual value as a column even if there are multiple different values across the whole selection

[undone surge]

for the set focus function is there a func that sets stop focus

is it clear focus ?

[gentle urchin]

True that, using find and adding the stat. Maps in bp's are not my favorite in general :p

[icy dragon]

The most worry you'll have is dealing with spaghetti.

[gentle urchin]

Switch to a bunch of ints isnt the worst spaghetti I've hear about :p

Could use a select and increment by reference instead i suppose

If selects allow string... it probably doesnt

[icy dragon]

Try switch with 60 cases :P
One of the worst decision I make for my side machinima project for predetermined character stats, now I used data tables

[gentle urchin]

Hehe well 60 stats, id probably toss it in some container at anything above 10

[remote meteor]

hail GAS

[shadow holly]

Yea it's already seeming like the worst part, at least once I've finished I never have to look at it again haha

[gentle urchin]

I have yet to dive into that. Theres just so much about it 😂

[icy dragon]

Haha my own botched ability system go brrrrr

[remote meteor]

basically all things considered for an RPG

GAS has you covered

[earnest tangle]

You have to make some decisions about savegame stuff if you use GAS

Effects and abilites don't really have anything for that out of the box, so if you want to save... something to think about

[gusty shuttle]

Hey, is there a way to migrate a specific asset instead of it asking to import the whole dang content folder? haha

[earnest tangle]

And at least in 4.27 the blueprint GAS apis are basically a joke for the most part :P

[remote meteor]

pretty much have to use c++ for gas

since the attribute set has to be implemented in c++

[faint pasture]

References my dude. YOu need what the asset references as well

[gusty shuttle]

Aye for sure. Especially for things super ingrained. Just a bit of a headache having to deselect every stinking folder I don't need.

[grizzled rain]

Trying to export a render target and it keeps failing

[faint pasture]

That'll teach you to couple your stuff like crazy lol

[gentle urchin]

Especially for things you intend to migrate

Decouple it as much as possible

[faint pasture]

You can just export and import if you want it to be busted on the far side

[gusty shuttle]

Example, I want the VR hand imported to my project for example. Why does it want me to migrate audio files that aren't even associated with the hands haha

[gentle urchin]

Because in the vr hands theres a reference to a thing that references the audio files

Or a ref to a thing that ref a thing thah ref the audio

Along those lines :)

Reference viewer will help you out

[gusty shuttle]

I understand the reference thing guys, trust me. However there are things the hands aren't even linked to that it still asks me to migrate is all I'm saying

[sharp temple]

what would be the proper way of keeping the left hand on a weapon because i have used FABRIK and normal IK for the left hand and it does seem to reduce the left hand movement from the weapon but it still moves away from the weapon

[dark crow]

Error?

[sharp temple]

it does the same with me when i migrate stuff when it has nothing to do with what i migrate i just leave it do it's think because i tried un-ticking the things that have nothing to do with it and it ended up breaking when i looked at the migrated version

[grizzled rain]

LogScript: Error: Script Msg: Only EXR export is currently supported for PF_FloatRGBA and PF_A32B32G32R32F formats.

What's PF_FloatRGBA?

[remote meteor]

hm

texture color thing

[gentle urchin]

Kinda contradicting imo. It wont pull assets it don't use

[gusty shuttle]

I can understand your view point. Perhaps I just had more refs to things with that one asset than expected

[dark crow]

Just change the Texture Format

RT Texture

You are using the wrong one for a PNG

[grizzled rain]

Ok that works for my render. Now I'm trying to draw on that render and export that instead but it's exporting as a blank image

[warm sand]

is there a way to setup buoyancy (or making fake buoyancy) so it would be possible to make a ship move in the water? It don't need to be very precise because the boats will be seen in an top down way... I would really need some help

[grizzled rain]

That's how I'm drawing

[icy dragon]

If you open it in Photoshop or bring it back to UE, does the RGB channel has something?

[grizzled rain]

No. It's just blank with an alpha layer

[icy dragon]

What usually happens is that the RGB channel has something, but A channel has nothing but 0 value. It's a problem even when using render target texture in image widget without going through a material

[grizzled rain]

The material from the render target has the drawing ontop of the camera render.

Here's what the material shows

and here's the draw on render target

[remote meteor]

turn off deh alpha and check again

[grizzled rain]

I did that in gimp and the exported image doesn't have any color

It's just an alpha layer

[gentle urchin]

I've been in the same situation. Some crazy asset being pulled that cant possibly be used by whatever i tried migrating.. 😅 but turned out it was a long chain of refs leading to it. Madness 🤣

[earnest tangle]

Any idea if there's some secret content browser filter for parent class that actually checks the full inheritance tree? Eg. if you have Main->Child->GrandChild, and you do ParentClass=Main, it will not find GrandChild because it has one additional level of inheritance

[gentle urchin]

Well the statement sorta implies it doesnt it

"Show me who has parent class = main"

[grizzled rain]

I found a workaround for the rendertarget issue. but there's still a bug

[earnest tangle]

It does, but oftentimes you want to find all the children and not just the immediate ones

[gentle urchin]

Yeah true

Is there some childOf filter perhaps?

[grizzled rain]

I stopped scene capture for drawing and exported the scene render with drawings directly on that instead

You can see the pixels I drew

t he color is off tho...

