slate

[bright otter]

what should be thr wheel trace collision respone of a chaos vehicle movement component for a custome vehicle model to make to drive and move from its starting point?

[grave hatch]

Why are you asking that in #slate ?!

[plush hinge]

Hey, anyone know why this widget is causing SlateUI to go up to around 15ms? theres not really much going on in the widget itself

[grave hatch]

Which widget?

[grave hatch]

Try GetTickSpaceGeometry()

There should be a method to retrieve it.

(that is the slate method, not hte umg one)

[tender patrol]

mmmh there is no such thing .GetClass

[grave hatch]

Check the api docs.

ngl, this sounds super dodgy and not something I would want a game I'm running doing.

[tender patrol]

Hello

How do you use STextComboBox ? LIke what is the way?

ok I see this but

I don't understand what is this

        + SHorizontalBox::Slot()
        .FillWidth(1.0f)
        .VAlign(VAlign_Center)
        [
            SNew(STextComboBox)
            .Font(IDetailLayoutBuilder::GetDetailFont())
            .OptionsSource(&TargetDeviceFamilyOptions)
            .InitiallySelectedItem(TargetDeviceFamilyOptions[CurrentSelectedIndex])
            .OnSelectionChanged(this, &FHoloLensTargetSettingsCustomization::OnSelectedItemChanged, PropertyHandle)
        ]
    ]; ```

The IDetailLayoutBuilder

[spring crescent]

That's just a static on the IDetailLayoutBuilder class that provides the default Details Panel font.

[grave hatch]

The OptionsSource is a pointer to a TArray<TSharedPtr<type>>

Or TArray<Uobject> or TArray<UEnum>

Or FName I believe...

[grave hatch]

Shrug

Forcing your user's mouse to click buttons on random web uis is a bit dodgy though.

It sounds like you're using the wrong tech if that's a requirement.

I doubt the clicking requirement is there if you do the native solution!

I mean it's fine for testing.

it's really not for any kind of released product.

So now you're exposing user ips to each other?

You are, of course, warning people that while the game uses dedicated servers, voice comms does not?

You aren't making CoD.

[grave hatch]

And you think it's a good idea to use it for p2p games.

[grave hatch]

Taht sounds like a good trade-off.

[limpid estuary]

Why not use the explicit 'allow comms' be your one time button press?

That would also make it consistant if they change their mind and disable it.

No clue, just seems like that initial game setup option (and later being in the settings) would make sense

And it doesn't have to be a obvious popup

Think of the number of games that prompt you to setup brightness/audio settings when you boot the first time

Have it be part of a 'first time config' menu thing

Then later be embedded in the settings

Every time you boot it?

I think in that case you need to find a different implementation

Tbh

Unless the comms aren't that important. And it can just be a per lobby chat opt-in

^ works if you expect the players to mostly be using discord comms or something already

[tender patrol]

where do I get the property handle from ?

I don't see where it got initizlized declared or anything ?

ehh it was a parameter I think

lol

[tender patrol]

How to change runtime a SButton Text ?

[hot notch]

How would I go about editing the style/brush that these return?

FCoreStyle::Get().GetBrush("ToolTip.Background")```

[grave hatch]

"Editing" ?

The font style is just a fontstyle object, FSlateFontStyle probably or FFontStyle

Just copy it, change values and pass a pointer to your new value.

(you obviously need to save your copy somewhere...)

The other one is a texture resource. I don't know if it' s a UTexture or whatever, but the source of it will be a png or svg in the engine somewhere.

That ones a bit harder to edit from code...

[craggy holly]

How do you define widgets in CPP now that the SLATE_DECLARE_WIDGET macro contains a static function definition?

[hot notch]

AFAIK these all return const though. I was more wondering if there was a default way to override these styles. Been trying to read through the Starship stuff but not quite following it yet.

[grave hatch]

What?

How does that change anything?

[craggy holly]

Because it throws an error about the static function not be present

[grave hatch]

You don't even need to use SLATE_DECLARE_WIDGET

[grave hatch]

You can can just add the styles to FCoreStyle and replace them?

FSomeStyleType YourStyle = *FCoreStyle::Get().GetFontStyle("ToolTip.Font"); (copies the style)

YourStyle.SetMyThings();

[craggy holly]

Ah ffs, you have to move it outside the class definition, it's fine

I swear with every update the Slate syntax gets more horrid

[grave hatch]

I've been using SLATE_DECLARE_WIDGET since 5.0 and it's not changed...

[craggy holly]

This is the first time I've had to do a custom widget since pre-5.0

[grave hatch]

I just slap them in as the first line inside the class.

It's always worked?

[craggy holly]

It's fine. The problem was I wanted to declare + define the widget in the CPP. Moving the static function out of the class definition solved the issue

Syntax is just cursed

[grave hatch]

I've literally never used SLATE_IMPLEMENT_WIDGET lol

[craggy holly]

It appears to be present for all low-level engine widgets as far as I can tell

[grave hatch]

Never noticed it tbh.

The DECLARE one is required for the widget class stuff.

No idea what the IMPLEMENT one does.

[craggy holly]

Ah yes. Thanks a lot Epic. Super descriptive.

[grave hatch]

What did you do to Slate?!

[hot notch]

That is my issue though. I don't want a copy of it. I want to modify what that returns so that when something else unrelated gets it, it'll get the new style.

[grave hatch]

const_cast

[craggy holly]

That's just coming from Slate whenever I try to create a widget of the declared type. AFAIK it's identical to SBox minus a few size parameters

[grave hatch]

It would seem not.

Why make a widget that's identical to box instead of a few size parameters?

Why not just use box?

[craggy holly]

It's not a box, it's like a box, just with a tick function + callback

[grave hatch]

Subclass box and add those?

[craggy holly]

I don't get it. The widget has two attributes, child content + an event callback. None of the other widgets do any uwierd registration stuff with events or content.

[grave hatch]

Which attribute is it even complaining about?

[craggy holly]

I mean they aren't even attributes

It doesn't say

[grave hatch]

Not in the properties of Self?

[craggy holly]

SWidget::FMargin apparently

wtf

Oh ffs

[grave hatch]

Sounds like you haven't inherited from something correctly.

[craggy holly]

Needed this apparently

Slate is an endless exercise in patience

[grave hatch]

Heh

[tender patrol]

Hey I had a questions this one, can someone help me ?

[grave hatch]

Bind the text value to a lambda or something

[tender patrol]

ok

[white prism]

I am at an absolute state of confusion. Is this a bug? I am setting stats in a UI using the gameplay ability system and tags. Now when I launch the game after opening Unreal 5.2 it looks like this. Some of them set but some of them stay default values.

IF I go and compile the widget blueprint for the menu they all set perfectly fine. I don't make any changes. I just click compile.

[maiden pine]

Hey I wanted to ask what are the website/tutorials you would recommend learning slate

[tender patrol]

Hey .OnTextCommitted(FOnTextCommitted::CreateSP(this, &FWindowTest2Module::SetUserName)) IDK why this gives me error when when running the script spawning me the slate widgets not building....

any idea?

[tender patrol]

I am trying to get a SMultiLineEditableText to work but no luck

[terse perch]

Hello, I'm making navigation for my inventory grid, and I'm wondering how I can make it work with multiple of them. I want to be able to jump from one grid to another.

For instance: I have two grids, one on left side, and the other one on the right side. The selected tile is the rightmost on the left grid. If I press the right arrow, I want to go to the leftmost tile of the right grid.

I saw that there is a HittestGrid, and it looks like something that would fit in this use case. Is it true or I need to use/implement something else?

[grave hatch]

Have you looked at the engine source to see how OnTextCommitted is handled?

[tender patrol]

Yes I has to use lambda because the normal one did not work

[pure cave]

So I am going through the struct customization tutorial. The struct has an enum and depending on the value inside the enum some SBoxes IsEnabled will be set. I am now wondering if I could take this one step further and hide/show them instead of just disabling. I thought about SetVisibility but that's for UUserWidget, so I might have to dig deeper but someone might know of some point I might start at

[spring crescent]

.Visibility() or .Visibility_Lambda()?

The function must return an EVisibility value.

[grave hatch]

You can do SetVisibility on slate widgets too.

And SetEnabled

Generally binding by callback is terrible, but everyone does it in slate everywhere.

[spring crescent]

Why is it terrible? Just wondering since it's standard practice.

[pure cave]

Well, it's really nice to have that. much easier than I expected.

[grave hatch]

Because they are refreshed every tick

Without reason

Exactly the same reason it's bad to use bindings in UMG. Except in UMG it's worse because it's BP.

[pure cave]

I will just pretend I don't know about that 🙈

[grave hatch]

I mean I do it myself.

Just pointing it out 😛

[crystal lark]

I'm trying to add extra data to spline points. I found this example of how to do it: https://github.com/MintBanjo/UE5_SplinePointsMetadata/blob/main/Source/SPMEditor/MySplineMetadataDetails.cpp#L81 THe link highlights the point at which slate widgets can be added to the spline point editor in the details panel. Is there a way to generate this from a struct type like the editor does in the wild? I see the IDetailGroup allows adding property rows that take a IPropertyHandle. I'm not sure where to get those handles from however, at least in this context. Am i stuck manually wiring UI for this?

[grave hatch]

What exactly do you want to do?

[crystal lark]

I want to embed a details property editor for a struct at that extension point (the spline point editor). So if I add something like a gameplay tag or set of values to the struct, the editor UI will automatically at least be up to date with it. There's still the problem of binding the editor UI to the underlying spline point metadata though.

For my case, I want to make a spline actor that I can customize each point so the mesh that gets spawned can be customized per point. I think to keep it simple, I'll just stick to doing custom widgets and use a combobox that's based on an enum, and then a data table/asset to map the enums to meshes.

(The struct in their example is https://github.com/MintBanjo/UE5_SplinePointsMetadata/blob/main/Source/SPM/MySplineComponent.h#L11 which is for the additional data that could be assigned to spline point)

[grave hatch]

You want to embed a detail editor for something not directly a property of teh spline point?

Into the details of the spline point?

[crystal lark]

yes

[livid marsh]

hello, sorry if this is a bit off topic but i figure people here might be CSS gurus
i'm trying to modify my sphinx's documentation and the CSS i'm adding is just breaking everything
it's super simple

body {
    background-image: url("../bg.jpg");
    background-size: cover;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

and yet everything seems to break from just including this one simple element
am i missing something here? how am i supposed to tell sphinx to just add this not break everything

it seems to just completely override the CSS used for some reason, instead of just adding ontop of it

[livid marsh]

nevermind, bashed my head against the css wall enough to finally figure it out

[grave hatch]

You'll need to create a details panel customisation.

See examples of how this is used: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/API/Editor/PropertyEditor/FPropertyEditorModule/RegisterCustomClassLayout/

[summer drift]

I'm currently trying to make a custom property type customizer for a struct property, but I can't seem to get it.
I need just what GetOptions does with UFUNCTIONs, but in a struct with a property. I can't use a ufunction cuz I'm grabbing the data from a C++ class, not a UCLASS

[grave hatch]

Why not make a ufunction wrapper that fetches the data?

[summer drift]

Because it's the way I have it setup, and changing it would be more work than it would be to just make the property customizer

[grave hatch]

Fair enough, but "it's from a c++ class" isn't really a valid reason. 😛

Did you have a specific problem? You haven't actually asked a question.

[summer drift]

It just ends up like this.

When I type something in, it shows the options, but not the currently selected. And when I do select something, it doesn't save the value to the property

I haven't really found anything online for this kind of thing. Either I'm missing it, or not searching for the right thing

Tried looking in source, but I can't find where GetOptions handles making a searchable combo box

[grave hatch]

What's the code you're using to define the combo box?

