Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

You could just use the “On Actor Overlap” on the Projectile to apply damage (or even run an ability that plays some effect and applies damage there). Basically just treat it like a normal projectile.

Custom Task is a pure Blueprint driven task that behaves like it’s C++ counter parts.

You can override / use various BP methods to build the task:

  • OnTaskStart is called when the Task begins. You would want to do any task setup here (You can use GetActorsForTask to get a list of all actors your task should affect according to how the user set it up in the ability editor). If your Task is just a single frame, you’d do the logic here as well.
  • OnTaskTick is called when the Task is running.
  • OnTaskEnd is called when the Task is completed. You would do any clean up logic here, if needed.
  • IsDone is a logic check, that by default, just checks if the task time has been met but you can add special logic.
  • IsSingleFrame let’s you return true if you want the task to be a single frame (so OnTaskTick won’t be called), or if it’s a multi-frame long task.
  • GetTaskRealm let’s you modify what realm you want the task to be (Client, Server, or Both).
  • CreateScratchPad let’s you return a UAblCustomTaskScratchPad based class that you can use to store any state information (various variables, actors, etc). These scratch pads are allocated per ability execution.
  • GetTaskCategory is what category you want the task to appear under in the Ability editor (you can use ‘|’ to do sub category: MainCategory|SubCategory).
  • GetTaskName is the name of the Task in the Ability Editor.
  • GetDescriptiveTaskName is a more elaborate version of GetTaskName that is built at runtime when the Tasks are placed in the Ability Editor (e.g, “PlayAnimation:<animation name>” is the descriptive name).
  • GetTaskDesciption is just a one or two line summary of what the task does. This appears in the Task selection dialog at the bottom of the window.
  • GetTaskColor is just the default color you want to assign to this Task.

Able isn’t going to do movement / pushing / etc for you. It’s more a tool you can use to help tie animations / sounds / particle effects / damage all together into a single discrete asset - which we normally just refer to as “Abilities”. While you can certainly do a shooter with Able (I even did a quick tutorial using Shooter Game, you can see the tutorials here ). I will say your goal is rather ambitious, and no one tool is going to help you cobble it together. Instead, you should take things step by step. Follow some YouTube tutorials on building a 3rd party action game, add features (vaulting, climbing, interacting with buttons, etc). Don’t try to run before you can walk. Instead, eat the elephant bite by bite.