[stuck folio]

Hey guys, is there any way to make a development only function in Blueprints? I know how to do this inC++ using function specifiers but not sure if and how to do this in BP

[gaunt ferry]

like a function that only gets called if its packaged

[grizzled rain]

I believe there's a hotkey

[stuck folio]

Yeah, I found an experimental feature which lets me mark a node as development only but in that case, I'll have to mark each instantiation of that function as Development Only.

[gaunt ferry]

so it only executes if its packaged?

[stuck folio]

See, Second one is where I created the function. Even if I mark it as disabled, when I am calling that method from another BP, it runs.

[earnest tangle]

I tried a bunch of things like child, parent, extends, subclass, but doesn't seem to exist sadly

[gaunt ferry]

.

[gentle urchin]

It must be possible to some degree, due to engine knowing this when you create a new class ?

[stuck folio]

I haven't packaged it and checked. But see the thing is that I am using the Disabled feature, which is another feature beside, enable always and enable (development only).
So, If I mark the node where I am calling the function as enabled, disabled or enabled on development only, it works perfectly. But I don't want to mark each call of this function explicitly. I want it to work just like how PrintString Function works.

[gentle urchin]

You can see the entire hieriarchy there so... but perhaps its not directly usable in thr content folder like that..

[gaunt ferry]

see i had the same issue i just made a check if it was packaged for distribution

[stuck folio]

OOOH

This is interesting. I think this is better

[gaunt ferry]

i make mods for games and i have to recreate stuff like C++ or bp thats not the same and it would error in editor but not the game so thats what i do

[stuck folio]

I just want to make a few utility methods to help my team in the development phase but should be disabled in shipping build. I think this function will do the job

Thanks a lot. You are a life savior

[gaunt ferry]

mhn

dw ab it lol

[earnest tangle]

Has anyone ran into a weird problem where attempting to place actors into your level always puts them at 0,0,0 and you can't move them?

Tried to restart editor and still keeps doing this...

[rough blade]

Maybe the actor has some code in its construction script that sets its location?

[earnest tangle]

Oh. Nevermind. I somehow had managed to enable a 5000 unit snap for the grid snapping :P

I wonder if there's some shortcut for changing the snap number because I definitely didn't click on it to do that lol

Might have fat fingered something

[mighty cliff]

does anyone have a good resource or video on why and when i should be replicating and when to use the various switch authority functions?

im trying to understand the 'why' behind why i see things done a certain way

[thin panther]

Network compendium pinned in #multiplayer

Made by one of the mods here iirc

Very good read

[wicked magnet]

Has anyone come across any solutions for automatically re centering a skeletal mesh or animation? I was just handed a large library of animations from different libraries that have very inconsistent center positions to fix, and I was trying to think of if there is a way to correct them via code instead of manually adjusting all of them so they're centered.

[faint pasture]

Just get in the mindset of thinking "What is the minimal information that needs to be synced for everyone to see the same thing happening?"

[civic herald]

Is there any reason this would only return 0,0,0 in my project not sure what i would of modified to break it but in a blank project i can use this just fine.

[faint pasture]

You sure you're just not in the negative quadrant?

How do you know it's returning 0?

[civic herald]

because i made it draw a circle around the camera location and it draws it at 0,0,0

using the same code in blank project

it follows me

[faint pasture]

Show the rest of your material. Also this is a #graphics problem.

[civic herald]

ah okay my bad i was looking for shaders or materials channel.

and just gave up and did blueprint.

[mighty cliff]

thats a good tip adriel

im thinking i might make like a test/learning project

where i have a bunch of actors and have widgets that show their variable info

[plush compass]

I'm trying to spawn a bunch of an actor in a 3d array and I'm using a transform array to do so. Does anyone know why I'm getting this random actor at 0,0,0 at scale 1?

[mighty cliff]

i have been learning by ripping apart various unreal assets i bought off the marketplace and it has been good

[plush compass]

I've tried a branch on the spawning loop and it still comes back

[mighty cliff]

is there a good guide for debugging? i would love to be able to select actors during game play and see their data

[gentle urchin]

Gotta see some code to have a good guess at it

Is this an ISM? If so, have you added a default one that you've forgotten about ? :p

[still socket]

quick question but for some reason the posses blueprint doesnt exist when i look for it. Anyone know a solve?

[faint pasture]

What is the "possess blueprint"?

[still socket]

what i would use to make a pawn active

this (it doesnt seem to show it at all for me no matter where i go )

[plush compass]

This is the code. For now i've gotten around it by scaling the spawned actor afterwards. I just have a duplicated 0,0,0 actor but for what i'm doing it doesn't really matter. More interested in why this is happening than needing to fix it.

[frozen ledge]

does anyone know how to reduce the amount of digits on a float?

as in the decimal place?

i remember on a spin box you can set the amount of fractional digits, i kinda wanna do the same for this float

[tawdry surge]

"Easiest" way to limit precision on a float is to convert it to text and then back to a float.

[gentle socket]

Is there a way to check the struct type of a data table?

[mighty cliff]

anyone have a good tutorial they liked for making multiplayer drivable vehicles of some sort that you can enter and leave?

or a good marketplace asset that i could rip apart?

