Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Submitted Able v3.16, notes below:

• Added an option in Able Settings to force ability activation when coming from the server. This skips the “CanActivateAbility” check entirely. It’s enabled by default. (h/t @JSwigart )
• Passive Abilities now support channeling.
• Fixed a crash with Canceling an Ability (h/t @JSwigart )
• Changed Cancel Ability Task to always call into Blueprints first (so users have the first say to cancel an Ability, followed by Tags, then finally checking the provided Ability on the Task).

As always; please let me know if you run into any issues.

[MarGon]

Normally the actor itself is pointing down X (if you add an arrow component, you can see that). However a bunch of the default meshes in UE4 are authored to point down Y and so required a rotation to make it match the direction of the Actor. Again, this is a non-issue if you author your mesh to point down X, or you setup the mesh component in a blueprint actor and Able can just instantiate that rather than trying to cobble together an actor from bits and pieces (e.g. just a static mesh).

I suggest to make the preview component rotation yaw -90 by default. all the assets on the marketplace are setup like this. if you don’t do it, its gonna make a terrible first impression after buying the plugin.

[MarGon]

The animation arrow button “Use Selected Asset From Content Browser” is not working. drag and drop neither and even selecting it manualy doenst work. (4.23)

it just works if you select the animation when you create the task. that means you allways have to type in the name manualy or copy it in and then you can not change the animation unless you remove the task and start over again. its driving me crazy. especially if you have tons of animations associated to the skeleton you work with. its a real workflow issue to me.

Update: It does work with montages.

[MarGon]

here is an other bug:
when renaming abilities while having some open will cause crashes very fast as soon as you do a few clicks somewhere. its a very reliable crash. can get it crash under 1min but still found no pattern to reproduce it. sidenote: the abilities have branches but they do not reference on of the renamed

[MarGon]

here are a few questions:

1. i tried to get a combo working with animations that transition when they branching like in the combo tutorial video. so i setup the state machine like in the tutorial on the documentation page. but even tho he plays the animation in the state machine there is no blending at all. same result as normal animations or montages. i tried to uncheck stop on interrupt because i thought it might just cancel the animation but it didn’t do anything for this case. is there any hidden checkbox, or a hidden setup in the anim blueprint that i might have missed or is this be a bug?

2. is there any way to debug the targeting? i didn’t got the turn to task work with the targeting, always resulted in wired rotations. i got it working with a collision query task at the beginning of each ability tho. but still i think with targeting this would require less setup.

appart from the rough start it looks very promising. creating a custom task was very easy what is important to customize it to your own needs. i really hope its possible to get animation blending for branching to work.

[MarGon]

here is an other bug:
after restarting the engine the custom task i added in the time line in every ability is gone and left is just an empty task.
yes i saved the abiliy before closing the editor and the task was doing what it was supposed to do in the game but after restart it doenst do it anymore.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

@MarGon

I suggest to make the preview component rotation yaw -90 by default. all the assets on the marketplace are setup like this. if you don’t do it, its gonna make a terrible first impression after buying the plugin.

I initially thought of doing that, but then you’d have the opposite problem. Maybe it’s the lesser of two evils though.

@MarGon

The animation arrow button “Use Selected Asset From Content Browser” is not working. drag and drop neither and even selecting it manualy doenst work. (4.23)

it just works if you select the animation when you create the task. that means you allways have to type in the name manualy or copy it in and then you can not change the animation unless you remove the task and start over again. its driving me crazy. especially if you have tons of animations associated to the skeleton you work with. its a real workflow issue to me.

Update: It does work with montages.

I’ve seen this happen on and off and I’m not sure the cause. There is nothing marking that field as read only. In fact, that field is marked as Edit Anywhere and the Selected Asset from Browser is just standard UE code. I’ll keep poking at it.

@MarGon

here is an other bug:
when renaming abilities while having some open will cause crashes very fast as soon as you do a few clicks somewhere. its a very reliable crash. can get it crash under 1min but still found no pattern to reproduce it. sidenote: the abilities have branches but they do not reference on of the renamed

Not terribly shocked by this. You could be renaming a blueprint that is mid compiling in the background, or invalidating some internal pointer in the editor. If you get a solid repro, let me know. In the meantime, I’d simply close the Ability editor when renaming things.

@MarGon

here are a few questions:

1. i tried to get a combo working with animations that transition when they branching like in the combo tutorial video. so i setup the state machine like in the tutorial on the documentation page. but even tho he plays the animation in the state machine there is no blending at all. same result as normal animations or montages. i tried to uncheck stop on interrupt because i thought it might just cancel the animation but it didn’t do anything for this case. is there any hidden checkbox, or a hidden setup in the anim blueprint that i might have missed or is this be a bug?

