Lava level, Help!

Hi! I’m a student at a university in Sweden, SU.
I’m currently working on my very first project; a tower that slowly fills with lava as the player climbs it.
This is also where I’m stuck… We don’t get much help with our projects and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the lava rise from
the bottom of the tower to the top over time, and make it lethal to the player.
I’ve played around with the blueprints, but trial and error haven’t gotten me anywhere.
We’re working exclusively in UE4 atm, with access to most demos (for example, the lava demo im using for lava) and assets.
Please help :slight_smile:

Hi Joiny7,

Welcome to the forums! :slight_smile:

This isn’t too hard to achieve what you’re wanting to do through Blueprints.

To create the lava rising the way you like, need to create a BP with a static mesh component that is your lava rising. Depending on what you’re doing this could be a simple plane with a lava material.

Here is a simple setup for the BP that will get you started with having this plan lerp between a location A and B. One cool thing about this is that We can set and origin and endpoint variable that we can change in the editor without having to reopen the BP. The endpoint variable we can set to have a 3D widget that can be adjusted and it will move to this point every time.

Take a look at this and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

Here in the timeline you will make a new Float variable that you can set the beginning time to 0 and 0. Add another key for the end time and set it to the 1 for value and [your time length] for Time. Also make sure to set the length (mine is 10) for the amount of time you want it to take to get from the origin point of the BP to the end point.

Final result with the endpoint that you can move in the editor.

For the damage and other effects to hurt the player you could can use a Post process volume attached to move with your BP so that it damages the player and will do a visual effect for the damage on the screen.

I hope this helps! :slight_smile:

Tim

Hi again!
Ive succeeded in making the lava move as I want, but i cant seem to get the lava to kill you when you touch it.
Help<3?

Hi,

Wouldnt a “pain” volume or a “kil z” volume (if instant death is desired) be better suited?

Cheers,
Klaus

I tried a kill z volume, but i couldnt get it to fit the lava shape (which is round) and rise with it as the lava rose.

If you want to do damage to the player you can use the “PainCausingVolume” This has a lot of other neat attributes like slowing down the character.

If you just want to kill them out right you could either crank the damage way up on entry for the PainCausingVolumes. Or possibly even animate a KillZ volume with your lava mesh.

Hope this helps.

@KVogler:

These are definitely good starting points.

@joiny7:

The killz volume would be good if you want the instant death player is destroyed. This could be placed below your lava and set to move along with your Lava mesh.

The pain causing volume will require more setup, but will give you better results if you don’t want the player to to die instantly. You will need to setup how the pain causing volume affects the player through BPs to tell it that when the player is inside the volume the health is reduced.

I hope this helps!

Tim

Hi, i’m updating this thread with my question because it was left exactly where i’m stuck. I’m trying to achieve the same kind of blueprint with rising water, but I can’t get my volume to move along with my blueprint. I have just attached the volume to the blueprint in the outliner, but it is not moving.

Dont attach it to the water as a separate actor. Make the volume a part of the water actor blueprint.

But aren’t volumes unsupported in blueprints?

I think a more interesting challenge, and I’m waiting to see what you come up with since it will be relevant to me, is what you will do to make rising lava visually correct as it passes all the objects that the player was climbing. Doing static fluids in UE4 is fairly straightforward but getting them to properly flow over surfaces, even in a slapdash and unrealistic way, is a really interesting challenge.

Hmmm. At least trigger volumes are reported to have been spotted in BPs :slight_smile:
And if all fails, a trigger volume could be used here (a bit awkward, but would work).