[wild jetty]

Would anyone be able to assist with gaining some info from these logs?

LogPlayLevel:     GI_Buck_Hunt_C /Engine/Transient.GameEngine_2147482624:GI_Buck_Hunt_C_2147482584
LogPlayLevel:     Function /Game/BluePrints/GI_Buck_Hunt.GI_Buck_Hunt_C:HideWidget:000A
LogPlayLevel: Warning: [2022.04.28-20.07.10:873][128]LogScript: Warning: Script call stack:
LogPlayLevel:     Function /Game/Widgets/Settings.Settings_C:BndEvt__Settings_BackSettings_K2Node_ComponentBoundEvent_17_OnButtonClickedEvent__DelegateSignature
LogPlayLevel:     Function /Game/Widgets/Settings.Settings_C:ExecuteUbergraph_Settings
LogPlayLevel:     Function /Game/BluePrints/GI_Buck_Hunt.GI_Buck_Hunt_C:ShowMainMenu
LogPlayLevel:     Function /Game/BluePrints/GI_Buck_Hunt.GI_Buck_Hunt_C:ExecuteUbergraph_GI_Buck_Hunt
LogPlayLevel:     Function /Game/BluePrints/GI_Buck_Hunt.GI_Buck_Hunt_C:HideWidget```

I'm trying to just get my back button to close down my Settings widget and load my Main Menu again, every other button doing this works fine, just not from the Settings menu 😦

[tawdry surge]

Says accessed none. So your "widget in" reference is null when it's called

[gentle urchin]

Feels backwards to read resize followed by insert. Why not just 'add'?

[wild jetty]

This is the event that's being ran when calling for the main menu. It's really odd that it's working fine everywhere else, just not from my Settings menu

And surely I'd have thought that if it was a failed 'Widget In' reference then my 'back' buttons would be failing everywhere?

[tawdry surge]

If it's isolated to the settings menu then I'd check and see what's different there

[tropic burrow]

I need to reparent a blueprint to Actor but that option isn't available

help?

[nimble needle]

👋 my blueprint logic is very rusty. I have a use case that I'd like to pick your brains on.

In my scene I have some houses, and I'd like to be able to disable the roofs with one button press. My first thought was to add a tag to the roofs, however most of them are children of a house actor, and as such they don't get picked up by GetAllActorsWithTag. How would you approach this feature? (Thought I should ask here rather than general)

[tawdry surge]

Isn't there a get component with tag also

[nimble needle]

Yes but that requires an actor to search on

[tawdry surge]

So get your house classes and search them.
Or use an event dispatcher if you always want all roofs to toggle together

[stable birch]

Is there a node for opening a file-browser (and selecting a file(s))

[lusty shard]

Some reason pause game is also pausing widget animations. Any idea about preventing that?

Currently if I pause before playing a widget animation, the widget does not change visually.

I can click on the buttons but if the game is paused animations will not play

[minor wolf]

if i have a bp variable with repnotify how do i get the old value?

[serene crown]

Hey, I've got a question, when I try to add and integer to my Integer array it changes the integers to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...etc instead of storing the 20, 60, 2, 4 ,10... etc

Is that normal?

[faint pasture]

Show your code

[minor wolf]

no, show your blueprint

[icy dragon]

No, show your link profile

[minor wolf]

i dont even know what that is

[minor wolf]

you are adding the index to the array, not the actual value

[serene crown]

How do I add the value then? 😄

[minor wolf]

depends what you want the value to be?

[serene crown]

a random value between the available number

[faint pasture]

@serene crownWhat are you trying to do here?

That looks aweful smelly

[serene crown]

Well I tried make a system that would let me chose a random spawner and then not chose it again until it's free

[faint pasture]

Shuffle Array exists

Shuffle the array, use the first X however many of the results

[serene crown]

Verry sorry, I'm pretty new XD

[serene crown]

But I have more than 1 object that I want to spawn

[faint pasture]

You have like 100 spawners and want to fill a random 10 of them. Shuffle array, spawn cube at the first 10 of them

You're trying to spawn things at 10 out of 20 possible locations right?

[serene crown]

and I don't want 2 spawning on one... AND they have to be able to respawn without spawning on the already existing ones

[faint pasture]

Yes exactly,

Shuffle the array of all possible places

then just iterate through it spawning things

you'll never spawn at the same one twice

until you run out, then just reshuffle if you want or whatever

[serene crown]

But I will it be random?

[faint pasture]

Say your spawners are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Shuffle it

now they're 4 7 14 3 10 6 15 5 2 1 12 13 1 8 15 9 11

Now just use the first 5 of them

and the next thing to spawn is at the 6th index, etc etc

[faint pasture]

Thats what shuffling is

randomly reorder an array

[serene crown]

Ohhh, okay

and how do I make the cubes pick one spawner after the other?
Also, how do I tell the code to reshuffle once it ran out of spawners?

Sorry for asking so much :/

[trim matrix]

I'm unable to change the emissive value of a dynamic instance material at runtime.

[faint pasture]

For loop

[faint pasture]

Show your setup

[pine trellis]

is the spring arm the only way to stop camera clipping in walls and stuff?

[trim matrix]

@faint pasture

The functions Event Start Glow and Event Stop Glow are getting called,

I did a draw debug string at the end of it

And the name parameter name is correct too.

