Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

ExtraLifeMatt · March 19, 2019, 4:28pm

Pablo1517:

I have a problem with cooking the game while using Able. Apparently it makes UE4 build editor stuff when packaging a game (so no editor code there) and we get a bunch of errors.
In
Able.uplugin
Somethnig like this exists:
"Plugins": 
{
"Name": "GameplayTagsEditor",
"Enabled": true
}
]
And we aren’t sure if this isn’t causing the problem.
Because for example in
AbleCore.Build.cs
you have this if
if (Target.bBuildEditor == true)
{
...
PrivateDependencyModuleNames.Add("GameplayTagsEditor");
}
Here is a log from Unreal Build Tool thrown out from Packaging process:
UnrealBuildTool.GuardedMain: Command line: "D:\MyProject\MyProjectEngine\Engine\ - Pastebin.com

EDIT:
Additionally I just now went to editor->Settings->Plugins, Found GameplayTagsEditor plugin and clicked “Package” only to get instantly interrupted by an error saying this
UATHelper: Package Plugin Task (Windows): ERROR: Engine module 'Engine\Plugins\Marketing\Able\Source\AbleCore\AbleCore.Build.cs' should not depend on game module 'D:\RogueOvercooked\GameplayTagsEditor\HostProject\Plugins\GameplayTagsEditor\Source\GameplayTagsEditor\GameplayTagsEditor.Build.cs'
UATHelper: Package Plugin Task (Windows): (see D:\UE4_Projects\RogueEngine\Engine\Programs\AutomationTool\Saved\Logs\UBT-UE4Editor-Win64-Development.txt for full exception trace)
UATHelper: Package Plugin Task (Windows): Took 2,2769716s to run UnrealBuildTool.exe, ExitCode=5

You can likely just move GameplayTagsEditor to AbleEditor.build.cs. GameplayTags used to have some weird dependencies even if you were just using the simple data types.

If I remove this from AbleCore.Build.cs



PrivateDependencyModuleNames.Add("GameplayTagsEditor");

and just add that reference in AbleEditor.Build.cs



            PrivateDependencyModuleNames.AddRange(
                new string]
                {
                    // ...
                    "GameplayTagsEditor",
                }
                );

It seems to build fine. Give that a shot and let me know if you have any issues.

Pablo1517 · March 19, 2019, 4:46pm

It builds fine by us too. It’s the packaging that’s problematic. The packaging process starts building for cooking and suddenly starts compiling editor code for no reason.

EDIT: We’re trying to cook now an empty project with just able to confirm if it really is the problem.

Pablo1517 · March 19, 2019, 5:24pm

FALSE ALARM.
We confirmed it was one of the other plugins and NOT Able that prevented cooking our game.

Thank you for your response and sorry for the trouble.

ExtraLifeMatt · March 19, 2019, 7:05pm

Awesome. Glad you guys got things working.

anonymous_user_1b73adcf · March 26, 2019, 4:51am

@Pablo1517 Pretty much nailed it but to elaborate:

Able was built as my replacement for Gameplay Ability System since that system was heavily built around Paragon at the time and it was really difficult to quickly throw together a simple Ability. That doesn’t mean the two systems (Able and GAS) can’t work side by side, but it was definitely meant as a way to replace GAS.

You can create Abilities at runtime, but you would have to do it in C++. However, Able allows for various runtime parameters so if you can create a basic framework of an Ability (I know I need to play some animation and then do a query and apply some amount of damage), then you can use those runtime parameters to fill in the details (play X animation, use this logic for my query, and then here’s the damage based on my stats/etc).

And yes, you can an unlimited amount of Passives active. The whole Active vs Passive separation is entirely a design one that fits with most games, but under the hood the two are treated almost identically.

Thanks for the elaboration @. I’m taking my time figuring out how I want to use this plugin, but the end goal is to use C++ and be able to create abilities at runtime. I’m hoping to use Able as an interpreter for a domain specific language. Abilities will be able to be created with that language and then executed using Able (all without recompiling).

I’m still inspecting the Able codebase and trying to figure out how I should go about constructing the DSL still. It looks like I should create some generic UAblAbility classes and then programmatically add tasks to the m_Tasks property based on what is written with the DSL. After creating the ability, it also looks like there is a validator that can be used to check for things like circular dependencies. That doesn’t seem too complicated, but as the author of the plugin do you have any tips/suggestions for my use case?

I’m probably not going to make the DSL too open ended. A single component of an ability may be a group of components that all do something. There may also be a chain of Able abilities that make up the ability that will be expressed with the DSL as well. I’d like to support things similar to the chain lightning tutorial, except the ability will be created at runtime. That’ll take a bit of thought to get figured out, but it’s probably possible.

ExtraLifeMatt · March 26, 2019, 2:00pm

Decriment:

Thanks for the elaboration @. I’m taking my time figuring out how I want to use this plugin, but the end goal is to use C++ and be able to create abilities at runtime. I’m hoping to use Able as an interpreter for a domain specific language. Abilities will be able to be created with that language and then executed using Able (all without recompiling).

