Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

Community Marketplace
61

Sounds good. The Rocket Launcher / Fireball all have their own collision volumes setup which then just calls some applies a passive ability that does a query, plays a particle effect, and then damages entities. Pretty simple, but yea, feel free to dig into the example projects to see how I have them setup.

62

Can we get a tutorial on having a character with multiple abilities at the same time with different action mapping, Like dodge, and attacking, and blocking.

Also it would be nice if you would do a tutorial on overriding the function of able.

63

The Shooter Game example actually shows mapping different abilities at run-time. It’s very simple to do. Let’s say you have 3 Inputs (using your example, Dodge, Attack, and Block) - when the Dodge Input is pressed, you would activate your dodge ability. Attack input, activate the attack ability, etc. Basically all that is changing is the Ability Object you are passing when you create the Ability Context, everything else stays the same.

With regard to overriding the function of Able, the latest video (showing how to create Chain Lightning) goes over overriding a blueprint method. Or did you mean some other type of overriding?

64

I’ve just saw the Shooter example and that’s answered my question regarding multiple inputs, but now i have another problem. I cannot get my ability to work, although i made sure it received the input and i have the ability set up exactly of how you did on the combo tutorial. To give you more information i have noticed that my animations doesn’t play if i put animation mode to anything other than Single Node.
Also What should i include in the (State Machine Name) and (Ability state name).

And regarding the overriding since you’ve uploaded a new video i will go over it and i will see it and i will ask you if anything comes up.

65

Your Ability doesn’t execute? Or it’s simply not playing the Animation? If it doesn’t execute, just check your Output log as Able will tell you why it couldn’t start an Ability (No Target, On Cooldown, etc).

You’ll have to use Single Node unless you are playing a montage (in which case you should be able to use Dynamic Montage), or you setup the Ability Animation Node - which walks you through what those State Machine / Ability State names are. :slight_smile:

66

I got this “LogAble:Error: GetAbilityObjectFromClass was passed a null class. Check your parameters!”

67

That means you didn’t pass in a valid Class (Ability) to GetAbilityObjectFromClass. There will be a dropdown on that method in the Blueprint where you can select the Ability class manually, or, if you are passing in a class ID (like I do in the shooter game example) - you’ll need to make sure you expose that variable and then set it once you drop that Actor in your level.

68

Ok, so i was able to get the ability to work when i setup a default class in the blueprint, but i cannot set the ability from the level editor like you did on the tutorial. any idea why?

69

There will be a small eye icon next to the variable (by default its closed so it looks like a semi-circle). Click that. That makes it public/exposed and then you’ll be able to see it and change it when you drop your actor in a level.

70

I didn’t explain clearly, i can change the actor’s ability from the level editor because the variable is set to global. But what ever value i choose, it only execute the default value. which is in the blueprints.

71

Are you getting that value and passing it in to GetAbilityObjectFromClass? If you download the Shooter Game example (link is on the store page), you can see exactly how I have all this setup and where you may be missing a step.

72

I do, that whats bugging me.
I’ve also checked the shooter Demo and i’m not missing anything either.

Btw Do you have a discord channel? so it’s easier to discuss the problems?

73

You can add me on Skype @

74

sent you an invitation

75

Update: so @ has been super helpful, and apparently the problem was from my project and not from able system.
Again i would like to thank @ for being helpful and patience with me.

76

@

Hello again, I just purchased this, and let me first say that I’m loving this so far! :smiley: This is likely the best thing I’ve ever bought on the Marketplace, bar none! This is truly amazing!
That said, I have some editor related “quality of life” feature requests that I’d like to make.

  • Show collapsed folder structure when clicking “Set Preview Asset” by default
    I’m using 4.15.0, clicking "Set Preview Asset nearly crashes the editor because it displays ALL the mesh assets in my project in a “flat-view”, trying to render the thumbnails is resource intensive and clogs texture streaming memory. (which doesn’t get cleared unless Ue4 is restarted). It would be nice to have the “skeletal mesh only” and “list view” as default, along with the default to show the collapsed folder structure instead of this current “flat-view”

  • Highlight or Outline of the selected track:
    It would be really nice to get some visual feedback on which track is currently highlighted besides looking at the properties alone.

  • Display Animation name in the track:
    Currently it just reads “PlayAnimation” I think it would be beneficial for it to read: “PlayAnimation: animation_name”
    (this would be very helpful to those building combo systems that feature several subtle variations of animations)

  • Task Timeline display options:
    Currently, the timeline doesn’t have an indication of “frames”. I understand why, because not every ability is going to have animation tied to it. However, it would be very useful when an animation is added, for those “frame perfect” games like fighters to have frame markers.

  • Task Timeline Snapping:
    On that note, precise incremental dragging of tasks that snap align to seconds, frames, and when snapping to the start/end of another task it would be good visual feedback to display a long vertical line along the whole track editor for alignment.

That’s all I can think of right now, as I’m only just starting to really get into this, and I’m sleep deprived lol
Thank you again for this amazing contribution!

77

@

Oh, I forgot! We have a “turn to” option in able, and I’m hoping that “move to” will eventually be added.

I understand there are many different ways to move a character to a target, perhaps provide the following options.

  • Lerp to (does what it says)
  • Move to (AI controller takes over, and the character navigates to the target)
  • Velocity to (uses acceleration to reach target)
  • Force to (uses force to reach to target)

Also:

  • Timeline scrubbing
    would be nice to scrub along the timeline and see which frame of the animation your at when lining up tasks

  • Display “Set GameplayTag” name in the track:
    Currently it just reads “Set GameplayTag” I think it would be beneficial for it to read: “Set GameplayTag: tag_name”

78

[MENTION=33476]Aumaan Anubis[/MENTION]

I’m glad you were able to grab it while it was on sale, I know you’ve been trying to pick it up for a while. :slight_smile: Thanks for all the suggestions, I really like the Quality of Life things like Displaying referenced asset names for things like Play Animation, Set Gameplay Tag (I’ll probably add it to Play Particle, Play Sound, and Remove Gameplay Tag as well). I also meant to do the highlighting your currently selected task but it fell off for more important bug fixes. I’ll see if I can’t get back to it.

Regarding Select Preview Asset, the performance on that guy is scary but it’s unfortunately out of my control (I simply call UE4’s Asset Selector class). I believe I have it set to show folders by default, but for whatever reason that option never seems to take. I’ll have to dive into it a bit more. In the meantime, there’s a bunch of options you can set to narrow down which assets it’ll try and load in the preview window. That seems to help quite a bit (i.e. turn off static meshs if you know you’re only going to be loading Blueprints as preview models). But, again, I’ll poke at it some more.

The Frame Perfect stuff and Move to things are stuff I’ve traditionally stayed away from since they can get very complex very quickly, but I’ll do some investigation. :slight_smile:

79

@

Thanks for the reply, glad to see such good support for the plugin, I look forward to any future updates to come :smiley:

80

I posted on the marketplace page but I’ll post here too:

“Would there be a way to blend two animations together using just this plugin? Like, if I wanted to have the character attack while running, could I do that in the plugins editor? Two separate animations, attack animation and run animation.”

I’m pretty much trying to blend animations using the ones I have without a state machine and would like to just use the plugin.