I'm creating the dynamic instance at beginplay

[faint pasture]

I don't see you assigning it anywhere

You're making it and talking to it but it's not being used anywhere

Just a material off on its own with no mesh to apply to

[trim matrix]

Isn't Set Parameter Scaler value

Setting it?

[faint pasture]

Where are you saying what mesh uses the material?

[faint pasture]

You're making a material

and you're not telling anything to USE the material

[trim matrix]

Oh

oooh

How do I assign it to use that material?

[faint pasture]

Try it

[trim matrix]

What's the function for it? Set Material Instance?

[late shuttle]

Set it in a mesh usually

[trim matrix]

Like so?

Ah yes

That works

Thank you @faint pasture

[pine trellis]

how come if I set my collision to block the camera for a mesh it still clips through the mesh unless I use a spring arm, is there anyway to block the camera clipping in walls without using a spring arm?

[hollow gorge]

Does anyone know of a smart way to link a keyboard key (enter) to a widget button's on clicked event? I'm trying to implement keyboard navigation in a main menu.

[crystal prairie]

Hello, looking for someone who can help with character mouvements/run please

[glass stump]

How do I change the movement speed of another BP actor when the player presses a (keyboard) button?

But in a way that's gradual. So like, as long as the F key is pressed, increase the Actor's speed by 10, or so.

[hollow gorge]

Within your ThirdPersonCharacter blueprint, you have a movement component with a bunch of variables related to movement and run.

[crystal prairie]

I never used unreal engine and I don’t have it

[hollow gorge]

does your current project include any starting templates? You could look there if you picked something else than Third Person

[crystal prairie]

Is under development, just taking some advance to find someone who could help for commission 🔥

[cyan sedge]

What type of gaming are you making?

[glass stump]

notetoself

[crystal prairie]

AAA

[cyan sedge]

No like anime

Or survival?

Animal?

[crystal prairie]

Realistic more like Monster Hunter World

[cyan sedge]

So you need someone to code characters or something?

[crystal prairie]

Yes and probably other stuff too

[formal parcel]

How would I know if something is in the red area pictured here, I know how to get the distance but i dont know how to do the area thing

[earnest tangle]

Check distance

That's it :)

[spark steppe]

nah, he only wants the 180° covered

[dark crow]

Sphere Collision + Dot Product?

[spark steppe]

so cross or dot product, forgot which one does the job xD

[earnest tangle]

Yeah dot product for determining whether it's within that "sector"

and by distance just to see if it's outside the desired radius

[dark crow]

If it's 3D you could just use the overlap as a is in radius factor

[earnest tangle]

Sphere overlap would be super easy too tho. For that you could just compare if you have overlap, and if the point's Z is higher than the center point Z :P

[spark steppe]

https://youtu.be/O9pkcjFfKNQ?t=228

[formal parcel]

oh wow, no answer for 5 mins i look away for a couple and lots

lemme see here

[crystal relic]

hello! apologies i need a little help with a project currently

nothing big

[dark crow]

Me too, I need moral support and pats on the back

[crystal relic]

you see i have this UI right? i need it to disable inputs when the UI is up, so i disabled inputs when the UI is up, problem is i need to input left click to close the UI and start the game

is there a "disable specific inputs"?

[formal parcel]

it cant be a collision sphere as these objects move

and mroe reasons than that but yea

[spark steppe]

https://tenor.com/view/looney-tunes-elmer-bugs-bunny-bugs-kick-gif-16789937

[formal parcel]

dot product makes sense i think, i just need to find the right ranges

[dark crow]

Why would them moving be a problem regarding a collision sphere?

[formal parcel]

then distance check

[spark steppe]

you can attach collision spheres as component to actors

so even when moving, that works

[formal parcel]

its not that they move, i prolly shouldn't have even said that

and its not all actors

can be meshes, events, etc

i need to be able to check on the fly

2 points and radius

[spark steppe]

are you trying to implement AI vision?

[formal parcel]

no

[earnest tangle]

if you get dot(up vector, direction to point) it should mean it's always in the above 180 sector if the value is >0

[formal parcel]

ty zomg

ty all

[spark steppe]

actor location + other actor location nvm

[dark crow]

Well, you need to query the data somehow if the other point is an actor

Not sure what you mean check on the fly, what's the second point basically

[spark steppe]

more like forward vector and direction to other point (normalized)

[hollow gorge]

is this blue rectangle considered keyboard focus on a key or if not what is it called?

[formal parcel]

i think i might have been overthinking

if its z axis is higher and its within the range....

its gotta be within the semi-sphere above right?

or did i smoek too much

[earnest tangle]

That would be correct yeah

[dark crow]

Yeap

[formal parcel]

lol

making simple things hard

[crystal relic]

hello sorry

ive tried a couple of methods and i still havent figured this out

i have an overlayed UI on my game im doing, but because i dont disable any inputs the player can move before a race starts

disable inputs is a bit broad, is there a way to disable a specific input?

[remote meteor]

you cant really disable specific inputs

but you can make sure the inputs doesnt reach the movement nodes by having condition checkings

[crystal relic]

i see

i apologise would it be too much to ask for a small example? should i show what i have so far?

i found a solution! its slightly scuffed but this will do for now

[royal iron]

Hey guys, fairly new to UE, question, if my character controller has a camera, and I want to position the mesh, can I get somehow the Camera's view in the blueprint editor?