[summer drift]

void FVersionDetails::CustomizeHeader(TSharedRef<IPropertyHandle> PropertyHandle, FDetailWidgetRow& HeaderRow, IPropertyTypeCustomizationUtils& CustomizationUtils)
{
    // Retrieve the inner property handle for the selected property within the struct
    StructPropertyHandle = PropertyHandle->GetChildHandle(GET_MEMBER_NAME_CHECKED(FVersion, VersionName));
    
    // Add a custom row to the header row
    HeaderRow
        .NameContent()
        [
            StructPropertyHandle->CreatePropertyNameWidget()
        ]
        .ValueContent()
        .MinDesiredWidth(250)
        [
            SNew(SSearchableComboBox)
            .OptionsSource(&Options)
            .InitiallySelectedItem(GetSelectedItem())
            .OnSelectionChanged(this, &FVersionDetails::OnSelectionChanged)
            .OnGenerateWidget(this, &FVersionDetails::OnGenerateWidget)
            .OnComboBoxOpening(this, &FVersionDetails::OnComboBoxOpening)
        ];
}

[grave hatch]

You don't have the currently selected parameter

Hmm. Never mind.

Guess I'm thinkinf of another widget!

What's your "on selection change" code?

Have you breakpointed it and looked at what it does?

[summer drift]

void FVersionDetails::OnSelectionChanged(TSharedPtr<FString> SelectedItem, ESelectInfo::Type SelectInfo) {
    if (SelectedItem.IsValid()) {
        NameVal = FName(*SelectedItem);
    }
}

[grave hatch]

Does that trigger and actually change the value?

[hallow jackal]

how do remove item for listview.
I know the problem, I used the wrong item

[long holly]

hey yall im trying to build a engine ui tool with slate but i have no idea where to start. what slate doc do you guys recommend for me to read/watch?

i know the umg framework of ui just not slate

only have that ui experience for me

[lucid pivot]

engine ui tool like a plugin? h ttps://benui.ca/ has slate articles

[long holly]

yes im trying to make an editor plugin but i have no idea how slate works

thank you i will look into that

[lucid pivot]

if you have questions i can (maybe) help, i'm building one too

[long holly]

im still in the design phase of it but if you want, can i dm you what im thinking of building and maybe you can give me directions on how i can proceed from there ?

[lucid pivot]

yeah sure if you want to sound some ideas off me, but im no expert

[long holly]

okay

i'll dm you later as im outside right now

[grave hatch]

Slate is just like UMG, but in c++. All the same stuff applies really. Just ignore all the complicated c++ umg stuff, that does not apply.

And read the pinned links.

[narrow terrace]

Yeah honestly think about it like this, Slate is what UMG is made of without being restricted by Blueprint. BUT the only disadvantages are that you can't use sequencer animations like in UMG and there is no visual designer for it BUT that's literally what I'll use UMG for when working with Slate to plan how to place stuff

I plan to eventually have a simple example in the compendium of that where I show the code sample in Slate and then the UMG designer view of the same exact hierarchy and such

[long holly]

i see

[grave hatch]

Tbh

Teh biggest hurdles with slate are 1) The chain methods for parameters. 2) The [] override to specify contents. Get your heard around those and it's all pretty simple.

[subtle veldt]

@grave hatch Can you help me, why can't I press this?

[grave hatch]

No idea. That's the mobile joystick, isn't it?

Also don't just highlight random people 😦

[coarse ice]

How can I add a Slate widget to an umg widget?

[grave hatch]

You can't really. You would have to create your own custom umg widget through c++ and then add the slate widget to that.

[coarse ice]

Hmm, can you tell me where I could find an example for that?

[grave hatch]

Not off hand, never done it. Might be something in the pinned messages here or in #umg about c++ uuserwidgets.

Or look at any of the uuserwidgets that exist in the engine, if there are any.

[coarse ice]

Ok, thank you, I will take a look!

[craggy holly]

UOverlay is probably the simplest example.

[winged fern]

I am working on grid inventory. I plan to use UMaterialInstanceDynamic for every slot item. Items count can rise up to 1000. To render different textures I have to create instance per item and set it via parameter. Does it make sense? Or maybe you can point me in another direction.

[craggy holly]

Use a list view

You only want to create as many widgets as you need to render the grid, you don't need one for every item. List/Tile views are meant to handle that exact case.

The only real caveat of them is that the grids widgets are fixed size, you can't mix widget sizes within a list view because the size must be known to calculate geometry/scroll bar etc.

[winged fern]

It is two different things. But thank you for pointing out List/Tile/Tree views. It can definitely reduce drawing costs. But what about all visible items? It is still can be a lot of them. Is it common practice to generate that many UMaterialInstanceDynamic for every item? UMaterialInstanceDynamic seems very cheap to render. I notice only performance hitches when create/delete. Some kind of pool can fix this problem.

[craggy holly]

If you need a dynamic material then you need a dynamic material, doesn't really matter

But if you're allocating 1,000 objects then yes it will take time

[pure cave]

Going through the plugin list once again in unreal and there is Live Update for Slate Refreshes the editor layout and tabs when Live coding is completesomeone might find it useful and activate it

[drowsy relic]

Hello I have a profiling question about Slate. Im trying to figure out why for each Engine loop, 7ms is going to Slate::Draw for 3 user interface widgets. Does anyone know how to find the most expensive widgets or functions being called in those widgets? Im getting used to reading Unreal Trace call stacks but I cant get anymore info besides Slate::tick. Ive tried collapsing the entire HUS too but I cant achieve the same performance as having no HUD at all.

[grave hatch]

Are you doing that in the editor?

Becuase if so, that Slate profiling will include the entire editor.

[grave hatch]

For rich text?

[grave hatch]

So <1>stuff</><1><2>other stuff</></> ?

[random ocean]

hey, i have a question. I have a slate widget and i need to bind to a subsystem delegate, is that possible?

is there a way to do that?

[grave hatch]

Sure

[inland flower]

Can I draw the same slate widget multiple times in different locations/rotations with different rendertransforms in OnPaint or OnArrangeChildren?

An SPanel widget holds a list of slots where each slot is a new unique slate widget. Then it iterates through the slots and calls ChildWidget->Paint() to render each one. That's not what I want to do, though.

I could do this with a single image by calling FSlateDrawElement::MakeBox() and passing an FSlateBrush, to render an image or material. But is there a way to do this with more complex widgets, e.g a widget created from multiple sub widgets in UMG?

[grave hatch]

That's a good question.

You can render widgets to render targets and then render those as textures in multiple places.

[inland flower]

Makes sense

[grave hatch]

Have you tried overriding OnPaint and literally calling Super::OnPaint() but with different geometries?

[inland flower]

Do you mean painting the complex child widget and then duplicating the paint result multiple times?

I'm thinking because Widget->Paint() takes a lot of by-reference arguments I could take the AllottedGeometry and just copy that every time I need a new widget

[grave hatch]

No. It would probably redraw it for each call.

Yeah. Pretty much that.

Change the allotted geometry and make multiple calls to teh parent method

[inland flower]

so after duplicating the allotted geometry result I can then tweak its render transform

[grave hatch]

I would give it a test and see if it actually works.

[inland flower]

yeah the most likely thing is that Paint() internally creates a render state that you can no longer change for this render cycle

[grave hatch]

I expect so

However, I have done plenty of custom stuff in OnPaint that doesn't use any widgets. Draws directly to the viewport. So maybe it can work.

[inland flower]

yeah it's possible I can call Paint() to get back AllottedGeometry and just set that widget disabled so that instance doesn't draw automatically

and then I can render the batch of allotted geometry in the parent widget

[inland flower]

It turned out to be very very simple - contents of OnArrangeChildren()

1 WidgetToDraw reference (this is an example, the real widget would be a reference passed from UMG)

Then each additional call to .AddWidget() creates another instance of the widget in a different position. This can be done in a loop for a list of widgets.

SlatePrepass is needed for GetDesiredSize to be nonzero

OnPaint looks like this

This results in a new call to Paint() per child

I think the main advantage of this is that I only need to allocate the UMG widget once, and even the Slate widget is only allocated once, so then the only overhead for each additional instance is just the side effect of calling Paint() which is essentially a new FSlateDrawElement payload

[grave hatch]

Nice

Did overriding OnPaint not work?

[inland flower]

I didn't try it, since I wanted to use UUserWidgets created in UMG as the child widgets to draw multiple times

[mental dawn]

Hello everyone, I'm making a plugin to import file into Unreal and for the part where the user has to choose the file, I'm calling ```cpp
TArray<FString> _paths;
const bool _openedFileDialog = DesktopPlatform->OpenFileDialog(ParentWindowHandle,
"Select a file to import",
"C:\",
"",
"",
0, // 0 = SingleFileSelection, 1 = MultipleFileSelection
_paths);

It perfectly works except that when the file is choosed, Unreal/the computer behaves as if an Alt_Tab was made (focus is set on previously opened window)...
Has anyone an idea of why and maybe how to correct this ?
Thx in advance

[grave hatch]

So it tabs away from unreal / your game?

[mental dawn]

from unreal, yup (it's an editor plugin)

[sand frigate]

Check if you are passing proper ParentWindowHandle.
Passing nullptr in my own code minimizes the editor upon the modal dialog close.

I am using const void* ParentWindowWindowHandle = FSlateApplication::Get().FindBestParentWindowHandleForDialogs(nullptr);, same as epic code.

[mental dawn]

ok i'm trying this
actually i'm using ```cpp
const void* ParentWindowHandle = GEditor->GetActiveViewport()->GetWindow();

[mental dawn]

it works perfectly 👌 thx my man

[wicked reef]

How can I make a widget from Slate?

Image for example is build on SImage, how can I make a Shape from SShape?

[grave hatch]

You mean UImage?

[wicked reef]

Not sure tbh

Isn't this the one you select when making a UMG and adding an image to it?

I just thought I could make a slate class look the same compared to when designing a UMG Widget but make it useable in widgets. So it looks like a widget but has the Slate functionality and is useable in other widgets as a "component".

Also can I get screensize somehow?

[grave hatch]

You can't use slate widgets directly in UMG. They are wrapped in things like UImage.

So if you want to expose SShape (is that even a thing or are you trying to make it?)

You would need to make a UShape and wrap it, like UImage does.

[wicked reef]

Just an example - okay I did not know a UImage existed too, I thought it was just the SImage but thanks, I think this is enough to work with for now

Also, can I use other components in my UShape like images and/or buttons?

Where is UImage??? I did find the SImage in source files but my explorer can't seem to find a UImage.cpp confusion

ok it is just Image.h ....

[grave hatch]

You can use any slate widgets you like in your own UMG wrapper.

[wicked reef]

sick sick

thank you @grave hatch

[wicked reef]

Do you may know about this one too?

[grave hatch]

Erm not really

[wicked reef]

alright, then I keep researching

[grave hatch]

I tend to get that stuff from our custom vp client.

If there's a bp node for it, you could look for that.

(look for the c++ implementation)

[wicked reef]

Alright, thanks!

Seems like it is very easy in BP so theres a nice C++ function (in case someone else is interested in this)

[grave hatch]

👍

[upbeat orchid]

I have a textblock, and any time the parent of it has SetEnabled(false) called, the text color is set to grey

I would like to set the color it goes to when it's disabled,
I've been looking for a while and haven't found anything that lets you do this

[grave hatch]

Have you checked the textblock style?

[simple temple]

why is this LargeFont returning null? FSlateFontInfo LargeFont = FSlateFontInfo(FName(TEXT("LargeFont")), 48, EFontHinting::Auto); TextBlock->SetFont(LargeFont); I've included the header #include "Fonts/SlateFontInfo.h"

[grave hatch]

Because you don't have a font named "LargeFont" ?

The fcorestyle or fappstyle has some default fonts available. Try seeing what they do.

[simple temple]

What do you mean? I just initialized it with the name ``FName(TEXT("LargeFont"))`

[grave hatch]

Also you should be using this: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/API/Runtime/SlateCore/Fonts/FSlateFontInfo/__ctor/5/

The other constructors are deprecated.

