Changing Player Pawn Properties

A few player pawn related questions.
The mod I’m working on is intended to change (extend) player corpse decay rate. I’m following the patterns from the “core-data mod” post. The only approach I’ve found that works is to sub-class the two pawns and make the change there. (Blueprint’/Game/PrimalEarth/CoreBlueprints/PlayerPawnTest_Female.PlayerPawnTest_Female’ and Blueprint’/Game/PrimalEarth/CoreBlueprints/PlayerPawnTest_Female.PlayerPawnTest_Male’)

So, I’ve done that. Changed the sub-classed pawn’s Corpse Lifespan to the new value. In the mod’s PrimalGameData_BP, changed the Player Character Gender Definitions -> (0 and 1) Character Blueprint to reference to my mod’s sub-classes so they will be spawned.

Cooked and tested in game. Intended changes work just fine. However, here’s the bug – none of the clothing renders on the TPV model. Clothing can be equipped and “functions”, but the clothing meshes do not render. If you put on pants, for example, the default male_underware mesh disappears (leaving a void in the pelvis) but the pants mesh does not appear. This happens for all clothes that I’ve tried.

I see that all clothing BPs reference the default pawn class via “Actor Class Attachment Infos” → “Owner Actor Parent Class” – one for each pawn.
Q: Will I need to change all references in all clothing BPs to reference my new pawn sub-classes? Meaning, I’d need to copy/subclass all of those into my mod as well?

Q: Will I need to change all references to reference my new sub-classes? i.e. sub-classing a pawn requires a cascade of other reference changes

Q: Am I going about this the wrong way?

I believe these questions would be relevant to anyone making player pawn related changes. Any assistance much appreciated.

[Update 7/14]
After latest client update, pawns spawn without base “underwear” meshes but clothes/armor now work and render properly. Better than it was before. :slight_smile:

Full Disclosure: The mod also has a few other changes (working fine), unrelated to player pawns.

Update:

After new DevKit update I tested again. Underwear still wasn’t rendering so I switched from sub-classing the pawns to duplicating them instead. Now underwear appears normally.
Mod is working, but I’m unclear why subclassing did not work.

Honestly, none of it makes any sense… you just keep doing the exact same thing a slightly different way until it actually works, and then you hope that it continues to work.

I’m beginning to thing I understand what it must be like for the guys working with the ArmA engine… ****

Some changes it seems you just can’t do via subclassing for reasons unexposed to us. Take for example the inventory on an item such as the Fabricator, you can’t go into the inventory on that and change recipes to point at a new item unless you copy the main StorageBox_Fabricator blueprint. The rest of the blueprints in the reference chain like the EngramEntry and the PrimalItem are all fine as a subclassed item though.

I would like to include longer corpse decay in my mod as well. Could you please break down exactly what you did?

  • No problem. Its only a few changes.
    I started with a cleaned out GenericMod (removed the test game mode, etc.)
  • Duplicated (not subclass) both PlayerPawnTest_Male and PlayerPawnTest_Female to my mod directory. Changed each to a mod-specific name.
  • Edit one of your new pawns (double-click it), scroll down, find “Corpse Lifespan”. Change that to the value you’d like. (in seconds)
  • Repeat for the other pawn.
  • Edit your mod’s copy of PrimalGameData_BP (double-click it), scroll down most of the way, find “Player Character Gender Definitions”. Open the tree.
    • Open the 0 branch, change the “Character Blueprint” to your mod’s male pawn BP.
    • Open the 1 branch, change the “Character Blueprint” to your mod’s female pawn BP.
  • Cook till golden brown.