2. is there any way to debug the targeting? i didn’t got the turn to task work with the targeting, always resulted in wired rotations. i got it working with a collision query task at the beginning of each ability tho. but still i think with targeting this would require less setup.

appart from the rough start it looks very promising. creating a custom task was very easy what is important to customize it to your own needs. i really hope its possible to get animation blending for branching to work.

1. There is inherent blending with the Able Ability Animation Node and it definitely works as long as you let the system manage things and are passing in Animation Instances (not montages). Montages have their own complex blending system that you’re better off just using Dynamic Montages with.

2. Targeting and Collision Query use the same code. If you enable the “Draw Collision Queries” option, you should see the same thing. As for debugging it, just turn on Verbose mode and it should tell you how many targets it found, etc.

@MarGon

here is an other bug:
after restarting the engine the custom task i added in the time line in every ability is gone and left is just an empty task.
yes i saved the abiliy before closing the editor and the task was doing what it was supposed to do in the game but after restart it doenst do it anymore.

That’s an old bug that should be fixed. A good way to prevent that in general is to save your custom task, compile it, test it, etc. Then go and add it to your Abilities. Basically measure twice cut once. Granted this isn’t possible if you’re being highly iterative with Custom Tasks (and I’ll run my local custom tasks through and make sure I didn’t miss some edge case), but that’s been the only fool proof strategy I’ve found with the rather dynamic nature of Blueprints linking other Blueprints.

[MarGon]

1. There is inherent blending with the Able Ability Animation Node and it definitely works as long as you let the system manage things and are passing in Animation Instances (not montages). Montages have their own complex blending system that you’re better off just using Dynamic Montages with.

I tried it all. Single Notes, Ability Animation Node with the state machine setup, Dynamic Montages. I tried all of this with root motion animations and without root motion. they all worked but there where absolutely no transition when branching. i allways get a frame to frame pop. the blend in and blend out settings in the ability node category of the play animations task properties are not doing anything usefull.

So i tried making 2 new abilites that just have a tpose and a branch to the next one that had an other static pose with an branch and it actually worked without any problem.
there where actually no differences to the things i tried. the only thing is i made this one from scratch again. the other one i changed things over time but settings where the same.

So i thought i try to reproduce this and removed the anim track and added a new one. while doing so i got a crash and since then my project won’t open anymore. i now have to delete the ability i was working on in order to get my project starting again. what makes me loose my patience what is a shame because beyond all these problems there might be a really useful plugin.

That’s an old bug that should be fixed. A good way to prevent that in general is to save your custom task, compile it, test it, etc. Then go and add it to your Abilities. Basically measure twice cut once. Granted this isn’t possible if you’re being highly iterative with Custom Tasks (and I’ll run my local custom tasks through and make sure I didn’t miss some edge case), but that’s been the only fool proof strategy I’ve found with the rather dynamic nature of Blueprints linking other Blueprints.

well, after all those custom task where gone after restarting i deleted all the empty tracks and added them again. so nothing changed in the custom task blueprint. it was compiled all along. but still, after a restart they where gone again. i wont waste my time doing it again. the feature is only usable one unreal instance. seems like the bug is back.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

@MarGon

I tried it all. Single Notes, Ability Animation Node with the state machine setup, Dynamic Montages. I tried all of this with root motion animations and without root motion. they all worked but there where absolutely no transition when branching. i allways get a frame to frame pop. the blend in and blend out settings in the ability node category of the play animations task properties are not doing anything usefull.

So i tried making 2 new abilites that just have a tpose and a branch to the next one that had an other static pose with an branch and it actually worked without any problem.
there where actually no differences to the things i tried. the only thing is i made this one from scratch again. the other one i changed things over time but settings where the same.

So i thought i try to reproduce this and removed the anim track and added a new one. while doing so i got a crash and since then my project won’t open anymore. i now have to delete the ability i was working on in order to get my project starting again. what makes me loose my patience what is a shame because beyond all these problems there might be a really useful plugin.

well, after all those custom task where gone after restarting i deleted all the empty tracks and added them again. so nothing changed in the custom task blueprint. it was compiled all along. but still, after a restart they where gone again. i wont waste my time doing it again. the feature is only usable one unreal instance. seems like the bug is back.

If you can provide a sample project repro-ing these bugs, please upload them here:

https://www.dropbox.com/request/kTG6mcS7QJybVoobgUZh

I’m working on a patch for later this week so I’ll try and squeeze it in if I can repro it and find a fix.