[simple temple]

Oh okay I see! Thank you! 🙏

[simple temple]

this seems to work FCompositeFont NotoSerifFont = FCompositeFont(FName(TEXT("NotoSerifFont")), FString("/Game/MyGame/Fonts/NotoSerif-Regular_Font.NotoSerif-Regular_Font"), EFontHinting::Auto, EFontLoadingPolicy::LazyLoad); but how do I make a TSharedPtr to this? TSharedPtr<const FCompositeFont, ESPMode::NotThreadSafe> ActiveFont = NotoSerifFont; gives an error

[grave hatch]

TSharedPtr<const FCompositeFont, ESPMode::NotThreadSafe> ActiveFont = MakeShared<FCompositeFont>(FName(TEXT("NotoSerifFont")), FString("/Game/MyGame/Fonts/NotoSerif-Regular_Font.NotoSerif-Regular_Font"), EFontHinting::Auto, EFontLoadingPolicy::LazyLoad);

[simple temple]

Thank you very much!

[upbeat orchid]

that's the issue, there is no style option for textblocks. Maybe they realized this and added it later ( my engine version: 4.26 )

[grave hatch]

Hmm!

[fleet pebble]

I am following the Slate Editor Window quickstart guide at: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/slate-editor-window-quickstart-guide-for-unreal-engine/

However I am getting compiler errors with the example code.... any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[spring crescent]

Are you getting actual compiler errors or just IntelliSense errors?

[fleet pebble]

@Thomas compile errors:

[spring crescent]

In your case it seems to think this is an FTrackCreatorEditorModule, is that code in the SEditorWindowMenu class?

[fleet pebble]

@gentle onyxmas No. FTrackCreatorEditorModule is the base class for my Editor Window plugin. The code above is the meat of OnSpawnPluginTab():
TSharedRef<class SDockTab> OnSpawnPluginTab(const class FSpawnTabArgs& SpawnTabArgs);

OnSpawnPluginTab() defines the widgets and layout for the editor window, and I'm trying to bind the OnClicked event (and others as seen above) to a delegate function in the SEditorWindowMenu class (inherits from SCompoundWidget), declared as FReply OnTestButtonClicked();

[spring crescent]

If that code isn't in the SEditorWindowMenu class then this won't be pointing to an SEditorWindowMenu.

The pointer needs to be to an instance of that class.

[fleet pebble]

@spring crescent ok will play with it some more and see what I can figure out. thanks

[fleet pebble]

@spring crescent Looks like you had the right of it. I dumped my code in the wrong class.... rookie mistake ha!

[toxic dagger]

I made a IPropertyCustomization for a struct I have to make it look similar to TMaps with ForceinlineRow specifier. Everything works great, except for when the struct is used in an array inside editor utility widgets using the DetailsView widget (Left side of the first pic).

Is there something I'm missing in my IPropertyCustomization to have DetailsView pick it up? Putting a breakpoint on the StructBuilder shows everything is valid and the code is executing

It seems that the Dropdown arrow is just missing for the editor utility widget, so I can't expand the array view

[grave hatch]

Hwge you tried adding the drop down arrow yourself?

[toxic dagger]

I'm not sure where I would do that, I'm pretty new to customizing the editor and slate. The arrow is there in every other details panel, it's only a problem in the DetailsView widget. Could I detect if the struct is being built inside the DetailsView widget and manually add the arrow myself?

[grave hatch]

Hmm.

[toxic dagger]

WidgetReflector says the expander arrow is there and it is visible, but it isn't visible

[grave hatch]

What is a details view compared to a details panel?

Hover over the expander arrow and see its desired size.

[toxic dagger]

then like this inside the editor utility widget

[toxic dagger]

The "Size" on the right is its desired size right?

never mind, found the desired size

The SConstainedBox seems to be set to Hidden and the button is a child of that

[grave hatch]

It'll be the container box that determines whther to show the button, not the expander.

Probably logic in the SDetailsExpanderArrow.

[toxic dagger]

Yeah, it's this function that is making it hidden. Even though the array has children, this is returning false

[grave hatch]

Go down Slate rabbithole and find out why that method is returning false.

[left anchor]

Hello, is there a way to do something like that with something like custom shapes?

[grave hatch]

In slate?

You could do it pretty easily with a raw call to the slate renderer and using a mesh draw element.

Specifically FSlateDrawElement::MakeCustomVerts on OnPaint in a slate widget.

There is no documentation, so use the engine source.

[bold terrace]

Is there any way to spawn an Editor Utility Widget (UserWidget) through Slate?
Trying to spawn a window in an editor tab through a plugin.
I am able to get a pointer to the widget in question, I just don't know to to add it to the SDockTab.

[grave hatch]

You would have to add the underlying slate widget to the sdocktab

[spring crescent]

Have a look at UEditorUtilityWidgetBlueprint::SpawnEditorUITab().

[bold terrace]

Thank you for the advice, I've tried to add all of "RootWidget() / CachedWidget() / TakeWidget()" among other syntax combinations, but all generated errors like no matching overloaded function found. You wouldn't have a suggestion on the proper way to access the UUserWidgets underlying slate widget?

[grave hatch]

I do not.

Have you tried Thomas' suggestions?

[bold terrace]

Yes, I'm sure I'm doing something wrong though.
With SpawnTabArgs.GetOwnerWindow()->SetContent(GetSettings()->QuickAssistantWidget->TakeWidget()); return UEditorUtilityWidgetBlueprint::SpawnEditorUITab(SpawnTabArgs);
I'm getting the error a call of a non-static member function requires an object , but I fail to see how I would provide that.
My google-fu is also failing me, not finding many relevant links

Very new at creating editor slate stuff, initially thought it was going to be easier since I only wanted to spawn in a tab with a single UUserWidget.

[bold terrace]

Is this something the widget itself calls to create a tab, or is this used with the RegisterNomadTabSpawner delegate?

[spring crescent]

It's what the widget uses to create a tab that is then registered with a tab manager's tab spawner (typically the level editor's, which is why by default Editor Utility Widgets disappear when you switch away from the level editor). But the code inside should give you an idea of how to create and add an Editor Utility Widget to an SDockTab that you already have.

[bold terrace]

That makes sense, I'll be doing just that.
Thank you for the advice!

[grave hatch]

UEditorUtilityWidgetBlueprint::SpawnEditorUITab(SpawnTabArgs); seems like the culprit

[bold terrace]

Oh yeah, I knew that caused the error. Just wasn't sure how to solve it.
It looks like UEditorUtilityWidgetBlueprint is an actual widget class and not a widget function library like I mistook it for.
But when looking at BP editor utility widgets, you can't select it as a parent.

I'm still trying to figure it all out

[smoky patio]

Hi, sorry for my beginner question but i have this doubt: Slate must be considered legacy or is actual and maintained? I implemented (in C++) a simple slate SLeafWidget, by overriding OnPaint method, and used FSlateDrawElement::MakeCustomVerts . The same result can be obtained by using only a UWidget with a CanvasRenderTarget. In addition i can capture pointer events bot in a SWidget and in a UWidget.

[thick pasture]

Slate is not legacy and is being maintained

The Editor is built on Slate, and UMG widgets are just wrappers for Slate classes

So everything, both the editor and UMG, is built with slate. It’s not going anywhere

[celest locust]

My friend's dad who works at Microsoft said that slate is old and we should all use uwp

[grave hatch]

uwu maybe

[narrow terrace]

Your friends dad is wrong lol

Joking btw, not wanting to be mean

[cinder oriole]

UWP is a bore cause Microsoft complicated the packaging process to force using thier platform.(Same way Apple forces Xcode or packaging on Mac). But it does have potential and seems friendly (at first glance) but i’ll stick to slate for now.

[celest locust]

It was /s BTW 😐

[coarse ice]

Hello, is there a way to expand all categories in a DetailsView Widget from code?

[grave hatch]

The details view is kind of an arcane private thing, so I doubt it.

Very little of it is exposed. But there might be a method. If it's not on the detail view class, though, probably not.

[left anchor]

Hello I'm getting a Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x0000000000000011

int32 SRadarChart::OnPaint(const FPaintArgs& Args, const FGeometry& AllottedGeometry, const FSlateRect& MyClippingRect,
FSlateWindowElementList& OutDrawElements, int32 LayerId, const FWidgetStyle& InWidgetStyle, bool bParentEnabled) const
{
SCompoundWidget::OnPaint(Args, AllottedGeometry, MyClippingRect, OutDrawElements, LayerId, InWidgetStyle, bParentEnabled);

const FVector2D PointSize(6.0f, 6.0f);

const FVector2D PointPosition = AllottedGeometry.GetAbsolutePosition() + AllottedGeometry.GetAbsoluteSize() * 0.5f - PointSize * 0.5f;

**FSlateDrawElement::MakeBox(
    OutDrawElements,
    LayerId,
    AllottedGeometry.ToPaintGeometry(PointPosition, PointSize),
    nullptr,
    ESlateDrawEffect::None,
    FLinearColor::Green
);**

return LayerId;

I get this warning in console

'FGeometry::ToPaintGeometry': Use FPaintGeometry ToPaintGeometry(const FVector2f& InLocalSize, const FSlateLayoutTransform& InLayoutTransform) instead. Please update your code to the new API before upgrading to the next release, otherwise your project will no longer compile. StarFusion D:\Documents\PROJECTES\Unreal\StarFusion\Source\StarFusion\SRadarChart.cpp 49

[snow dragon]

whats a good way to get the current world or spawn an actor in a slate class

[spring crescent]

You can use GEngine->GetWorldContexts() (which supports range-based iteration).

Be aware that in editor there'll be several of these, with world 0 being the editor world, while the PIE world might be world 2.

You can do a check such as

UWorld* World = nullptr;
for (const FWorldContext& WorldContext : GEngine->GetWorldContexts())
{
    if (WorldContext.World()->IsGameWorld())
    {
        World = WorldContext.World();
        break;
    }
}

[snow dragon]

trying it out and doesn't seem to work

this is inside of an editor slate

[spring crescent]

Then don't use the IsGameWorld() check.

For the editor you can just use the world returned by GEngine->GetWorldContexts()[0].World().

[snow dragon]

nice cheers

[grave hatch]

I wouldn't do that

Check if the world type is EWorldType::Editor

Or there's FLevelEditorModule->GetFirstLevelEditor() - I'm sure there's a method to get the edited world there.

Just assuming the first editor context is the editor world is basically the equivalent of Get All Actors Of Class index 0.

[spring crescent]

I think GEditor->GetEditorWorldContext(false).World() looks like a safer bet, now you mention it.

[grave hatch]

That'll do it.

[spring crescent]

Well, it does generally seem to be the case, but yeah, better to be safe.

Oh wait, I say that then I realize that in my own code I used GEditor->GetEditorWorldContext().World(), lol.

[grave hatch]

I just really hope that GetEditorWorldContext doesn't do the same thing lol

[spring crescent]

Nah:

FWorldContext& UEditorEngine::GetEditorWorldContext(bool bEnsureIsGWorld)
{
    for (int32 i=0; i < WorldList.Num(); ++i)
    {
        if (WorldList[i].WorldType == EWorldType::Editor)
        {
            ensure(!bEnsureIsGWorld || WorldList[i].World() == GWorld);
            return WorldList[i];
        }
    }

    check(false); // There should have already been one created in UEngine::Init
    return CreateNewWorldContext(EWorldType::Editor);
}

[grave hatch]

Good good.

0 migth fail if, say, you opened an asset editor and then changed map

[spring crescent]

Oh, good catch.

@snow dragon

Use this instead: #slate message

[snow dragon]

nice one

[snow dragon]

trying to find a class for this widget, think i found it, but getting error

somebody said its private so im guessing i cant use it? just seeing if someone knows if there is a way to create that slate element

[grave hatch]

In the property editor module somewhere there's a load of helper methods li ke "CreateAssetPicker".

I believe that particular one isn't private, though.

SObjectPicker or something?

I can't remember exactly.

Look at the property editor module.

