What is it?
A simple to use, easy to extend montage linking system for UE4 4.13. Intended for basic melee combat, but can be used for any other “fire and forget” montage in a Character based BP class. SMM allows you to quickly support combat animations (provided you have them), but doesn’t support any advanced features of a combat system. The example character will come with everything it needs, except a mesh and animations, to work. **Keep in mind that without a character mesh and animations, you’ll only be able to walk around- not attack anything. **Probably able to work with almost any other non-animation system.
What does it come with?
- Melee Chain Component which processes the request
- Base Melee Character interface which means you don’t have to use my specific character
- 2 Custom Animation Notifies (which can be used with any skeleton; these work just like the “Play Sound” notifies- automatically.)
- 2 Enums, 1 Structure, and a Data Table (where you define new player attacks)
- Basic Print String wrapper to log debug information. (It’s nothing special, but you might consider this a bonus. )
- Severalhelper functions for dealing with the melee chain component.
What are the limitations?
- No way to support “holding”/looping](https://i.gyazo.com/381461ca01d3fd851b1784751eb6f35e.png) montages.
- The system doesn’t care about slots, but the montages you pick and the animation BP you use need to have the same slot set up for support.
- The system doesn’t have an “exit” path- if you wanted to abort the anim, you have to manually handle it.
- Everything has to work with the exact same skeleton. No dynamic retargeting , folks.
How do I set it up?
- Download the project below.
- Open up the folder in your OS (or you can migrate from inside UE4), and copy over the content folder to your project’s content folder. Nothing important is in the Config folder.
- Open your project.
- In your character class, add a “MeleeChainComponent”.
- Implement the BPI_BaseMeleeCharacter interface. Be sure you add the events and fill in the functions.
- In the “DT_MeleeAttacks” data table, add new rows for any/all attacks you want to define.
- Pick out your animations- these need to be AnimMontages, and should only have one AnimSequence.
- Add the defined notifies to your montage.
- In the data table, set the montage- and if you setup the notifies, check “UsesNotifies”. Define your stamina costs and damage as well.
- In your character class, when you want to try to attack, call “Process New Attack” on the MeleeChainComponent.
- Change the settings to suit you- these are in the details pane of the component.
- Set your meshes up, and your animation BP if it’s not already.
- Drop a “BP_Dummy” into the level, when you attack it, it should add up all the damage you’ve done!!
But it’s not working!
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The animation is not playing, but the log doesn’t give me an error message!
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Make sure the Montage and the AnimBP are using the same slot, and that you are using an animation BP.
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The log says the attack isn’t defined!
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Make sure you set the montage reference in a valid row in the “DT_MeleeAttacks” data table
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I can’t attack very quickly!
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Try changing the interrupt handling setting to “WhenDamageDisabled”, or (and I don’t suggest using this) “Anytime”.
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Damage isn’t applying / Stamina isn’t dropping / I can’t lock on / I can’t change weapons!
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These functionalities are not included.
What’s the point?
I saw that there wasn’t really a “super simple” melee system. To be honest, you’re probably better off learning how to do something like this yourself, but if you don’t have the time and don’t need a lot of features, this might help.
Versions
v1 (4.13)- 10/27/2016 - Download
[SIZE=5]Changelists
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