[tawdry surge]

No. Camera preview is only in the level.
You can use orthographic view in the BP editor to line it up pretty well tho.

[forest nimbus]

After removing an index from previous frame, any reason this doesn't work (if it's actually hooked into the get)?

Removal part:

[royal iron]

Cheers!

Also, in the First Person template, if I replicated the player, and the client picks up a rifle, it wont shoot. I tried to search in the blueprint why, but couldnt figure it out :c Any idea?

Also when I crouch the client becomes choppy in movement and the speed isnt set to crouch speed :c

[blissful grail]

Has anyone gotten the Data Validation BPs to work? Made a forum post if anyone wants to take a gander. https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bp-data-validation/543062

[blissful grail]

Alright - I solved it - you can read the forum post to see the answer.

[drowsy ridge]

Hey all,
I've been dealing with this nasty bug that's been causing a huge ruckus for my team. I've been working on a boss health bar, and it's functional in the editor. It goes down to 0, it uses a widget blueprint with a progress bar and functions the same way a normal health system would. (all values are floats)
However, when packaging the project, the health bar doesn't go down and it literally doesn't work at all, it only works in the editor. It's such a weird issue.
Do you guys have any suggestions or tips on how I could go about this?

[gentle urchin]

How is it set up?

Using binding for percent ?

[prisma tree]

Why the hell is the function not being called?

[gentle urchin]

On tick

You clear it every frame

Add it to beginplay instead

When you call set timer you clear it if it already exist, and start over

Doing this every ~15ms will surely make the timer ignore the 1 sec delay

[prisma tree]

Oh thanks, but why isnt this working?

[gentle urchin]

0.0?

What in the world are you trying to do

It must be called once

[prisma tree]

It has to have a value?

[dawn gazelle]

Why set one timer that only executes once to set another timer? Why not just set the one timer you need?

[prisma tree]

what i want to do is to call a random function repeatably

[gentle urchin]

Then check looping

And call the set timer by function name once

On beginplay

[prisma tree]

Like this:

Or maybe there is a better way?

[gentle urchin]

This wont work.

[prisma tree]

Yea im finding that out 😉

[prisma tree]

Cause if I set timer by function name on loop from beginplay it will always choose the first function from the randomized array....

[gentle urchin]

Have your function call a new random function

[gentle urchin]

If you want random intervals you add a random bool in front of the switch

Or a random bool condition, a float with some percentage

[prisma tree]

Thanks that looks much easier....but I don´t really understand how a bool can make it execute at random intervals? such as each 2-7 seconds....

[gentle urchin]

Or that i guess

Cleaner in many ways 😁

[obtuse herald]

Pretty sure the timer node has already a random float included

[tacit lark]

Hi everyone, could anyone please point me in the direction of undersating sweep and sweep results in Overlap events? I don't understand why the only one that fires from sweep is the root of a BP, and I don't know if this is something that can be set up in the engine in any place or way, I have a problem with arrows, due to I have a general sphere collision as a root, and I want to get the impact point of the arrow using its static mesh, but from sweep is always false, so sweep result data is always "null", and the only way I found a sweep was true was making the collision with the root, thanks

[prisma tree]

But what is the "start random timer" function? like this the functions are not called at random intervals but at the interval first choosen at begin play:

[gentle urchin]

Isnt that just initial start delay and random start variation thingy? Ah perhaps thats it

[dawn gazelle]

That's not how it works. If you set a timer, you're setting it for the defined Time. So even if you're inputting a random time, it is only setting that random time once.

[gentle urchin]

Extend the node

[obtuse herald]

Their Screenshot is different from yours. You call a start a looping timer with a random interval. The interval is choose once. Datura calls a function to set a timer (non looping) with a random interval and then calls the function again when the timer fired

[dawn gazelle]

The start delay variance still doesn't make the timer fire at random intervals, unless you repeatedly call the set timer node.

[obtuse herald]

Yeah, honestly I was pretty confident that it also had an interval variance parameter but I guess not

[gentle urchin]

So in which case would that work?

[prisma tree]

So hence my question: what is the "startRandom timer" function? what does it contain?

[gentle urchin]

Its the event starting the timer

[dawn gazelle]

It's just a custom event.

[gentle urchin]

Litteraly shown in the screenshot

[prisma tree]

Oh sorry yes offcourse!

[obtuse herald]

It starts a new timer with a random interval. The timer will fire once.

[gentle urchin]

So how does the random parameter input work then 🤔🤔

[obtuse herald]

The initial start delay? It delays the first call but does not touch the interval itself

iirc

[gentle urchin]

Is it ment like a variance between multiple instances ?

[dawn gazelle]

No, it's to change how the timer behaves initially...

[gentle urchin]

Basically time slicing

[obtuse herald]

You are basically offsetting the calls by initial start delay

[gentle urchin]

Or frame spreading or whatever term fits

Spreading the workload across multiple frames basically

For multiple instances

[dawn gazelle]

So if you have your timer set to 5 seconds, then add an initial start delay of 10, it should fire after 15 seconds for the first tick, and if looping, it'll keep ticking every 5 seconds after that.
If you then include a start variance of 2, then it should fire between 8 and 12 seconds for the first tick, and if looping, it'll still keep ticking every 5 seconds after that.