[snow dragon]

one of these maybe

[grave hatch]

That's the ones

[snow dragon]

is there a way to make an empty FAssetData?

o nevermind

[snow dragon]

got it working, but its looking funky

[grave hatch]

Tjat

That'll be the wrong widget.

Try SObjectPropertyEntryBox

[snow dragon]

got this. but when i set it, it remains empty

also enalbed the show thumbnail and stuff but its not displaying

[spring crescent]

Bind to .ObjectPath() (get) and .OnObjectChanged() (set).

[snow dragon]

added them. think i did it right but not sure. it's still doing the same thing

[spring crescent]

That's weird, it definitely looks right. Try turning that Cast() into a CastChecked().

Not sure how that could be the problem, though ...

[snow dragon]

same thing..

[snow dragon]

so i added a break point, and this code isnt calling when i set a static mesh in the editor

[grave hatch]

Did you hot reload or whatever?

You need to close the editor, compile and reload.

If you live code, you need to recreate the widgets (close whatever window you're using and re-open it)

[smoky patio]

How can i convert screen space pointer position in absolute pointer position (relative to viewport) inside SWindget::OnDragOver(const FGeometry& MyGeometry, const FDragDropEvent& DragDropEvent)? I get pointer position with DragDropEvent.GetScreenSpacePosition(). I need to draw a quad cursor under pointer position.

[grave hatch]

MyGeometry.AbsoluteToLocal(FSlateApplication::Get().GetCursorPosition()); or something like that.

Except that may not work if the window isn't a 0,0 because apparently "absolute" position is relative to the application's root window. Which is silly.

[smoky patio]

A second question please, is possible to draw in wireframe mode instead of filled?

[grave hatch]

Do you want to draw 4 lines to make a square?

[smoky patio]

I want to draw a quad diamond made with 4 vertices, 2 triangles. But only the borders.

[grave hatch]

So just draw the lines

How are you drawing your diamond now?

[smoky patio]

Inside OnPaint

` FSlateVertex CursorTop;
CursorTop.Position = CursorPos + FVector2f(0, -CursorRadius);

FSlateVertex CursorBottom;
CursorBottom.Position = CursorPos + FVector2f(0, CursorRadius);

FSlateVertex CursorLeft;
CursorLeft.Position = CursorPos + FVector2f(-CursorRadius, 0);

FSlateVertex CursorRight;
CursorRight.Position = CursorPos + FVector2f(CursorRadius, 0);

CursorTop.Color = FColor::White;
CursorBottom.Color = FColor::White;
CursorLeft.Color = FColor::White;
CursorRight.Color = FColor::White;

TArray<FSlateVertex> CursorVertices({CursorLeft, CursorTop, CursorRight, CursorBottom}); 
TArray<SlateIndex> CursorIndices({0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 0});

FSlateDrawElement::MakeCustomVerts(
    OutDrawElements,
    LayerId,
    Handle,
    CursorVertices,
    CursorIndices,
    nullptr,
    0,
    0
);`

[grave hatch]

Try creating an array of FVector2f and using MakeLines

[smoky patio]

Ok, i try, thank you very much.

[grave hatch]

Np

[snow dragon]

been doing that and relaunching unreal

[vocal burrow]

Hello
Is it possible to make custom Text alignment for Rich Text Block with decorator class? So the Text will be aligned both on the right and the left border like on pic:
I want to be a writer 🙂 Seems like by default UMG I can choose only 1,2,3 options(from the pic)

[snow dragon]

omg was calling wrong function

[grave hatch]

We know which one you should be circling then, boller!

[snow dragon]

all working

cheers for the help, guys

[snow dragon]

at the moment im using a tick function to update my panel. is there like a post select actr delegate on the GEditor?

[grave hatch]

Yes

It might be on the FLevelEditorModule somewehre

VS is currently throwing a wobbly.

[spring crescent]

Look for OnActorSelectionChanged.

[obtuse eagle]

What's the relationship between SWidget and UWidget? Are they related? I'm trying to do something with the OnFocusChanged delegate and I want to gain access to the UWidget that has gained focus.

Or is it something entirely separate and I can't have UWidgets with delegates like this?

[grave hatch]

UMG widgets are uobject-based wrappers for slate widgets.

[obtuse eagle]

So is there a way to get to one from the other? Basically Buttons don't have appearance properties for when they are focused, so when a button is selected by the gamepad, there's no visual feedback. I've found a hacky way to overwrite the style when a widget is in focus, but I can't apply it because Buttons don't have those events and it would also require recreating every button in the UI (we're in EA so there's a lots of stuff). So what I wanted to do is apply this logic when the focus changes, but those events are slate and only deal with SWidgets...

[grave hatch]

Are you using CommonUI styles? I hear they're pretty awful.

You can get the SWidget backing a UWidget by doing TakeWidget() on the UWidget, I think.

But there's no easy way to go the other way.

[obtuse eagle]

Just using the out of the box button

[obtuse eagle]

Okay well shit. So I thought these slate delegates could help me but it seems like they can't.

[grave hatch]

They probably can.

You just have to carefully massage the widgets into compliance.

[obtuse eagle]

Honestly I'm pretty surprised that Unreal doesn't cover this situation... UI controller support seems pretty crucial

[obtuse eagle]

Okay haha, tell me more?

[grave hatch]

You'd probalby need to replace the buttons you're using with a custom calss or just edit the engine source to add your delegates.

Probably easier to do the latter...

[obtuse eagle]

Haha yes, those are the other options I had listed. But replacing with a custom class would be a huge undertaking as the UI for the whole game is close to finished.

Editing the engine was another avenue I was considering

I was planning to edit the UButton class. However, apparently that's not a UUserWidget, so it doesn't have access to the focus path related events.

Which would bring me back to the slate delagates, through which, again, I can't access the UWidget through the SWidget.

[grave hatch]

You can access the swidget from the uwidget, though, and assign the delegates after the fact or change the underlying class to your own slate subclass which has assignable delegates.

After all, what happens in UButton stays in UButton.

Nothing cares about what class backs it.

[obtuse eagle]

Okay wait so. I could bind something to the OnFocusChanging delegate from UButton. Then when this does occur, I could get the SWidget from the UButton and compare it to the one that's passed in through the event and if it's the same one, I know this is the button that currently has focus?

[grave hatch]

More like when your UButton creates it's widget, you add a binding to the swidget that has a callback to teh ubutton.

If you edit the engine, anything is possible.

[obtuse eagle]

It's a bit annoying, given the fact that a button knows whether it has focus. It just doesn't have events when it gains and loses focus. So using the stuff that's already there would require every button to do polling... Or some managing entity to poll for every button in existance..

[grave hatch]

Edit the class.

Be happy.

[obtuse eagle]

Oh okay. So slate event occurs -> bound SWidget function executes -> callback to button?

[grave hatch]

You can bind the function directly to teh ubutton

[obtuse eagle]

What do you mean then by "add a binding to the swidget"?

[grave hatch]

SNew(SButton)
  ...
  .OnFocusGained_UObject(this, &UButton::OnFocusGained) // typod the class here
  ...;

In whatever part of the code creates the backing SWidget inside SButton

Assuming SButton even has the right events.

[obtuse eagle]

SButton only seems to have OnFocusLost lol

[grave hatch]

It has OnFocusReceived from SWidget

[obtuse eagle]

Oh wait a few layers up SWidget does seem to have OnFocusReceived, but no delegates

[grave hatch]

It just overrides OnFocusLost

You would need to override that in your own sbutton subclass

Also send a reference to your ubutton to the subclass

(Use TWeakObjectPtr)

And hten call some event on your UButton edit

[obtuse eagle]

I don't know how SButton and UButton are related though. How do I make UButton use my own derived SButton type?

[grave hatch]

You edit the source of UButton

[obtuse eagle]

Yes

[obtuse eagle]

I also just got to that part

Okay well... there's a way

It's more difficult than I had hoped.

Atm we are not using a custom version of the engine, so it's a big change for something like UI feedback to swap to a custom version. But it's an option

[grave hatch]

It's actually really simple. Override SButton, add a few methods, edit UButton to use that subclass and add a call back to your edited UButton class

[obtuse eagle]

Yea I know. I mean just because it's the first time I would edit the engine and swapping over to a custom engine does have some consequences.

[grave hatch]

You can edit the engine and then create an installed build for your fellows!

Or write your own UButton subclass and change all your buttons.

It might even work with a redirector.

[obtuse eagle]

Yes it does seem like those are the options

Someone told me a redirector could work, but it would break all of the events tied to the buttons.

[grave hatch]

This is why you never use default classes and always add your own subclass, even if it does nothing.

[obtuse eagle]

And also, the UButton class doesn't have any focus events anyway. So I got it to work by wrapping a button inside a UUserWidget. But that makes the replacing fucked and complicates things.

Yea I know. I joined an old BP project

[grave hatch]

That's actually probably bad advice, but still.

[obtuse eagle]

Hmm maybe, I don't see any downsides besides the slight convolution it adds.

[grave hatch]

Teh advantage of c++.

Search+replace is easy.

[obtuse eagle]

Yup redirectors are... tough

What I could do though. Is OnFocusChanged, loop once over all the buttons and see which one has focus. That's bad, but not nearly as bad as permanent polling.

[grave hatch]

Is there a method which returns the currently focused umg widget?

Because polling that single value isnt' so bad.

[obtuse eagle]

Btw what's the best approach here? Just build it and share everything on the repo? Cause that's a lot of extra stuff on the repo.

[grave hatch]

Good question

#engine-source 😛

[obtuse eagle]

You can request the currently focused swidget so no. BUT, you can ask a widget whether it has focus. So OnFocusChanged I could poll the currently existing set of buttons once for that bool.

It's a bit strange how some of the focus stuff is exposed to the widgets, but most of it isn't.

[grave hatch]

Because they didn't need it.

I know you can get the focused swidget, but umg widget is a different matter.

It's like the umg widgets just do a 1-way poke into teh slate hierarchy

[craggy holly]

You'd need to cast it to an SObjectWidget and get the UWidget from there. Not exactly clean though.

[grave hatch]

Surely that's only if the focused widget is actually an object widget? What if the focused widget is a widget inside that widget?

[craggy holly]

Yeah actually, ignore that. It'd be another one up again

[obtuse eagle]

Yea but you get the entire focus path

so you would have to be able to find the one you're looking for no?

[grave hatch]

You can go up the parent hierarchy until you got to an object widget, but that's just tedious.

[craggy holly]

Well the "focused" one is always going to be at the end of the path, but you'd have to traverse the hierarchy to find the SObjectWidget

[grave hatch]

And you can't actually cast smart pointers well, you'd need to check the classes with string comparisons. :/

[craggy holly]

yeah

definitely not nice

[grave hatch]

Depends if SObjectWidget does SLATE_DECLARE_WIDGET or not

Woudl you believe it doesn't?

It's so shitty.

[obtuse eagle]

So just to get back to this. After the UButton creates the SButton, I would bind something to the SButton events and pass in the reference to the correct UButton for the callback?

[craggy holly]

With how inconsistent Slate is I'd believe it 😄

[grave hatch]

They have this whole type information system for swidgets comparable to the UObject StaticClass/Getclass system but never use it.

[grave hatch]

No, there is no delegate to bind to in SButton or its parents. You have to subclass SButton, override OnFocusReceived and Lost and add your own callbacks to the UButton.

-OR-

You check the currently focused slate widget and traverse the hierarchy until you find an SObjectWidget by checking the widgets' debug type.

That doesn't require any engine changes.

It's just dirty.

[craggy holly]

Or, make a focusable UUserWidget like UCommonButton and use it's focus events

Replace all buttons with that

ez

[grave hatch]

But they're basically already released into EA and don't want to change the near-finished UI for their entire game.

[craggy holly]

If you're that far in, then yeah customising the engine seems a more likely play.

[obtuse eagle]

Yea I actually prototyped one to see. But the replacing work would take days, probably more.

I also briefly tried to make some kind of attached UUserWidget that gets the focus and redirects it to the button and changes its appearance. But so far it didn't quite work.

