ActorComponent Construction Confusion!

[elder glacier]

Hey, I've created a C++ component called GuidComponent. The purpose of this component will be to have a persistent FGuid for an actor that can be used at runtime with a subsystem I'll be creating.

Currently im doing whats in the picture, on component Register, generate a new GUID if we have the default Invalid guid

However when I unload and load back into a level, all my GUIDs change.

I've tried also using:

• OnComponentCreated
• PostInitProperties
  But none have given the desired results</3

Is there something freaky about component creation that I'm unaware of here?

(did a thread bc I dont wanna interrupt sorry!)

[gentle juniper]

Is the Guid a UPROPERTY?

[elder glacier]

It is

[gentle juniper]

thats odd. maybe because of the instance thing

[elder glacier]

Hmm okay, ill switch to EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite to be sure and lyk, thanks for helpin out btw:)

Still generates a new GUID on level load unfortunately 💔

Interestingly, when I use PostInitProperties(with the same code as show above), every GUID is now the same and all GUIDS change to the same one again when I reboot the editor

[elder glacier]

getting desperate..... here I fuckin go experimenting again

one of these bastards gotta work

IsSelectedInEditor is disgusting to use but could work lol

Okay IsSelectedInEditor is const, probably for the best...

This give the same behaviour as PostInitProperties as I mentioned above???

[mental trail]

should probably use IsTemplate() instead of just the CDO flag

[elder glacier]

Oh nice okay! I'll give that a go when I'm back! What function would you recommend using here too?

[mental trail]

this feels more like an OnConstruction thing than registering but I'm not sure exactly... I would try to see if there are any engine examples of setting a persistent guid on an actor/comp

[elder glacier]

Nice okay, thanks for this, I'll give this a go when I'm back from work:)

[sand wedge]

onregister is fine, it will never be called on a template/archetype

there is also no need to manually add serialize as long as it is a uproperty it will be serialized

[mental trail]

in that case I think the simple thing is to just breakpoint who is calling the new guid

It feels like the IsValid check should protect against this starting in PIE as surely the property would be already present?

[sand wedge]

just make sure to test with a fresh asset, because all these manipulations with serialize could cause unexpected results

[elder glacier]

Nice thank you both! I've got a test asset, ill just nuke it and its instances to be super safe and try this all out:)

[elder glacier]

So I'm now doing this but I've also tried with using the OnRegister function, both still give me random guids when I reload the level

I get a bunch of breaks when placing a breakpoint at 31

This is with a new asset and level

[elder glacier]

So I put a breakpoint in there....

gif has gone freaky w the colours there but yeah this gets hit when I drag it around

bit hard to breakpoint and figure out why in this case 😄 Also tried to print callstacks instead of just print "hit" but that lagged me tf out

All seems to be duplicate of this however :

okay character limit fucked me there but here it is in a txt file

[silver shard]

🙀 components feels so janky and it's not helping every callback is called like 4-11 times when duplicating object. Or maybe it's just me issue and didn't find the correct way.

I tried drilling deep into this and after all of this only hope I can think of is to make the guid generation deterministic for all of those calls.
Something like grab random seed from actor guid + little something something and use that for guid generation 🤷 or just use the actor guid directly if that's suitable.

One positive about the whole thing is that actor guid seems to be fairly stable when OnRegister for example is called...