[prisma tree]

@dawn gazelle @gentle urchin Thanks so much for your polite answers to such a noob as myself, I finally got it to work 🙂 You are the best ❤️

[gentle urchin]

Exactly! 😄 thanks

[covert schooner]

So I started refactoring some of my blueprints out into a blueprint macro library to simplify some code, but I cannot find any of my macros. Do I need to do something to attach the macros to the blueprint that needs to use them?

[gentle urchin]

Parent of the macro lib defines where you can use then sorta

Iirc

[keen schooner]

So if you were to write a function within a blueprint, and then a macro within that function, all functions contained within the parent function within that blueprint could also call that macro?

Edit: A quick read of the link below, and a few other google searches, show my above statement to not be how Macros work. Just didn't want to spread any sort of disinformation in the form of a question.

[gentle urchin]

Øhh 😂 not sure if that'd work

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/why-and-what-parent-class-to-use-with-macro-libraries/288515

[wicked osprey]

Guys, where is the best place to store the Equip animation of an item? If you store it in the weapon itself, then in order to get access to the animation, I will have to spawn the actor, but the thing is. What the actor should spawn in his hand only after some time after the animation starts, for example, when he brings his hand back. You can create an item under the map and when you need to attach it, but I have an option that when I receive damage, the timer should stop and if at that moment I have already buried the item underground, but have not yet had time to attach it, then how will I remove it?

[undone surge]

i made a homing projectile to go towardsa and enemy but its going towards the feet of the actor . is there a way i can change where on the actor is homes to ?

[high ocean]

Any way to change the collision channel this event fires off of?

I want to use a custom channel since sometimes the interractible object wil be partially obstructed by foliage so visibility won't do.

if I change it in player controller I need to further change other stuff

nvm, something else is broken... I have this forest and top-down camera. I have a material function implemented in all foliage materials that hides anything between the player pawn and camera. So far so good. The problem is that results under mouse cursor don't work properly & invisible vegetation is preventing me from clicking on actors under it. Not sure exactly where the problem lies 🤔 Any thoughts?

[tight schooner]

I think you can Get Bounds from an actor and maybe get the bounding box origin from that.

[undone surge]

i followed this tutorial where would i set the bounds here

[high ocean]

@undone surge omfg that's such a bad implementation, just find another tutorial from someone that actually knows how to use the engine

[undone surge]

ok ill see another video

[high ocean]

@undone surgeAs for your question/problem. There's many ways to do it, but a more flexible way would be to have a base class actor that is "targettable" by the homing missile. Then add any scene component to it (collision sphere/target point/empty static mesh/whatever you like). Parent it to the mesh & move it wherever you want each actor to be hit by the homing (head/torso/wheels etc). Derrive all your targettable actors from that class and you have a flexible system regardless of what/who the target is. Oh, and when getting a target, get the world location of that socket/scene component and aim for that instead.

[undone surge]

i see. that makes sense. although would there be specific homing logic if i do it this way ?

[last pond]

Hey all, i think this is an easy one but i'm just having a brain fart. I have two nodes set up to randomize the colour of a character's shirt and pants however i also want to do one for skin and hair colour. obviously i don't want bright blue skin for a human. I was wondering if anyone knows how i could swap the random unit vector to pick from a list of specific colours.

[brittle garnet]

I think it makes much more sense to have a HomingGoal component that you attach to any actor and use that as the target. Rather than having a Targetable actor class that everyone must now derive from.

[high ocean]

@undone surgewhat do you mean by specific homing logic?

[undone surge]

like what would i look for in a tutorial that shows the thing homing towars the scene component

or are there bullt in funtctions for it

[high ocean]

Realized that after I wrote and that's why I changed "most flexible" with "more flexible" 😂 Yea, ur right. Just an independent scene component asset would be way better probably

[brazen pike]

You're doing the homing in generally the right way, just that you are checking for actors with tags which is not a great idea in this situation. So you want to be much more specific about what to check. It is going for the feet, like duke said, because you are choosing specifically the scene component (probably). Try checking where the scene component is on the actor you're shooting at and see if its at the feet.

[undone surge]

i made a tag component which has a list of enemies and actors etc. would that be a better idea. i use that for ai sensing and stuff

[high ocean]

Yea, I said it's a clumsy implementation because of the actors checking, the extra useless vector math instead of using built-in *distance to * function which is faster since it does all that in cpp etc. Hence I said "someone that knows how to use the engine". So many tuts out there from ppl that have little idea of what the engine knows on its own

[undone surge]

ok ill try to change this to check dsitance using the function and the tags thing

[brazen pike]

yeah, also (unless you're doing it somewhere else) it would be a good idea to set 'closest distance' to 9999999 or something at the very start of the function otherwise it might not consistently work

[undone surge]

yea i set it to a huge value

[brazen pike]

you set it every time? or you set the default value to be huge?