There are so many weird ways to approach this lol

[obtuse eagle]

Oh okay, so the SButton variant just has a member referring to its UButton and in those focus overrides calls back to it.

[craggy holly]

If you're that close to release, modifying SButton and UButton seems the most viable approach, that or the hierarchy method if you want to avoid messing with engine code.

[grave hatch]

Tbh, I woudl go with option 2 and use https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/API/Runtime/Slate/Framework/Application/FSlateApplication/GetKeyboardFocus-/, https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/API/Runtime/SlateCore/Widgets/SWidget/GetType/ and https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/API/Runtime/SlateCore/Widgets/SWidget/GetParentWidget/

[craggy holly]

SButton doesn't know about UButton. UButton binds to events that SButton exposes.

[obtuse eagle]

Yea but he suggested making a custom SButton type that does know about UButton.

[craggy holly]

You can't

[obtuse eagle]

If I'm understanding it correctly

Why not?

[grave hatch]

Why not?

[obtuse eagle]

So you would opt for the hierarchy approach?

[grave hatch]

It's the easiest way.

[craggy holly]

I suppose you can actually, but I'd sooner just expose a new event on SButton that is executed when it receives focus, and custom UButton would bind it.

But hierarchy still seems the most sane approach

[grave hatch]

That is what I suggested basically 😛 I guess you don't need a custom SButton subclass if you're already modifying UButton.

But modifying those classes is definitely the correct way.

It's just the inconvenient way.

[craggy holly]

yeah

[obtuse eagle]

Yea what you guys are saying makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the input. I'm going to take a break and get back to it later. Probably starting with the hierarchy method. Or maybe the polling one. Even looping over 100 buttons once when focus changes isn't that huge. Provided the UI is set up cleanly and not everything can be focused. And provided the event isn't called every frame when I'm not hovering over anything focusable.

[grave hatch]

I think I suggested the SButton subclass because you don't want to be randomly modifying every sbutton used in the entire engine.

[obtuse eagle]

I have to say this server is so nice. Especially as I'm the only C++ programmer on the team. Even just to talk shop a bit ^^

[obtuse eagle]

Yea okay so only UButton would use the new subclass. Instead of anything else that might be using SButton that I'm unaware of.

[craggy holly]

To be fair outside of editor I think it likely wouldn't matter too much, any button you see there is going to be UMG most likely

Personally I'd modify SButton to add the "onfocus/nofocus" events, and modify UButton to bind them and broadcast UMG-level events to do whatever you need.

Everyone has to customise the engine at some point 😄

[obtuse eagle]

Is it that common?

[grave hatch]

The engine isn't perfect and it's written very specifically for Epic's needs (read Fortnite's needs).

[craggy holly]

Yeah, it can be pretty common honestly

[grave hatch]

I'm luckily enough to work for a company that can actually get Epic to make changes to the engine itself, but even that can be frustrating. "Oh, yeah, we're doing that, it's currently slated for 5.6" -> we need it next week.

[craggy holly]

The tough part is remote teams distributing their custom builds, which is a PITA because of the size. Though once you have a decent setup working with Unreal Game Sync it becomes quite managable, just takes a lot of time/setup

[grave hatch]

And UGS then also requires that you use perforce. And we all know how evil that is.

[craggy holly]

based 😄

For me it's either that or whisper black magic to git to get it to mysteriously do what I want

[obtuse eagle]

We do use perforce but are currently 4 people of which only I do c++. So getting all that up and running didn't seem worth it. Also I have no experience with it

[grave hatch]

Probably isn't

[craggy holly]

Yeah, too much work for that

[grave hatch]

Tbh, if you're the one building and packaging the game, they don't even need the changes.

As long as it works for you, what do they care if gamepad focus is iffy?

[craggy holly]

Depends if you expose anything to BP though too, particularly anything serializable

Actually not certain how that plays out when you mix source with non-source for versioning etc

[grave hatch]

Just don't actually use the changes while developing. Just use them to package 😄

https://tenor.com/view/dig-deep-poppy-amanda-leighton-trolls-the-beat-goes-on-keep-digging-gif-18093033

[obtuse eagle]

Lol. Yes but we all test everything. And I feel like I would just commit to a custom engine for everyone if we do go that route.

And so far I'm not the one doing the packaging anyway. But I could

[grave hatch]

That was absolutely terrible advice and never do it.

[obtuse eagle]

Oh okay I thought you were being serious lol

Semi

[grave hatch]

Originally it was.

But Jambax raises good points.

[cold quarry]

What's the name of the int/float scalar widget?

SSpinBox 😄

[long cargo]

what was the fix

[grave hatch]

I guess we'll never know.

[chrome jasper]

can someone with experience with the Renderer/SlateRenderer contact me, i'm trying to figure out some stuff that is freaking me out right now

i would also pay this guy who helps me at this stuff, just saying

[grave hatch]

Or just ask your question and get it answered for free if anyone knows the answer.

http://www.dontasktoask.com

[chrome jasper]

I purposely didn't write the question out because if I did, I'd be called an idiot pretty quickly for modifying the WindowsWindow.h class in the engine source

[grave hatch]

Not necessarily.

There might be a better way to do it. Might not.

But nobody is going to help if you don't ask.

[cinder oriole]

why would anyone call you an idiot for asking a question.... just ask... if there's a jackass here, i dont think anyone will tolerate them

[chrome jasper]

Okay

but i guess i solved the issue

the question was if there is any way to pause the slate renderer because i wanted that 2 applications can share one single window to render to

and with coordination the window that is not allowed to render to the window sets its renderer to SlateNullRenderer

but i already managed to do that

[grave hatch]

Interesting idea.

[granite compass]

Is there a book on Slate or it's just another painful system to learn with resources scattered around the web?

[grave hatch]

The resources you need are in the pinned message and the engine source code.

[granite compass]

Qt to Slate transition guide ❤️😍😭😭😭😭😭

Thanks!

[warm vault]

What's slate and umg framework? I just go to create BP then widget

[thick pasture]

#umg message

[warm vault]

👍

[latent sequoia]

Is my understanding correct that in UE 5.2 there is no out of the box way to create Slate widgets purely from Python?

I've looked through all kinds of links and the 20tab thing is for UE4 and TAPython is an external plugin so neither of those would work for me. I'd like to avoid having to rely on anything but the source code so using Editor Utility Widgets unfortunately wouldn't really work.

[grave hatch]

Good question

From my understanding (and bear in mind I don't use python) is that python shares the same api as blueprints, so it wouldn't have access to slate.

But I might just be wrong.

[placid elbow]

@latent sequoia I’m also curious about py + slate. I’m currently using py + qt which has limits to editor interactivity :/

May need to begin digging into cpp if you have to avoid TAPython. (Which I’m just now discovering, seems like exactly what you need!)

[latent sequoia]

That makes sense, I checked the stuff available in the unreal module provided to python and it doesn't have any of the Slate classes (i.e. the layouts) and it didn't have any of them.

Was just hoping that maybe there is a trick I was missing ^^ Thanks!

[latent sequoia]

Yeah tapython looks promising but I'm not too keen on building an entire Pipeline on the basis of a plugin maintained by a single guy, bus factor and all that...(and there's no source code available, so incase development stops you can't even maintain it inhouse)

[placid elbow]

Makes total sense, there's a similar conversation going on in TechArtAid server with @tribal estuary
Perhaps yall can link up and chat about it. I'd love to be looped into the conversation too

@latent sequoia

[tribal estuary]

thanks! bro, you are everywhere😂

[dawn lintel]

I am working on making a plugin a bit more functionality via CustomizeDetails(IDetailLayoutBuilder& DetailBuilder) which uses Slate to layout the things.
But since its in the editor, I have to relaunch editor to test any/change. Is there a way to faster iterate on layout related things? (aside from relaunching the entire editor)
(*Sorta like the EditorUtilityWidget, but for Slate?)

Other than just using a near empty project with minimal things loaded for layout design portion? I'm new to Slate so I need a lot more trial/error.

[grave hatch]

Live Coding works a treat with slate changes.

[thick pasture]

http://codekitten.me/tools/LiveUpdateForSlate/

Have you looked at this plugin so live coding works better with slate?

[dawn lintel]

ooh. that looks super neat! That looks like that can work for me

[tribal thunder]

I'm not asking for a step by step tutorial, but I may ask more questions depending on the answer, I'm trying to figure out how I make a UI for game, and I am struggling a little bit.

I'm trying to make the whole Left Top side of my screen. here.

so it has to be a drop down menu, that shows units, their inventory and location, I'm sure I can figure out inventory and location, but I struggle with the drop down menu

I also need to somehow figure out how to auto populate these drop down menus

[thick pasture]

Are you trying to do the game UI in slate or UMG?

[tribal thunder]

Slate.

[grave hatch]

Check the pinned messages. Plenty of useful slate info.

[tribal thunder]

I mean, only thing I understand from this is that I have to use a Panel Widget, and maybe animations to get what I want.

Or I could change how this works, and use a combobox.

but that's just cause I know very little slate/c++ in general.

[grave hatch]

http://www.learncpp.com

[tribal thunder]

Actually can I set.. a box to open up via animation, and have a scrollbox on it..

Yeah no that won't help me.

I went to Uni to learn C++ and I still struggle with it.

I fail to grasp some things is all, I'll learn them eventually.

[grave hatch]

Then you should probably stick with UMG?

[tribal thunder]

UMG seems harder

But yeah I guess. I could attempt it.

[thick pasture]

Yeah I would try jumping into visual scripting (blueprints) and UMG if you aren’t super familiar with C++

[tribal thunder]

I can't learn BP

and I know enough C++ to get by without BP

[thick pasture]

What do you mean by you cant learn BP?

[tribal thunder]

I.. don't have the attention span to visual code if that makes sense?

which is why I opted for Slate over UMG

and I got the whole menu made in Slate, just the dropdown part is not working.

Slate is similar to PHP (Laravel) in a sense.

and I do know that

[thick pasture]

If you haven’t already I would look at one of the engine’s drop-down menus

And replicate that

[tribal thunder]

that's where I struggle. I don't know what widget/box to use

[stuck jewel]

generally speaking, in a details customization with an https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/API/Editor/PropertyEditor/IDetailLayoutBuilder/ would anyone know how you might make an entire array property area colorized, and otherwise totally unaffected?

i'm trying to color code different array properties to make a details pane a little easier on the eyes. i've been mucking around trying to use an SOverlay with one slot for a color block and one slot for the property name widget / property value widget but it just does dummypants things like this (first row)

[grave hatch]

I'm sure there was the ability to let the details panel do its default thing and then modify the result.

I don't think you'll be able to colourise the entire row.

It's not even part of the widget when you generate it.

[elfin flint]

How do I tell slate to update a widget?

[grave hatch]

Define "update"

[elfin flint]

I tried to invalidate a combo box, when i just needed to call SetSelectedItem.. :)

[pulsar remnant]

Is it okay to re-Construct a slate widget oftenly (every frame for example) or should preffered method be re-using existing widget by adding/removing childs and other changes?

[grave hatch]

I believe the epic suggestion is to reconstruct when necessary.

[bitter cedar]

I made a 2 Modules (Game and UI)
I made a Slate class in the UI Module called SMyTextWidget and I tried to create a UMG class to wrap SMyTextWidget in it
if i tried to locate the UMG class in GameModule I get

error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "public: void __cdecl SMyTextWidget::Construct(struct SCTextWidget::FArguments const &)"

but if the UMG class in the same module where Slate is it compiles just fine

Note the UIModule, Slate and SlateCore are referenced in the Build.cs file and the header is included too

LNK2019 is linkage error so if someone showed me this error i would tell him to check the build file(.Build.cs file in the GameModule) or he's missing a header
but the code does compile in UI module, so there's no missing headers and the UI module/Slate/SlateCore are referenced in Game module

why is that?

[thick pasture]

Does the game module have UMG added to its build.cs?

