Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

[Kelreth]

@Kelreth

Hey! Fairly new to able so they’re probably easy-to-solve, but I’ve got three quick questions, would greatly appreciate if anyone could help me with them

So I’m trying to create a Fireball that needs to be cast (in this example 0.7s) and after that fires it’s Projectile (if the cast was not interrupted).
How I’m doing that currently (any better solutions, especially when I want to modify cast-times in-game later?):

Have an Ability activate upon Input that starts a 0.7s long Ability. At 0.6999 I spawn an Actor that has a Sphere Collider and the Particle System attached.
If the Collider touches another Character a second Activity is played for 0.0001s that deals damage and plays a passive “Burn” ability on the target hit.

Soooo, to my questions:

1. How could I go about having an Ability that I can activate DURING the Fireballs cast-time but that would NOT cancel it’s cast? For example let the player activate an Ability where he teleports a set distance or let him move (quicker) while casting the Spell.

2. About moving while casting: What would be the best solution to make players move at only lets say 20% of their speed while casting any Ability? Slow them down manually in “On Ability Start” and then speed them up again in “On Ability End”? Or applying a passive ability that lasts until the cast is done? Or maybe use Gameplay Tags in some fashion?

3. About the “Burn” passive. I would like it to apply a completely separate Burn instead of Stacking and/or refreshing the Duration of the old one. So if the target player has a Burn on him that’s still lasting 3 seconds I want that Burn to stay untouched and apply a new, completely independent Burn, even though it comes from the same Fireball Ability.
   I haven’t quite figured out a way to do this since the checkboxes under “Passive” only allow for Stacking and Refreshing mechanics (as far as I know?).

Okay so I’ve found a workaround for 1) just make the ability that will be activated during another ability passive
and for 2) ive already listed some solutions, i guess i’ll just try around with that and take whatever works best

but does anyone have a solution for my third question? is this something Able supports or do I have to write my own logic for that?
and about casting Abilities: what if one player has - lets say - a powerUp that lets him cast 50% quicker for a short amount of time.
That would mean reducing the length of an Able Ability by 50% for one player but not for the other. Any way to achieve this within Able?
As far as i can tell you can only “get Length” of an Ability, but never set it (in Blueprints). Any chance this will ever be introduced? (maybe as a “length scale”?)

The only current solution I would find is to craft a custom Cast-time System and fire a 0.0001 second Able Ability at the end of the cast.
However that would make me have to do all the networked Animations, Sounds, Particles etc…, which Able does so beautifully, myself.