completely new creature crashing game every time... stumped.

Development Modding ARK: Survival Evolved
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1

so… the mesh and skeleton imported. animations playback fine in the editor.

I created the MyDino_Character_BP, added the mesh, setup the animations, changed the dino name tag and custom tag to “MyDino”

I created the MyDino_AIController_BP, edited the settings for it, linked it in MyDino_Character_BP

I created the DinoCharacterStatusComponent_BP_MyDino and set the values up inside it.

I created the DinoColorSet_MyDino and set the allowed color sets for it and referenced it in MyDino_Character_BP

I created the DinoEntry_MyDino and just set it up to use the Dilo Dossier and icon for now.

I Edited the PrimalGameData for the mod and added the Additional DinoEntry to point to DinoEntry_MyDino

After that, I Added the dino into the test map and ran a test…

Problem 1) The dino Sits in the same spot all the time, plays its animations and always appears 1/2 way in the floor no matter how I place it in the map.

Problem 2) If I get close to the Dino and bump it, or if I shoot the dino with a gun, the game crashes with the following error:

Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000118

UE4Editor-ShooterGame.dll!APrimalCharacter:: GetMaxHealth() (0x00007ff8eea26537) + 7 bytes [f:\ue4\unrealengine\projects\shootergame\source\shootergame\private\primalcharacter.cpp:2703]
UE4Editor-ShooterGame.dll!APrimalCharacter:: DrawHUD() (0x00007ff8eea1ed78) + 166 bytes [f:\ue4\unrealengine\projects\shootergame\source\shootergame\private\primalcharacter.cpp:1590]
UE4Editor-ShooterGame.dll!APrimalDinoCharacter:: DrawHUD() (0x00007ff8eea70909) + 0 bytes [f:\ue4\unrealengine\projects\shootergame\source\shootergame\private\primaldinocharacter.cpp:2449]
UE4Editor-ShooterGame.dll!AShooterHUD:: DrawUIHUD() (0x00007ff8eec24097) + 12 bytes [f:\ue4\unrealengine\projects\shootergame\source\shootergame\private\shooterhud.cpp:148]
UE4Editor-ShooterGame.dll!UCustomCanvasWidget:: DrawWidget() (0x00007ff8ee9b34f3) + 0 bytes [f:\ue4\unrealengine\projects\shootergame\source\shootergame\private\customcanvaswidget.cpp:118]
UE4Editor-ShooterGame.dll!SCustomCanvasWidget:: OnPaint() (0x00007ff8eeb8d151) + 0 bytes [f:\ue4\unrealengine\projects\shootergame\source\shootergame\private\scustomcanvaswidget.cpp:103]

now based on the error… what I’m guessing is happening is it is unable to find the file “DinoCharacterStatusComponent_BP_MyDino” which contains the dino’s health values, however I can’t seem to find anywhere on how to get the dino’s main file ( MyDino_Character_BP ) to point to it.

Any help with both of these problems would be greatly appreciated. Searched the forums, found several threads on making variant dino’s (ones that just use copies of the existing dino’s) and tried everything that was listed in them and still no solution to the problem, even tried setting the ‘Root Body Bone Name’ in hopes that it would resolve the ‘stationary / half in ground’ dino issue, but nope.

2

followed Unreal Tutorials for adding NPC’s as close as I could with using the ARK Blueprint system, and still end up with the same results.

Im about done with the DevKit far as attempting anything advanced. Seems they have managed to break most the standard ways of doing things within the Unreal Engine, hell even displacement maps don’t want to work it seems. The support within the Modding forums (reading through so many questions) seems to be lacking, we’ve been pretty much tossed a DevKit and expected to do everything from trial and error being most the Unreal Engine documents are useless for this Devkit. Guess the dev’s really don’t want a active mod community like they claimed, they only seem to pop in to post “dev kit updated” status.

3

When you open up Dino_Character_BPs, there are several tabs. The defaults, containing numbers and some references, and the component tab (and also graphs, but those aren’t important right now). StatusComponents need to be added through said component tab.

4

All the needed status components were added to both the animationAI file and the Character file, went through several different ones to see what I needed to setup.

still same result. Added the vars and their linking for getting and setting the various values. Like I said previously, I used the Unreal Tutorials as much as I could for setting up npc’s using the ARK Blueprints.

5

Well, the “GetMaxHealth” and “DrawHUD” suggests that the game has a problem with: 1) getting the health value for this dinosaur, 2) doing damage to the dinosaur, 3) displaying the dino’s health (or any combination of the three).
Unfortunately, the Unreal Engine Tutorials are not helpful with the DevKit, as it operates on highly simplified principles and is incompatible with a lot of core UE features (or at least gives no read or write access to them, which is effectively the same thing).

Your best bet it to look at any vanilla dinosaur, use the “reference viewer” (found under the “asset” drop-down menu when the asset is open, or right-click menu in the content browser) and see if you’re missing any important references.
I haven’t worked with UE by itself, but make sure to assign your custom dino the proper parent classes - it’s the only way to tell the devkit what it is and how it should behave in general (since once again, core functions are hidden).