[bitter cedar]

yep, also i would like to say that even though I am not sure what the reason behind this is, but my intuition tells me to somehow blame the macros for this, because I have no problem referencing anything else

[grave hatch]

Did you actually implement the construct method in your cpp file?

[bitter cedar]

yes, as i said it works(compiles) if the UMG class is implemented in the UI module, if i forgotten something like that the code wouldnt compile even if they are in the same module

[grave hatch]

Did you export the class with an api macro?

[obtuse eagle]

Is there a way of knowing which userwidget is currently the top one?

[pulsar remnant]

Any idea why my widget crashes on this?

[thick pasture]

You’re going to need to give more context than a screenshot with 5 lines of code 😅

When does it happen? What is the class name? What have you done so far to debug it?

[pulsar remnant]

I understand that, but the thing is I have no clue about why and what can cause it
I thought it might be a common issue, if I missed a required step

Anyways context is: I have a slate widget which has a wrapper for UMG
and at beginplay I add this widget to screen inside a user widget
As soon as I hit beginplay, it crashes

[grave hatch]

And the call stack is?

And the local values are?

What is _Widget? because it's not defined there.

Nor is RequiredArgs, which may very well be the cause of the crash.

What is teh actual error message?

[bitter cedar]

yes, and It seems i forgot to add, the UI module in *.UProject but this didnt fix the main issue

[pulsar remnant]

You can read a little from here #cpp message

[bronze lynx]

Hello I have a question
Does somebody know why slate don't allow FUICommandInfo execution while you are in drag and drop ?

bool FUICommandList::ConditionalProcessCommandBindings( const FKey Key, bool bCtrl, bool bAlt, bool bShift, bool bCmd, bool bRepeat ) const{
    if ( !FSlateApplication::Get().IsDragDropping() )

When processing a command, the first check is to block execution when you are drag dropping and I wonder why because I could really use that kind of system
thx in advance

[grave hatch]

Not a clue tbh

[sonic garden]

Are widgets guaranteed to be constructed parent-first? IE:

void UAuraUserWidget::NativeConstruct()
{
    Super::NativeConstruct();

    if (const UPanelWidget* ParentPanel = Cast<UPanelWidget>(GetParent()))
    {
        // Try to get the parent's UAuraUserWidget

        if (UAuraUserWidget* ParentAuraWidget = Cast<UAuraUserWidget>(ParentPanel->GetOuter()))
        {
            ParentAuraWidget->AddChildWidget(this);
        }
    }
}

is this guaranteed to work (Checking if the parent exists recursively on native construct)

I basically want to give the uppermost UAuraUserWidget root a bunch of information about it's children

[sonic garden]

Ah, I'm dumb, I can do this in reverse apparently.

void UAuraUserWidget::GetAllChildrenWidgets(UWidget* Root, TArray<UAuraUserWidget*>& OutWidgets)
{
        if (!Root)
        {
            return;
        }
    
        if (const UPanelWidget* Panel = Cast<UPanelWidget>(Root))
        {
            for (int32 i = 0; i < Panel->GetChildrenCount(); ++i)
            {
                UWidget* Child = Panel->GetChildAt(i);
                if (UAuraUserWidget* AuraChild = Cast<UAuraUserWidget>(Child))
                {
                    OutWidgets.Add(AuraChild);
                }
                GetAllChildrenWidgets(Child, OutWidgets);
            }
        }
}

in case anybody has a similar need in the distant future

[open raven]

is slates still capture mouse click and position when detached from player controller?

[grave hatch]

Sure

[open raven]

Could you give me some insight. Is it possible to get mouse click event and deprojecting screen to world when I detach from my main player controller and moving around in the viewport without any possessed player controller?

if this is possible I will spend all my time to learn slates

[grave hatch]

You'll only get a mouse click event in slate, I think, if there's actually a widget to click on in the viewport

And you can't really detach from your player controller...

You can unpossess your pawn, but your player controller will remain yours

[open raven]

can I easily deproject screen to world if I use slates if the widget is entirely empty? I really need that

[grave hatch]

Can't you just use your player controller or something to do that?

The hud class has a convenient method fro it

[open raven]

no for my procedural map generation algorithm I always need to detach from player controller to move around entire world easily.

[grave hatch]

How do you do that?

[craggy holly]

You're never "detached" from a controller

They don't really have a transform even

[grave hatch]

I did try explaining that.

[craggy holly]

Projection is dependant on the scene view, you don't even need the controller really

[open raven]

And I need to make very tiny changes for each actor. I need a UI that shows me the correct variables that I cannot easily calculate for each thousands of calcualtions

[grave hatch]

How do you "detach" from your controller?

[open raven]

when I detach none of events work anymore both for player controller and UMG if (Viewport->KeyState(EKeys::LeftMouseButton)) GEngine->GameViewport->GetMousePosition or this PlayerController->GetMousePositionall doesn't respond anything when I detach. From this button

[grave hatch]

Oh you mean in the editor?

[craggy holly]

Oh, well that explains a lot

[open raven]

yeah I guess I couldn't explained well 😦

[craggy holly]

Yeah well most stuff doesn't work when you detach from the controller because you're in an editor view, which the game doesn't really know about

It's like simulating

[open raven]

in engine internals actually I always get print message if I click somewhere when I detached from main PC. I jumped the source but everything is too much low level

    {else if( Click.GetKey() == EKeys::LeftMouseButton )
        {
            if( !Click.IsControlDown() )
            {
                const FScopedTransaction Transaction( NSLOCTEXT("UnrealEd", "ClickingBackground", "Clicking Background") );
                UE_LOG(LogEditorViewport, Log,  TEXT("Clicking Background") );
                GEditor->SelectNone( true, true );
            }
        }```

I guess I don't have any other option than making my own custom player controller acts like same flexible moving panning around everything editor doing

[grave hatch]

You could get editor viewport from FLevelEditorModule::GetFirstActiveLevelViewport() (this isn't static) and try doing something there.

But idk where you'll get the event from to run it.

You could make your own level editor viewport class and do it from that!

[open raven]

isn't it harder than making my own custom player controller acts same as editor navigation?

[grave hatch]

Probably

Just do that?

Or just change your game mode to enable delayed start and then you'll get a spectator pawn by default and you can fly around.

[open raven]

I need top perspective always but anyway thanks for your help and clarification. Without you I would try to learn slates just to do what I wanted.

[upper salmon]

evening all - has anyone ever managed to get transparent slate widgets / windows working? I've fiddled with it over the past week, but I can't seem to work out how to actually do it

[grave hatch]

An entire window that's transparent? Or just a single widget?

[upper salmon]

window ideally, it seems like it should be possible

there's a whole load of code that looks like it should support it, e.g. the morphing functions

[grave hatch]

I mean, just create an SWindow and set its content to something with no fill and you should have a transparent window, if it's possible.

[upper salmon]

hmm, that might be it maybe? I'm currently using a fill value with alpha, and it does not work

[grave hatch]

How are you specifying the fill?

How are you even creating the swindow?

[upper salmon]

hmm, it's literally just an SWindow, normal constructor. SupportsTranspracy is set to PerPixel, Initial & Render Opacity set to an input value (0.25)

so no fill colour, actually

need to test something

[grave hatch]

You aren't using the slate application method to make them?

[upper salmon]

I believe so;

I don't really know what you mean by "application method"

Slate code just looks like nonsense to mee

[grave hatch]

Erm, nevermind. I was sure there was a way to construct them from FSlateApplication, but it appeares it's just modals and registering already-created ones.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/API/Runtime/Slate/Framework/Application/FSlateApplication/GetWindowTranspa- might be of interest

[upper salmon]

yeah, I've seen that - it doesn't tell me much tbh

there's almost zero information online

[grave hatch]

So what does that actaully create?

Also have you tried not using a style?

The style might add a background...

[upper salmon]

a black window - style could be the problem, but I have a hunch it might actually be something else rendering over the top

in which case slate was never my problem >.<

[grave hatch]

Heh

[upper salmon]

ah no, cut it right down to the minimum, and it's still just black;

`NewWindow.Window = SNew(SWindow)

    .SizingRule(ESizingRule::UserSized)
    .SupportsTransparency(FenestraToUETransparencyType(WindowParams.TransparencyType))
    .AutoCenter(EAutoCenter::None)
    .SaneWindowPlacement(true)
    .LayoutBorder(FMargin{ 2, 2 })
    .AdjustInitialSizeAndPositionForDPIScale(false)

    /* Window Params */
    .ScreenPosition(WindowParams.InitialDesiredScreenPosition)
    .InitialOpacity(WindowParams.Opacity)
    .RenderOpacity(WindowParams.Opacity)
    .FocusWhenFirstShown(WindowParams.bFocusWhenFirstShown)
    
    /* Size Params */
    .ClientSize(SizeParams.InitialDesiredSize)
    .ShouldPreserveAspectRatio(SizeParams.bShouldPreserveAspectRatio);

// Add our new window to the Slate subsystem (which essentially opens it)
FSlateApplication::Get().AddWindow(NewWindow.Window.ToSharedRef());

// Make sure our new window doesn't hide behind some others
NewWindow.Window.Get()->BringToFront(true);`

[grave hatch]

And you're sure it's setting the transparency properly?

[upper salmon]

should be, I'll have to step through, but that's a nightmare

heck, not even sure I can do that

yeah, no idea how to debug it tbh, it's a slate argument, so as far as I'm concerned it disappears off into the void

[grave hatch]

put a breakpoint in the Construct function of SWindow.

Then check it's Args parameter to see what you're parsing to it.

And then see if it's actually using any of those values in the Construct function.

[upper salmon]

yep!

I can probably debug a little more from here, now that I can see the internal variable name

no, this absolutely looks like it should be working 🤔

sanity check: enabled in Windows too

[upper salmon]

haven't been able to crack it, ended up taking it to paid support, weee

[grave hatch]

Good luck!

[upper salmon]

thanks!

[hexed jungle]

Theres an overrideable function in the graph nodes made from slate, where one can insert additional stuff into the header. This extra function call is made inside a HBox, and returns a single SharedRef to a SWidget. I suppose theres no way to make two entries inside this very same function without wrapping them in yet another hbox?

[grave hatch]

You can get the parent widget for the swidget, cast it to an hbox and then add a slot.

You're then at the mercy of the underlying code not changing...

[hexed jungle]

Sounds rather risky

    + SHorizontalBox::Slot()
            .HAlign(HAlign_Right)
            .VAlign(VAlign_Center)
            .Padding(0, 0, 5, 0)
            .AutoWidth()
            [
                CreateTitleRightWidget()
            ]

This is engine code tho, so it probably wont change that much, if at all? 😄

crossing fingers

sorta surprised i got it to work at all lol

[grave hatch]

What you can do is check the GetTypeName() (I think?) of the parent widget. It should be "SHorizontalBox"

Just do a check() on that and you'll soon know if it changes.

[hexed jungle]

there's also a GetParentType...

ugh im brand new to slate

[grave hatch]

Slate is awful at types.

[hexed jungle]

could i like... cast ?

nvm ill just do hbox in hbox

[grave hatch]

It has a system built in that's meant to work like the Cast/IsA system for uobjects, but using the macro for it is optional... and if a widget doesn't, it will return the first parent class that does.

[hexed jungle]

it's whatever

[hexed jungle]

ouch

[grave hatch]

Super useful 👍

[hexed jungle]

wuhu! It worked

[pulsar remnant]

How do I draw something like this with FSlateDrawElement::MakeBox

Red is allocated size, Greens are boxes each drawn with FSlateDrawElement::MakeBox

The problem is I cannot apply custom size to FPaintGeometry which calculated from AllottedGeometry.ToPaintGeometry

[grave hatch]

For that I would use drawline tbh.

Draw 4 lines for the box and one for each green thing.

The box used a 9 section image.

Or 9 images, I forget.

[pulsar remnant]

I think you a little bit misunderstood me
Red box is representing widgets allocated size, not actually part of the UI, but still line is a good advice. Thanks 😄

[grave hatch]

Did you ever get a response about transparent windows?