[Demonrras]

I found a problem…
I trying to make a ability that collide with dinamic mesh to make damage to my buildings but, the collision query don’t work with dinamic mesh.
When I try to fire a event to see whats go on, the fire event OnCollisionEvent don’t work.

[Demonrras]

All this buttons also are not working…

[Demonrras]

Do you have any discord, or other social live contact?

[ExtraLifeMatt]

@Demonrras

Do you have any discord, or other social live contact?

The feedback or support emails (feedback [at] extralifestudios.com / support [at] extralifestudios.com) are the best ways to reach me. As for your issues, OnCollisionEvent will only be called IF the collision actually occurs. If you aren’t seeing it happen - then likely either your wall or your collision settings (channels) aren’t setup properly and the collision isn’t registering in the engine. For example, make sure your Enable Collision Queries / etc on your building.

If you turn on “Verbose” for the Query task, it’ll tell you exactly how many results it got back from the physics scene and what was removed due to filtering, etc.

I was testing OnAbilityStart last night so I’m shocked that it doesn’t work for you. Did you check the Output window to see if it got dropped out there?

Putting the final touches on Able v3.20 which adds some really fun new stuff (thanks to @JSwigart and team) as well as some requested features from users. I’ll take a double check on OnAbilityStart/End tonight to make sure nothing broke there and I’ll get this submitted to Epic.

[Demonrras]

The feedback or support emails (feedback [at] extralifestudios.com / support [at] extralifestudios.com) are the best ways to reach me. As for your issues, OnCollisionEvent will only be called IF the collision actually occurs. If you aren’t seeing it happen - then likely either your wall or your collision settings (channels) aren’t setup properly and the collision isn’t registering in the engine. For example, make sure your Enable Collision Queries / etc on your building.

If you turn on “Verbose” for the Query task, it’ll tell you exactly how many results it got back from the physics scene and what was removed due to filtering, etc.

I was testing OnAbilityStart last night so I’m shocked that it doesn’t work for you. Did you check the Output window to see if it got dropped out there?

Putting the final touches on Able v3.20 which adds some really fun new stuff (thanks to @JSwigart and team) as well as some requested features from users. I’ll take a double check on OnAbilityStart/End tonight to make sure nothing broke there and I’ll get this submitted to Epic.

OnAbilityStart and End works well.
My problem is the collision query…this don’t hit world dinamic. I do a simples test with linetraceForObjects with object type of world dinamics and collision of my actor it’s ok.
When I do my ability to collision query on pawn type works well. World Dynamics are failing…So, I’m doing a separate linetrace after activate the ability. it’s badly done and I wanna to make this right with your plugin.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

@Demonrras

OnAbilityStart and End works well.
My problem is the collision query…this don’t hit world dinamic. I do a simples test with linetraceForObjects with object type of world dinamics and collision of my actor it’s ok.
When I do my ability to collision query on pawn type works well. World Dynamics are failing…So, I’m doing a separate linetrace after activate the ability. it’s badly done and I wanna to make this right with your plugin.

If it works on Pawns but not World Dynamics then it has to be that geometry isn’t setup to enable overlaps (which would be why ray casts work). Make sure your building or what not is setup like they have it here:

Collision Overview

[Demonrras]

Hi,

Your plugin permit implement something like that with a melee punch or a sword slice???

WIP - Splattitorium Physical Animation Component Test on Dedicated Server

I wanna try to add physics hit reaction like the video above in multiplayer. This detect where on physical body the collision are made and calculate damage using this location…

[ExtraLifeMatt]

@Demonrras

Hi,

Your plugin permit implement something like that with a melee punch or a sword slice???
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8LPXig6cdSA
I wanna try to add physics hit reaction like the video above in multiplayer. This detect where on physical body the collision are made and calculate damage using this location…

No, that’s not inherently supported by Able. You’d need to create your own task that does all the tracing and find the closest impacted bone.

[Demonrras]

No, that’s not inherently supported by Able. You’d need to create your own task that does all the tracing and find the closest impacted bone.

ok tks for the answer.

[Demonrras]

I do the trace in my character BP to make this more easly…and call this function on client side of CustonEvent on Ability.
Now, how I can add targets of trace to my context ability?

[ExtraLifeMatt]

@Demonrras

I do the trace in my character BP to make this more easly…and call this function on client side of CustonEvent on Ability.
Now, how I can add targets of trace to my context ability?

You would want to do that through the Custom Targeting on either your query or the Ability itself. You can return a list of actors that way and it’ll get added to the context.