In my game, when the player starts the level, a cutscene is played (or skipped, if there is an existing save file). The cutscene is a widget that gets added to the viewport on beginplay. However, since by the time beginplay runs, part of the level is already loaded, the player can see a very low detail version of the landscape for a second before it adds the widget and plays the video.
Here is what I’m trying to achieve:
The play button is pressed
The loading screen appears
The cutscene plays
The cutscene ends by fading out and the gameplay level starts up immediately
I’ve tried several methods so far but they either flat out didn’t work or only started loading the level after the cutscene ended. I’ve tried looking up level streaming but could only find ways where the level is loaded while the cutscene plays which is not necessarily what I want as the level might not finish loading during that time.
For the first issue where by the time beginplay runs, part of the level is already visible. You could create a widget in the level itself on BeginPlay, that shows “a blank screen” for a small period then calls an event on your Cutscene actor to start that sequence and hide the blank screen.
The other issue of the cutscene finishing before the level is completely loaded could be resolved by simply extending the duration of the cutscene (eg after finishing the video, hold for a known ‘safe’ time period). Or better would be to receive an event when the level has finished loaded. Now I dont believe that event is possible, however there should be some event that you can listen to or activate once you are confident that things are probably OK. For example I have an app that creates and attaches objects to actors in the scene (this takes some time). So I send a message whenever each actor has all their objects added (I am ready msg), I then bind to these events and just count down all actors readiness state. After this has counted down I know that my main actors are ready and I can then send a message to remove the widget and start play.
Your first suggestion is what is happening right now. The cutscene is not a separate actor but a widget that is added to the viewport in the level blueprint’s beginplay.
Your second suggestion would also not work since it would lead to having a black screen between the cutscene and the gameplay starting which is not how I want it to work.
Counting down the actors would also not make sense. By the time beginplay runs the player character is already in an okay state (otherwise the camera showing the level wouldn’t work) and it is the only important actor in the scene to check.