[upper salmon]

I did not, no, but I did get it working when I changed the project default framebuffer format

slate widget opacity is now working as expected

viewport opacity is the next thing on my list to look into and remains a mystery

[grave hatch]

Being able to see through a viewport would be amazing.

[pulsar remnant]

Well, even if that's a possible thing, you probably need to dig into Windows API or something

Which normally handled by engine

[grave hatch]

Setting the clear colour of the viewport widget to an translucent colour doesn't work sadly!

I guess maybe it's about the image format of the viewport

It'd be a lot easier if it worked... for stuff.

[upper salmon]

the rendered image also needs an alpha channel

[grave hatch]

Yeah.

I'm not sure you can set the viewport render to have alpha all that easily.

[upper salmon]

the framebuffer can have alpha, so it should be possible

feels like something one of the virtual production style templates should be doing

[grave hatch]

Yeah.

That's what we do, but not for the editor viewport, which is what'd be useful for me.

[upper salmon]

hmm, looks like the VP examples might be doing the compositing in-engine, which bypasses this problem

[grave hatch]

Yeah, there's a lot of it in there in various plugins.

[pastel mauve]

Hi! I'm an Unreal newbie, though I have a programming and gamedev background. I thought I'd try to make a simple tool that makes use of Unreal's rendering and UI features (a standalone thing, not an editor plugin), but I'm having trouble figuring out where to start. Right now my starting goal is to bring up a single-line text input field upon pressing a hotkey, and hide it upon pressing enter or escape. Seems simple, but I'm stuck on how to get there.

I found this documentation, but it seems to be intended for someone who already has some knowledge of UE. It mentions how to access the viewport and add widgets to it, but not where this code would actually live: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.2/en-US/using-slate-in-game-in-unreal-engine/

Could someone point me in the right direction?

[grave hatch]

You should probably use UMG.

A lot more tutorials and will work fine for what you described.

[raven ledge]

The editable text field:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc9QpPzmrsM

Setting keyboard focus:
https://unrealpossibilities.blogspot.com/2020/08/unreal-engine-tips-how-to-use-keyboard.html

Binding an event to keyboard press:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU9aps1DBY4

This should kickstart you in a general direction.

[pastel mauve]

Thank you for the resources! Ultimately I'd be attaching more behavior to the text field (the intended purpose is as a command palette) which I'm not sure how well UMG would be suited to? And in general I am much more comfortable writing C++ code than fiddling around with a GUI

😅 honestly my main problem here is that I'm not very used to game engine GUIs, much more used to just doing stuff with SDL or raylib or similar tools

[grave hatch]

You can make a base class of UUserWidget (or whatever you like) in c++ and implement the actaul stuff in UMG

Have a look at the pinned messages in here. Some useful Slate resources.

[pastel mauve]

...Do I have the option of not using blueprints or UMG? I will be much more comfortable implementing more complicated UI behaviors in code than blueprints

I guess I was hoping there was someplace I could just drop some C++ code and start making things happen

[raven ledge]

I'd say yes, but I'm a UI designer and I've been using UMG and blueprintss only.

[grave hatch]

Overall, slate is pretty easy to work with, there's just a bit of a barrier to entry learning where to start. The pinned messages cover that. If you really want to use it.

And it also lacks a WYSIWYG designer

I really want to make one. One day, perhaps.

[pastel mauve]

Don't need or want a WYSIWYG, just want to drop a text field into the approximate center of the display (to start with) and then use it as a command palette input, showing a list of command actions filtered by the input text and choosing an action with enter/arrow keys

[grave hatch]

So basically you're re-inventing the console.

Why not just use the console?

[pastel mauve]

Nope, a command palette has just a little similarity to a console but it's definitely not the same thing, or appropriate for the same UI functions. The tool I'd like to make would be a sort of simple 3D modeling tool and commands would be things like "add a cube to the scene"

Which is a great use case for a command palette, and would be a pretty clunky fit to try to use a console for that

[grave hatch]

Which you could do using the console. The console command would be "add" and you could just use "add cube" instead of forcing your users to write "a" and "to the screen" unnecessarily

Even if it's autocompleted, it's still unnecessary

[pastel mauve]

I agree that consoles are useful, but I'm really not looking for UI design advice. Just where I need to click to get a C++ source file I can start adding code from the tutorial into

[grave hatch]

Pinned messages!

[pastel mauve]

Can you be any more specific? I guess you must mean the compendium link, but this is a very large page and I'm not sure where to find the information I'm looking for

[grave hatch]

Basically the viewports have a slate widget (like slevelviewport, but that's the editor one) that you can add things to. And you'd add it there. I have no idea where or what the game version is called.

I believe the viewport client is the FGameViewportClient, though.

The slate widget creates the viewport client which in turn creates the viewport that you see.

So you should investigate what uses the FGameViewportClient and work your way back to the slate widget that that game viewport uses and hope it allows you to hook into it.

You may be able to do something via player controllers and the AHUD class, but I thihk they only deal with umg and raw rendering.

You may be able to get the game viewport from them, though.

Other than that you'll need to find something which iterates the available viewports.

Good luck 👍

Or the game instance might have something useful?¬!

[pastel mauve]

Erm. That's pretty similar to the docs page I linked to in the original question, mentioning that my problem is that I didn't know where to put the code that accesses a viewport and adds a widget to it, though the tutorial suggests that obtaining a viewport handle might be as simple as GEngine->GameViewport?

Maybe this is an editor basics thing. Where do I put that code? Where do I have to go in the editor to create or open a source file where I can put this tutorial code, and then run it e.g. on a keypress?

[grave hatch]

Well, you create a class called SYourWidget. You don't add it to the engine. You put it in your project.

Then you'd use the player controller and an enhanced input setup to interact with it because it probably won't have focus.

[pastel mauve]

Gonna need some help on what that means. Is there a makefile somewhere?

[grave hatch]

No.

[pastel mauve]

In that case, how do I add a class to the project?

[grave hatch]

If you haven't done any UE c++ before, your first port of call should be #cpp

Do you have a c++ project already?

Do you even have a project?

[pastel mauve]

I created a new project in UE5. It opened the unreal editor and visual studio. I so far followed the steps in the documentation for editing projectname.Build.cs to load slate dependencies. I've been poking around in the editor, trying to figure out where the code goes. That's about where I'm at.

[grave hatch]

Nothing to do with c++ should be done in the editor.

It should all be done in your IDE.

To add a class? Same way you add any other c++ class to a project. Create a .h and . cpp file.

[pastel mauve]

Normally there are more steps than this

Maybe I'm overcomplicating it

[grave hatch]

You are

The UE toolchain will just compile everything in your project's Source folder.

[pastel mauve]

Coming from doing some tinkering with Unity and Godot I guess I assumed that code was going to have to be attached to actors somehow. Or, failing that, that there must be some need to tell the build system explicitly what files to build and link. UE really just...builds anything and everything in the source folder? I guess then my next step is to start reading API docs for how to either poll input or add an input handler and just drop that into Source/myproject/myproject.cpp?

[grave hatch]

Correct

[pastel mauve]

Well that makes my life a lot easier then

Thank you

[grave hatch]

Though a slate widget just needs focus to accept input

You can set that through FSlateApplication::Get().SetKeyboardFocus(...) or some such

[placid plover]

About CommonButtonBase since during its initialization, it will add a UInternalCommonButtonBase to its root, and the SButton in the internal button is not in MyWidget, how can i correctly focuses to the SButton when using SetUserFocus() to the CommonButtonBase?

[grave hatch]

Get the button from UInternalCommonButtonBase.

[placid plover]

hm but its protected, how can i get it?

[grave hatch]

Is it not exposed anywhere?

If it's protected to can do a bit of a hack where you create a subclass of UInternalCommonButtonBase that has a single method ThingType GetThing() { return ProtectedThing; }

And then cast the object to that and run GetThing() on it

[placid plover]

huh? you can do that even though its not the class?

[grave hatch]

Not recommended, of course.

[placid plover]

o.o

[grave hatch]

Yes

[placid plover]

mind blown

[grave hatch]

class Base
{
 protected:
    int32 Number;
}

class UsedChild : public Base
{
  // stuff
}

class BaseHack : public Base
{
  int32 GetNumber() { return Number; }
}

UsedChild X{0};

static_cast<BaseHack&>(X).GetNumber(); // works fine

[placid plover]

one way i can think of right now is, since TakeWidget() on UInternalCommonButtonBase will return the SBox , the SButton is at the child slot of the SBox, so maybe?

// From the SBox reference
TakeWidget()->GetChildren()->GetSlotAt(0).GetWidget()

[placid plover]

😄 good to know... looks so out of the usual inheritance constraint, if we can just break it like that 😂

oh well.. not too surprised now that i remember you can make const into non-const

[grave hatch]

It's definitely a hacky hack.

Better than a private access hack, though

[placid plover]

hmm.. maybe i will get it through the hierarchy..
these hack feels so wrong 🫠

[wind temple]

how to add SViewport inside SWindow

[elfin flint]

Using StructPropertyHandle in IPropertyTypeCustomization::CustomizeHeader, how do I override the entire struct, not only one member?
Note: SetValue does work since the custom struct is a non-supported data type.

[grave hatch]

Window->SetContent?

[wind temple]

i want to get get the main viewport and duplicate or render in a slate window without render target. i tried but nothing. do you know how do i do that? my problem with render target is the anti-aliasing, it doest work on render targets :c

[grave hatch]

So you want to render the main window twice?

[wind temple]

yeah

[grave hatch]

You... can do it.

I'm not entirely sure how.

[wind temple]

i have this UGameViewportClient* ViewportClient = GEngine->GameViewport; but dont know how to translate the info to the SWindow

[grave hatch]

I think you want the viewport slate widget which actually does the rendering. I think.

(which you can get from the client)

You might be able to get the resource the game is actually rendered to and then re-use that in another widget.

[wind temple]

Thanks for your attention!

[hexed bough]

So I've been following a tutorial to make a letter-by-letter printing RichTextBlock (https://www.protowlf.com/unreal/printing-text-in-unreal/) and I got it working, but found that it doesn't quite meet my needs, it creates a default decorator and uses the first row of whatever RichTextStyleTable you give it. I'd like for it to be able to read at least 2, preferably 3 or more styles per dialogue, and in my infinite naivitë I tried replacing the single reference of the decorator with an array that's meant to be tied to the different runs in the text, but I ran into errors and as I was thinking about it I came to the conclusion that my solution wouldn't work anyway(since it's not very flexible), and now I'm kinda stumped as to how to achieve what I'm trying to achieve. If anyone has the time to give me some pointers it would be appreciated 🙏

[wind temple]

Ansering my question, i did it ```
void UMyActorComponent::OpenWindow()
{
// Assuming you want to get the viewport for the first player (index 0)
auto ViewporClient = GEngine->GameViewport->GetGameViewport()->GetViewportWidget().Pin()->GetParentWidget();

// Create a new SWindow
Window = SNew(SWindow)
    /* set all properties we got passed with the call */
    .Title(FText::FromString("WindowTitle"))
    .ClientSize(FVector2D(1920, 1080))
    .UseOSWindowBorder(true)
    .bDragAnywhere(true)
    .CreateTitleBar(true);

// Set the Viewport as the content of the SWindow
Window->SetContent(ViewporClient.ToSharedRef());


// Add our new window to the Slate subsystem (which essentially opens it)
FSlateApplication::Get().AddWindow(Window.ToSharedRef(),true);

// Make sure our new window doesn't hide behind some others
Window->BringToFront();

} ```

[ripe lava]

What is the best way to draw a material to a render target in slate?
I read froyok's article, but it seems more complicated than what I need since I'm not trying to do this from outside of slate (I'm working in a child class of SImage).
I just want to draw a material to a render target, and read it. I need it to be performant tho, since there will be a small amount of cases where I'm writing basically on tick.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[grave hatch]

Can't just you do it with a slate material brush?