[undone surge]

default

[brazen pike]

I'm pretty sure that the closest distance from the last time the function was fired would be used the next time then. So it would only actually work if the second projectile's target was slightly closer. Unless this is done on the projectile or something which gets destroyed afterwards

[undone surge]

yea i set it to destroy after 1 sec

cuz it came back after a long time xD

[high ocean]

Well, as soon as the particle effect ends and all that, you can just have an event called to destroy it, no need to hang on to fixed delays and stuff, unless you want - idk, a net homing missile that holds the enemy in place for "X" seconds etc. Aaanyway 🙂

Any ideas on how to get a trace to go through masked materials? 😛

[brazen pike]

Are you tracing on complex?

[high ocean]

no. Just using clickable interface, top-down game, fkin tree leaves get in the way in the forest 😐

this works because there are no leaves in between

if I move around (or the forest is dense) then it won't pick it up 😐

I'm using boxes for checks:

[brazen pike]

What code are you using to detect clickable things? If its similar to my project then I can help

[high ocean]

just simple component hovered

Tried changing from visibility to a custom channel but it still won't ignore the masked part of a material 🤷‍♂️

Using render target is out of the question because it would utterly destroy performance, got some expensive shaders there

[brazen pike]

I've never done it this way, but ignoring visibility collision on foliage you dont want to select doesn't work?

[high ocean]

nope, but now I'm not sure if this or something else is causing the problem, need to check my foliage spawner bps...

[brazen pike]

What happens if you remove collision from your foliage entirely? (removing all simple collision and then setting complex to be simple)

[tawdry surge]

Did you set the new custom channel to ignore everything by default? Cuz that should definitely work

[late dragon]

Any idea why the begin play event isnt called in my animator?

its called on my character

but not on the animator

[tough barn]

I need to understand how to use blueprints

They're really confusing, I'm new to ue4

[high ocean]

It has no coliision

[brazen pike]

Probably should ask in #animation

[tawdry surge]

Is the animation BP assigned to the player in the level?
It should fire otherwise

@tough barn do you know how to program in any language?

[tough barn]

Yes but it's not advanced or anything

I can only code Lua which isn't really anything.

[slow pewter]

U need to understand the Logic behind it, and it will need time if u dont have Basic Code Experience but if understand the Basic Logic its pretty Easy

[tough barn]

I mean I understand some basic things.

I'm not used to writing code in blocks or a map sort of

[tawdry surge]

If you know what variables, functions, and classes are you'll be fine

[tough barn]

Not classes

I know there is an actor and other things but I don't really get it

Isn't everything basically an actor

[tawdry surge]

Object. And those are classes

[brazen pike]

Well I didn't really understand basic logic when I started. I just looked up tutorials for very basic things (like movement, doors, shooting guns, etc) and tried to understand why certain things were used as I went along. I know there are better ways, but youtube tutorials (while often not giving the best techniques) can be useful to start with

[tough barn]

I found a channel called unreal engine tutorials

I don't know if it's the best place to start

[tawdry surge]

Epic has the learning portal on unrealengine.com
They have several beginner BP courses id start with

[tough barn]

Oh I'll check that, thank you so much

[brazen pike]

I've seen some of their tutorials. While maybe not the best they at least acknowledge the existence of multiplayer in a lot of tutorials so not a bad channel to go off of

[tawdry surge]

I wouldn't worry about accounting for multi-player until you're comfortable enough to make a small simple single player game on your own.
But dev addict does a great job teaching multi-player concepts

[terse moss]

Also not in the same vein, but the "WTF Is?" series is great for learning what random nodes do that you aren't familiar with

Forget who the guy is

[tight schooner]

Mathew Wadstein 🍅

[terse moss]

Yep that's the guy!

[tight schooner]

He's in this discord though on other channels last I saw

[terse moss]

Makes sense

He's been such a huge help through learning BP stuff for me

[tight schooner]

Yeah, same. Epic's own BP node documentation can be too vague sometimes

[terse moss]

Gotta love when it just reiterates what the pins tell you already

[gentle urchin]

Isnt that just auto generated documentation anyways?

[boreal mesa]

i'm making an entirely single player game, do i need to use GameMode and GameState cleanly or can I just don't really care and put everything in GameMode?

[undone surge]

im trying to get the distance between my player and an enemy character in this blueprint of my friendly AI . how wouldi get a ref to that spawned enemy

[brazen pike]

Are you still doing a homing projectile? If so show the rest of the blueprint

[undone surge]

no no im tryung to set my firndly AI to only aim if the enemy ai is in certain range

[tawdry surge]

@boreal mesa single player you can just use game mode directly

[undone surge]

i will fix the homing after thsi

[boreal mesa]

nice, thanks

[brazen pike]

Well you can do it slightly differently where the player being attacked would be set in the AI's blackboard. Then you can get that blackboard value and check the distance to it using the locations of both actors rather than what you've got here

Although you may not be using a blackboard if you're following youtube tutorials

[undone surge]

i did use a blackboard and behaviour tree but the only 2 things in that i have are gong to player if it sees me or moving to random location if it doesnt. so friendly ai follows me but i only want it to shoot an enemy if its close to me so it doesnt shoot it across the map

tree and bb for friendly ai*

[brazen pike]

Oh so you do have a BB?