I’m still inspecting the Able codebase and trying to figure out how I should go about constructing the DSL still. It looks like I should create some generic UAblAbility classes and then programmatically add tasks to the m_Tasks property based on what is written with the DSL. After creating the ability, it also looks like there is a validator that can be used to check for things like circular dependencies. That doesn’t seem too complicated, but as the author of the plugin do you have any tips/suggestions for my use case?

I’m probably not going to make the DSL too open ended. A single component of an ability may be a group of components that all do something. There may also be a chain of Able abilities that make up the ability that will be expressed with the DSL as well. I’d like to support things similar to the chain lightning tutorial, except the ability will be created at runtime. That’ll take a bit of thought to get figured out, but it’s probably possible.

Nope. You pretty much have it figured out. Just make sure the Hash for the ability name is being calculated properly as that is used as an identifier everywhere. If you are creating a new object and then setting the name, you’ll need to add a method or something to recalculate that hash. That’s the only “gotcha” I can think of off the top of my head.

jwyuen · March 26, 2019, 4:08pm

Hey
I am doing something new now.
I am gonna try and put this into AI Behaviour Toolkit So instead of play animations it will play ability
What do you think?

Jesse

ExtraLifeMatt · March 26, 2019, 4:27pm

Sounds good. I haven’t used that plugin myself, but it should be do-able I would imagine.

jwyuen · March 26, 2019, 4:38pm

well it works now Woop
You should check it out. Awesome and easy to use to make any AI!!!

jwyuen · March 28, 2019, 6:27pm

haha ,
You a Genius, doing a Lot of research and planning. Game is gonna be just all Gameplay Tags and Data tables!
Since there is so much involved in this game, Like only certain things can kill different things
Vampires can only be decapitated and Ghosts can be attacked by Iron or salt for example, Using Gameplay Tag containers in the datatables in order to get the info on the enemies
Gonna make a couple of Actor components and BPI also and base all characters including enemies and players off base character in it

Cheers

jwyuen · March 29, 2019, 9:21pm

Hi ,

Reporting a Bug:
Made a Base Ability and everytime i make a Child of that Base, It Crashes UE4.
You know about this?

LoginId:fccb8f874804dfd45b73dd83fc7fffda
EpicAccountId:506d6d1a590d441cbefea319a8150060

You do not have any debugging symbols required to display the callstack for this crash.

Jesse

ExtraLifeMatt · March 30, 2019, 2:46pm

Does that Ability have a Custom Task? Or is it just a plain Ability and you’re inheriting from it?

jwyuen · March 31, 2019, 10:05am

Its got animation and stuff in no custom task

xermao · April 1, 2019, 2:35pm

I found that a lot of function is unavailable in AblAbility’s blueprint.Is there any way to call get controller,or get all actor of class,BlueprintFunctionLibrary?

ExtraLifeMatt · April 1, 2019, 2:37pm

I’m looking into this. Trying to repro it locally.

You should be able to get those through the Context.

Context->GetSelfActor->GetWorld->GetAllActorsOfClass

xermao · April 1, 2019, 2:48pm

GetWorld is not unavailable in blueprint, and I don’t want to use c++

ExtraLifeMatt · April 1, 2019, 2:56pm

Bah, I see how they want that setup. I’ll pass in the world context object which will expose that.

EDIT: What methods are you specifically trying to access the world from?

xermao · April 2, 2019, 10:22am

GetGameInstance,GetPlayerController,GetAllActorOfClass,GetAllActorWithTag.

May be this is a bug?I make a collision task in able,the collison channel set to my custom channle named “enemy”,of course I set all enemy to the this channel.
then I override On Collsion Event function, when the function called,in Hit Entities,it never get enemy.I set collision task channel back to WorldDynamic,and it works fine.
In my enemy blueprint nothing is in WorldDynamic channel,they all in “enemy” channle.
If I set Query source to Target Actor,when Target Actor is null, it will crash editor in
AActor* SourceActor = m_QueryLocation.GetSourceActor(*Context.Get());
I know I’m in a wrong way to use query task,but how ever it should not crash,you can give a message to tell user it’s wrong.

ExtraLifeMatt · April 2, 2019, 1:24pm

xermao:

GetGameInstance,GetPlayerController,GetAllActorOfClass,GetAllActorWithTag.

May be this is a bug?I make a collision task in able,the collison channel set to my custom channle named “enemy”,of course I set all enemy to the this channel.
then I override On Collsion Event function, when the function called,in Hit Entities,it never get enemy.I set collision task channel back to WorldDynamic,and it works fine.
In my enemy blueprint nothing is in WorldDynamic channel,they all in “enemy” channle.

If I set Query source to Target Actor,when Target Actor is null, it will crash editor in
AActor* SourceActor = m_QueryLocation.GetSourceActor(*Context.Get());
I know I’m in a wrong way to use query task,but how ever it should not crash,you can give a message to tell user it’s wrong.

I would double check your collision settings. Sounds like somehow your enemies are getting put on the WorldDynamic layer. Able just passes things along to the underlying collision query call, but I’ll double check to make sure.
So, normally I actually prefer crashing than limping along. The crash is the message, in a way. However, this case may be a bit overzealous. I’ll see if I can make it more forgiving.

jwyuen · April 4, 2019, 6:17pm

Hi how far are you on the update?