And set that as the image source

FSlateMaterialBrush Brush(Your Materral)

SNew(Simage).Image(&Brush)

or so

[ripe lava]

Can you read texture values with that?
My end goal here is to read the texture value under the mouse.

[grave hatch]

Or do you actually need to read the pixels?

[ripe lava]

yes

[grave hatch]

Hmm.

Then this isn't really anything to do with slate specifically.

It's just drawing a material to a render target.

Though, you probably can sample the brush resource from your slate material brush.

[ripe lava]

Is there a good way for doing that? Last time i tried to read textures directly it turned into a mess and i gave up lul. not to mention i would need this to work for materials too.

[grave hatch]

Materials aren't texture, you can't sample them.

You need to render them first.

I mean, unless you happen to convert the material graph to c++ and fake it 😄

He has gone and overcomplicated it a lot.

Making it a component, using an entire virtual window...

Honestly, I would look at the source for node "Draw Material to Render Target"

and just copy it - or even call the bp function directly.

[ripe lava]

Yea, I'm having a look at the source to see if i can find a better way.
When I did a test run of this in BPs I used "Draw Material to Render Target", and it ATE performance when being called as often as i needed it to be. Even seemed like it caused a memory leak since my fps wouldnt return to its normal rate after.

So using it is a no go

[ripe lava]

Is there a way to draw a certain coordnate of a material to a render target? Drawing the pixel I need to a 1x1 render target would solve most of my issues.

[grave hatch]

Use UV offsets

That'd have to be part of the material.

[grave hatch]

Does the material change that often?

[ripe lava]

I'm trying to make a UI Button that only registers clicks/hovers on the opaque parts, and supports animated materials... so basically i need it to update on tick when using animated mats.

[grave hatch]

Or just don't use a material and/or use a sprite sheet that is static

Or find a programmatic way to estimate where the transparency is based on your material's algorithm.

[ripe lava]

I wouldn't be in here asking for help if i was capable of something like that lul.

I think I'm onto something with my 1x1 render target idea. I found a way to chose what pixel of the material I write. Just gotta write a func for calling "ReadFloat16Pixels()" from BP's (for prototyping) but its being a pain.

[grave hatch]

If you can't do it a good way, have bad fps 😛

[ripe lava]

Yeah... the 1x1 still runs like butt...

[oak zinc]

Is slate running on a different thread or it’s in the game thread

[grave hatch]

GT

[oak zinc]

Ah I see thanks

[oak zinc]

@grave hatch my bad actually wanted to ask if slate is rendered in another thread

[grave hatch]

The rendering happens on the render thread, updates happens on teh game thread.

[oak zinc]

so also umg is rendering on the render thread?

[grave hatch]

Yes

Probably?

[narrow terrace]

UMG isn't rendered, it's functionality is on the game thread but it's just wrapper objects for Slate widget's which as said earlier are rendered on the render thread

[obtuse prairie]

any ideas on why this could not work ? (in all scenarios the "image" input is correct)
if feels like i can only "use" it once, then it ignores

also, as soon as i try to use set style my engine crashs

[digital peak]

Somebody aware of a cookbook for slate?

[thick pasture]

No there aren’t any books for Slate or UMG to my knowledge

I wouldn’t really recommend any game development related books (at least unreal specific) either as they will most likely become outdated within a year

[digital peak]

Wouldn’t agree (because of https://www.gameenginebook.com for example) but to stay focused: Somebody know a good database for slate code snippets?

[thick pasture]

I know this will be dumb to say but the engine itself is a database of slate code snippets

The editor is made from slate so it’s extremely helpful to learn from

The UMG/Slate compendium has some slate info but not example snippets like you’re after https://github.com/YawLighthouse/UMG-Slate-Compendium

Most people use UMG for game UI and slate for editor tooling, which in those cases they just use the editor itself for code examples

(Obviously that’s not always the case, sometimes you do need a custom slate widget for game UI, but it’s usually the use case)

But due to that slate doesn’t have a lot of documentation

[thick pasture]

But yes if you do keep it extremely generalized a book like that could work, so you are right. I was mainly referring to an engine specific book, since unreal updates extremely quickly. So most code snippets would become outdated fast due to function deprecations and refactors

Yeah slate samples are sadly stretched thin, but I’ll try and keep my eye out for any good websites showing examples

[digital peak]

Thanks… totally agree

It’s the completely wrong channel but if somebody want to know what I am looking for https://github.com/michidk/Unity-Script-Collection but for Unreal Slate

[grave hatch]

The engine source + pinned messages here.

[pulsar remnant]

Does a slate widget expected to calculate it's desired size before painting?
Or can the Widget do it inside OnPaint() and invalidate layout?

[grave hatch]

Yes, it's before.

OnPaint is actually const so it shoudln't be motifying itself in any way in that function.

The right place to calc it, I think, is in SlatePrepass()

[pulsar remnant]

So do you mean ComputeDesiredSize() or CustomPrepass() ?

Also I think I've seen an example of a widget invalidating itself at OnPaint() with const_cast

Does invalidate triggers another OnPaint() regardless of invalidation reason?
If it doesn't, why I'm not supposed to do it in OnPaint()

[grave hatch]

I don't know whether OnPaint is triggered by any invalidation.

[grave hatch]

I guess CustomPrepass is the one. Make sure to set bHasCustomPrepass.

[pulsar remnant]

SlatePrepass() calls CustomPrepass() (if enabled), calculates children (if have any), then finally calls CacheDesiredSize() which calls ComputeDesiredSize()

So why I need to calculate in CustomPrepass()?
As far as I see, the only difference is CustomPrepass() is called before child calculations

[grave hatch]

Override compute desired size then?!

[pulsar remnant]

Don't get me wrong tho, I'm just trying to understand

[narrow terrace]

I did make an example project that rebuilds the border widget with heavily commented code, I hope that helps?
https://github.com/YawLighthouse/UMG-Slate-ExampleProject

[grave hatch]

Just try it and see if it works.

[pulsar remnant]

I just wrote this at the end of OnPaint() and put a log at each function

if(WidgetHeight != GetCachedGeometry().GetLocalSize().Y)
        const_cast<SNameplate*>(this)->Invalidate(EInvalidateWidgetReason::Layout);

Invalidated paint 4 times, here is the results:

With this snippet:

20:33:42   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:43   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:43   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:43   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:43   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:44   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:45   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:45   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:45   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:45   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:49   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:50   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:50   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:50   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:50   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:51   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:52   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:52   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size
20:33:52   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:33:52   Warning      LogTemp         Compute Desired Size

Without this snippet:

20:32:02   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:32:04   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:32:09   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint
20:32:11   Warning      LogTemp         On Paint

So it turns out invalidating layout causes re-paint

I will put size calculation code to ComputeDesiredSize()

---

But the thing is my code paints stuff based on some conditions, for example

if(PaintA)
{
    PaintA();
    CurrentHeight += SizeA.Y;
}

if(PaintB)
{
    PaintB();
    CurrentHeight += SizeB.Y;
}

It doesn't feels very efficient to check these in both functions

Any suggestions?

[true hearth]

what's the right way to have a box with a blue background and a black border? is the idea that I nest two boxes inside of each other for that?

[grave hatch]

Use SBorder?

Or overlayed SColorBlock I suppose...

[pulsar remnant]

Just an idea:
Can't you create a child to whatever panel you are planning to use (for example canvas) and paint your allocated area in OnPaint() for this? Or would you be overwriting your childs paint?

I know it's pretty much unnecessary, I'm just trying to see what's possible

[pulsar remnant]

Can a slate widget choose to not invalidate itself every frame?
Just like wrapping with invalidation box

[grave hatch]

Try it

[true hearth]

I ended up nesting two SBorders together -- the outer with a padding of BorderThickness. having written a lot of HTML/CSS, I'm suprised that there isn't something more obvious for this, but so it goes 🤷‍♂️

[silver tide]

Can you use a blueimplementable event as a function for a slate button im adding to the details panel in c++

[true hearth]

does anyone have an example of how to use a custom font with an STextBlock?

I imported everything and it works great in the visual UMG editor but I can't figure out how to make it work with my Slate widget

[true hearth]

sigh, I figured it out. it needed an absolute path, not a relative one

[grave hatch]

No. Slate has no bp support. That would have to be umg for that.

[silver tide]

Man that sucks. So any functionality I want to do would have to be all in C++?

[grave hatch]

You can interface with bp through 3rd party stuff. You could, for instance, add a delegate to a subsystem that is blueprint subscribable.

Then trigger the delegate from slate.

[ripe lava]

Hey, Any idea why this might be happening?
https://imgur.com/a/o7iCN5K

[grave hatch]

Are you using widget components?

[ripe lava]

Nope

[ripe lava]

The confusing part is the crash only happens when i stop PIE while the actor is still ticking the "Render" function.
If i delete the actor first, it doesnt crash.

[grave hatch]

Which actor?

[ripe lava]

This one

The widget its setting the image on is just a userwidget with an SImage to see if the render worked.

[grave hatch]

You need to stop do something 9n actor destroy maybe?

Maybe check if the render object is valid before sending it to that tick method.

[ripe lava]

Nope, Still crashes.
The crash is being caused by the Slate3DRenderer trying to create a SharedRef to itself and i guess its getting GC'd before it can do that? Idk how to stop that or if i even can.
I think thats what this line is trying to do: // Enqueue a command to keep "this" alive. InRHICmdList.EnqueueLambda([Self = SharedThis(this)](FRHICommandListImmediate&){}); I could be wrong.

This is where it crashes: /** * Converts a shared pointer to a shared reference. The pointer *must* be valid or an assertion will trigger. * * @return Reference to the object */ // NOTE: The following is an Unreal extension to standard shared_ptr behavior [[nodiscard]] FORCEINLINE TSharedRef< ObjectType, Mode > ToSharedRef() && { // If this assert goes off, it means a shared reference was created from a shared pointer that was nullptr. // Shared references are never allowed to be null. Consider using TSharedPtr instead. check( IsValid() ); <- CRASHES HERE. return TSharedRef< ObjectType, Mode >( MoveTemp( *this ) ); }

Not that it probably matters but this is 5.2.

[grave hatch]

What's the actual error message?

[ripe lava]

The Slate3DRenderer class was being GC'd before it could call that function.
Also not a crash, just hitting a bunch of checks. (I know i said crash, I misspoke (mistyped?))
I think I fixed it tho.

Changing this line delete Renderer; in the destructor of the resources class to BeginCleanup(Renderer); seems to have fixed it.
That's what I get for copying engine code (from SRetainerBox) and expecting it to work the same for my use case.

The reassuring comment above it didn't help either lul.
Really made me not want to doubt it.

    {
        // Note not using deferred cleanup for widget renderer here as it is already in deferred cleanup
        if (WidgetRenderer)
        {
            delete WidgetRenderer;
        }
    }```

[grave hatch]

A check is basically a crash 😛

And I see. Good info! I guess they manage the widget renderer in some other way.

[magic beacon]

https://youtu.be/xOflQbEfU_E?si=8VIHxZEdXdtOoP2K

[magic beacon]

Hello there,
I want to create a UI like shown in the link
But I am rather new to UI and I don't know more about how to create UI like.
I do have some knowledge and experience creating some UI using UMG and this is kind of 3D UI which i never create before and not finding anything on the internet.
Please anyone help to get completed my task.
Thanks!

[hearty lantern]

hey guys I am facing this issue
Error C2679 binary '=': no operator found which takes a right-hand operand of type 'TSharedPtr<WidgetType,ESPMode::ThreadSafe>' (or there is no acceptable conversion) ProjectEagle D:\EpicGames\UE_5.3\Engine\Source\Runtime\SlateCore\Public\Widgets\DeclarativeSyntaxSupport.h 937

while compiling anyone know how to solve this one

[grave hatch]

1. https://tackytortoise.github.io/2022/06/24/common-slacker-issues.html#error-list

2. What's the definition of MenuWidget?