4.8 API Change to GetDefaultPawnClassForController

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

The virtual keyword has been removed from AGameMode::GetDefaultPawnClassForController

I used to have a custom implementation of this:



UClass* AGGameMode::GetDefaultPawnClassForController(AController* InController)
{
	// see if the pawn class is set on the controller, if so use the class it wants for the pawn
	IControllerInterface* c = Cast<IControllerInterface>(InController);
	if (c && c->DefaultPawnClassForController)
	{
		return c->DefaultPawnClassForController;
	}

	return Super::GetDefaultPawnClassForController(InController);
}

I use this to allow the AI and player controllers to spawn the pawn which suites them. How can I work around this?

2

Yeah quite a lot has changed in GameMode - including the removal of ‘DefaultTimer’ as well, and ‘ChoosePlayerStart’.

I’m waiting on 4.8’s full release to see how ShooterGame in particular gets around this stuff. I haven’t really had a chance to look at it yet.

3

Oh ****, we have overriden both of those functions and they are absolutely necessary for our game. I hope they offer us decent alternatives. This will be the second time they’ve completely revamped AGameMode. I hope it all works out well, and not like they forgot to make stuff virtual like they did in 4.7, which will only be fixed in 4.8.

4

You should raise your concern on the 4.8 Preview dedicated page in order to get a feedback on Epic on how they planned to manage this. This may avoid missing stuff like Shammah said…

5

In order to allow Blueprints to implement functions like ChoosePlayerStart, GetDefaultPawnClassForController, and a great many more I had to make them BlueprintNativeEvents. Unfortunately that meant the C++ implementations of those functions are no longer named ChoosePlayerStart (for example), and instead the virtual you need to override is ChoosePlayerStart_Implementation. Otherwise it will work as before. This will be covered in the upgrade notes for 4.8 once the full release comes out, unfortunately we don’t have a preview version of the upgrade notes at this point.

As for DefaultTimer I chose to get rid of it as for games that don’t make use of it, it was just a wasteful timer ticking away for no reason. And for games that do make use of it, you can trivially redefine it in your own header and ideally give it a more appropriate name.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

6

ok so it’s an easy upgrade.

Thanks for the update.

7

For anyone wondering how to fix the DefaultTimer, the ShooterGame simply added the following function:



	virtual void PreInitializeComponents() override;

	/** Handle for efficient management of DefaultTimer timer */
	FTimerHandle TimerHandle_DefaultTimer;





void AShooterGameMode::PreInitializeComponents()
{
	Super::PreInitializeComponents();

	GetWorldTimerManager().SetTimer(TimerHandle_DefaultTimer, this, &AShooterGameMode::DefaultTimer, GetWorldSettings()->GetEffectiveTimeDilation(), true);
}