[undone surge]

yes

this

right

[brazen pike]

Cool right well when the player is seen, then you should set the seen player as a value to be stored in the blackboard. That is when the BT would realise it should move towards the player which you could then start checking the distance to the player and when it is within a certain value it is then allowed to aim

Or maybe everytime you try to aim it does a distance check

[brazen pike]

So just do what you have here but instead you'd get the bb PlayerRef's location and 'get distance to' with the AI's location

[undone surge]

i see

also

the BB does not HAVE to go with a BT right

or when i make one for each character then each char wil have its own BB and BT?

[brazen pike]

Each character will have the same BT and BB (if they're the same type of character) unless you specify it. But they won't share the exact same one as they'll have instances of the same one (meaning one AI might have its PlayerRef set but a different one won't unless it also saw the player)

[brazen pike]

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I think so.

[undone surge]

Can i make one BB for 2 behaviour trees or other stuff

[brazen pike]

I'm not an expert on AI, so I'm only giving you what I believe with my limited experience. Take most of what I say with a grain of salt

[undone surge]

ok thanks, i will try to follow wat u said to see if i can make it work

[brazen pike]

Hmmm. I have no idea. I'd guess so but ask over in #gameplay-ai to make sure

[undone surge]

ok

[brazen pike]

I've just checked. Yes you can.

[undone surge]

i see

[glass stump]

Can you use blueprints to edit specific properties of the mesh's materials?

[earnest tangle]

Depends on what properties you're referring to

I think there might be some, but more advanced stuff will be in C++

[tawdry surge]

Materials you can usually just make a dynamic material instance and play with the exposed parameters in BP

[glass stump]

Ahh I see. I just wanted to use a timeline to edit the emission level of a material. I'll see if I can do it with the instance.

ty.

[tawdry surge]

You 100% can

[glass stump]

Ah, nice thank you. :)

[tawdry surge]

Btw if you're in ue5 don't crank material emissions and use it as a light source. It can cause artifacts at anything above a slight glow

[lapis inlet]

Need help, is there a "scroll" input?

[tawdry surge]

You mean the mouse wheel?

[lapis inlet]

yea

Ah

[tawdry surge]

It's mouse wheel

[lapis inlet]

Mouse wheel up

and down

cheers!

I'm trying to make it so a camera connected to the player object can be moved up or down

So to get a wider view

Wow that was easy

Done that

Alright

Now

Click to move

Also

How do you create groups?

[tawdry surge]

In the editor or during gameplay

[lapis inlet]

Editor

[tawdry surge]

I think ctrl g is the hotkey but right click on a an asset in the world outliner to find it in the action menu

[lapis inlet]

Oh I meant blueprint groups

Like the white box

[jagged stone]

I'm trying to understand how to listen to events on another blueprint object....For example see above. I have a custom GameState BP with a custom event dispatcher (Current State Updated). And I want to listen to this event....I can do it as above by casting after the Event BeginPlay and then binding to the event dispatcher and routing through a custom event...but to me this just looks messy as hell. I would like to be able to just use the event node (show at the bottom of the image) to listen...can I do it?

[lapis inlet]

Alright now

I want every object in my game to "orbit" the central sun - I already have a gravity simulation implemented, now I just need to calculate the orbital velocity of the objects and then apply it

[tawdry surge]

Idk what you mean by "the white box" but you can set tags for the actors you want to get and save them in an array or a map

[lapis inlet]

I found out it was "comment"

[tawdry surge]

Oh, lol

[lapis inlet]

Anyways I'm currently trying to calculate orbital velocity and then apply it to the player - the formula is actually relatively simple from what i've found, but I'm still finding it difficult.

The Gravitational constant has been set in a gamemode, while I'm trying to set an orbit using the central "star" at the levels centre as the base.

This is currently what I have, but it's being finicky

[tawdry surge]

Have you tried ticking accel change on add force?

Since you already did the mass calculations yourself

[lapis inlet]

Oh no its the gamemode doing errors

Saying "type of object is undetermined" when its a gamemode blueprint

[tawdry surge]

Your not getting the game mode

Or really casting to sun

[lapis inlet]

Ah

[tawdry surge]

Casting requires an object that you want to cast

[lapis inlet]

Aaaaah

[mystic hinge]

is this an appropriate place to ask question in regards to niagara scratch pad modules?

[lapis inlet]

Well for Sun that should work (and looks like it does), but how do I extract a variable from a gamemode to use in an actor blueprint?

[tawdry surge]

Do get gamemode

[lapis inlet]

Ooooooooh

Thanks! I'll see if I can hotch-potch a solution now

[tawdry surge]

The sun cast isn't connected to the execution pins so it isn't happening

[lapis inlet]

Oh it

wont tell me that it can get Constant G

Constant G being the variable

[tawdry surge]

What do you mean?

[lapis inlet]

My game generates gravity using a gamemode

And in that gamemode it determines the gravity using the Gravity equation, the main component is a variable called "constant G"

It just tells how strong gravity is

In RL its like, 0.0000000 (lots of zeroes) 00098 something

Naturally its a lot bigger, around 30000000 for the game

And its a variable inside the gamemode blueprint

[tawdry surge]

And that game mode is main gamemode base?

[lapis inlet]

I want to tell my player actor to take that variable for use in calculating the orbital velocity they have in relation to the central "sun" in the game, so they don't immediatelly go into freefall and get eaten

[lapis inlet]

It's just called MainGameBase

Cus I'm lazy

[tawdry surge]

Ok. It looks like it's giving it to you