Check if an actor was placed in editor, or spawned at runtime?

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Hello, how can I tell if an actor was placed using the editor (a coin in the world), or spawned at runtime (from a killed enemy) from within the BeginPlay function?

I need this so the coin can set up it’s parameters, such as to persist as a world coin, or to bounce around and face out.

Thanks!

2

If it was spawned in editor then the coin is visible with out hitting the play button. If it shows the moment you run the game then it was spawned by a blueprint (like the event begin play, you an event that was caused by your enemy dying, etc.)

3

I meant programmatically, how can the Coin class know if it was placed or spawned, so it can set it’s values properly.

4

Found a solution to my problem.

FTransform spawnTrans = FTransform(flinchDir.Rotation(), GetActorLocation());
APickup* pickup = GetWorld()->SpawnActorDeferred<APickup>(SpawnItem, spawnTrans);
pickup->ID = DropItem.ID;
pickup->WasSpawned = true;
pickup->FinishSpawning(spawnTrans);

Lets you initialize variables on an actor before actually spawning it. This way you can set certain variables, before it runs it’s BeginPlay.

5

All Actors have a variable called “bNetStartup” with the description “If true, this actor was loaded directly from the map, and for networking purposes can be addressed by its full path name”.

I have been able to check if an actor was placed in the map or spawned by using this flag.

It is useful for if you play a sound on spawn in PostInitializeComponents() for instance and do not want to play the sound if the actor started spawned in the world.

3 Likes
6

I could not find the variable you mentioned. Maybe it is not in 4.19 or above any longer?

7

Actor.h line 150 in 4.22.1

UPROPERTY()
bNetStartup:1;