Help (while appreciated) is not helping, HOW MUCH might one charge to edit a Blueprint?

Development World Creation
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1

I offered any of $30,000-$60,000 worth of Hollywood and game industry assets collected over 25 years, (3D models (everything in life and more) Interiors, Exteriors, Characters, clothes, hair, 6,000 unique Motion Capture files, KONTAKT sound Libraries galore, EVERMOTION Complete… but no bites, not one. No one even mentioned it or asked if I had (for example) A 3D fully rigged Sea Monkey family to animate (I do, I made them myself they have over 50 facial expression bones!)

So, MILLIONS OF 3D models etc. etc. offered,and no one even asked about any of it,. Certainly no one committed to LAYING EYES ON MY BLUEPRINT., (I even uploaded it, multiple times!) Just vague incomplete ‘hints’ and random non-specific ‘clues’. From actually very nice guys that did try, kinda and to an early point.

(When I help, I kind of commit a bit, I once wrote and shared the equivalent of a book when a viewer asked how I managed such multi layered complex and believable facial and head performance, in one of my animated series I wrote it out perfect step by step, with numbered figure examples, demo files, and call it: ‘LIVE TAKE!: Realtime Artistic Performance in 3ds Max’.

I just want to finally release my VR game! I know no one wants credit in the game, or a percentage of its profits (for all of 5 minutes work for someone who knows BP’s…), or when I offered that months ago, it would have been taken up… No trade, No profit, no credit, none of that is worth anything, so CASH…

Problem: When my character flies across a room, if it comes near a wall etc. instead of sliding against it with proper friction, it STOPS INSTANTLY from a moving really fast. Very jarring it will ruin my VR Game Reputation before I have one if I release like this, even though I have crated a very beautiful elaborate and HUGE singe player Sci-Fi world (NOT Dystopic, Not overly clean.)

I know I know, I’m an idiot for not knowing this ONE THING,…I’m sorry I spent 25 years as a character animator. Ok?

Outrage accepted only from people who have NEVER been frustrated in their entire life!
Like the Doctor from Star Trek Voyager said to 7 of 9: “I’ll complain if I want to, it’s comforting!” ;")

Thanks for your attention.

Rob from NextWorldVR

“Time is our most precious resource, waste ANYTHING but TIME!” -When World Collide (1952)

2

I haven’t solved this problem yet either but it IS a solved problem somewhere.

One thing I noticed about the engine is that it will put your pawn to a dead stop if you have the Sweep checkbox enabled in your ActorSetLocation (or similar) node in blueprint, and the place it’s trying to set the pawn’s location to will cause it to overlap a blocking collision shape. When that happens and it uses Sweep,
then it does this:

  1. trace back to the farthest it can go toward the target location without overlapping the blocking shape,
  2. set the actor’s location to THAT instead,
  3. Kill all the actor’s velocity in every direction.

Super annoying.

In C++ of the Character actor class or maybe it’s the Character Movement component, there is a function named something like SlideAlongWall which sounds a lot like what you want, but I haven’t dived into the C++ stuff yet. Thing is, I believe that function already happens every tick of movement on the character to help resolve just what you’re talking about, but if you’re not using a Character Pawn, OR if you’re using SetLocation nodes with Sweep enabled, it can dead-stop the pawn.

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Hey, thank you,! I woke up and saw my question ‘downvoted’ by mute cowards and wanted to just give up… (why are people here, uf they downvite unanswered question. To make someone elses time on this planet just a little harder for no reason?

Well I appreciate the info,. I wish I could find these unexpected game killing problems before I spend months writing, building, lighting, animating and recording dialog… This is the 3rd 80-90% complete game i have ‘shelved’ after coming up against exactly one impassible limitation that makes release impossible and continuing foolhardy… I wish I was content with making small or predictable games, or ‘shooters’ (shudder)… but 25 years working in Hollywood (before moving to San Francisco 2 years ago), I prefer to tell stories, create adventures, rather than merely slap a gun in a hand and say: Have at it!

Oh man… I really wanted to release this, there are not enough sci-fi worlds out there that are somewhere between too dark/dystopic/depressing and too clean/bright/boring.

However, it is nice, relieving, to confirm I am indeed wasting time and set this silly dream aside.
Maybe I’ll sell my 3 partial games and say ‘Instant unique massive world with intact dialog: Just add code, for exactly one thing, that should be simple.’.

Maybe I could add Patrick Swayze ‘Ghost’ movie physics, and eliminate all character collisions, you go through walls, unless you use your energy to GRAB ONE! LOLOL. ;")

Thanks for responding…

4

What’s your deadline? Maybe I could take a look at it and try to get it working. I have Google Drive if you want to share the project files that way (or other arrangement could be made). I can’t guarantee I’ll know how to fix it but I know exactly what it’s like to have one stupid little thing stop an entire project from being viable. But this doesn’t sound like it has to be one of those.

Before you send me anything I should mention I don’t have any VR hardware so I hope that doesn’t keep me from being able to fix or test your stuff. I didn’t want to answer the call only to find out that I couldn’t help you, so I let someone else take it up, but nobody did, so maybe I should just give it a try – maybe I can fix it, maybe. Depends on your time frame and my ability level.

5

Honestly, I think one of the reasons you were downvoted is because you spent most of the question talking about the things you’ve made and complaining about other people refusing to fix your problem, instead of actually talking about the problem. I would help if I could, but I don’t have any information, and most people don’t have time to make a business deal.

6

Don’t give up just yet. Like mightyenigma said, this is typically handled inside of the Character class. Are you using a Pawn and performing movement with functions like AddActorLocalOffset (or WorldOffset) with sweep set to true (also going back to mightyenigma’s comment)?

If so, there is a potential fix that I used in a prototype I built to rotate the velocity in a different direction rather than setting it to zero. I did manage to find a potentially more optimal approach for you from the Unreal Tournament code, though, so I’ll reference that instead. Sweep usually just halts all movement if the actor comes into contact with a surface, but you can change the behaviour of it. However, I unfortunately only have C++ for you, but I’ll run you through the C++ so you should be able to change it into blueprints with relative ease based on the logic:

Here’s the AddActorLocalOffset node for reference. You’ll see some familiar stuff in there when referencing the C++.

FHitResult Hit; //Created a hit result here. You don’t need to do this in blueprints. All blueprints that have a sweep setting will allow you to return the sweep hit result like above.

GetOwner()->AddActorWorldOffset(Translation, true, &Hit); //Moves pawn and checks for collision. I pass my hit into this function so I can reference it. Like I said, you can simply use the returned hit result in that BP node I linked.

http://api.unrealengine.com/INT/BlueprintAPI/Collision/BreakHitResult/ (here’s an example of the break hit result you’ll need to access the correct data)

if (Hit.IsValidBlockingHit()) //Check if you’re getting a valid blocking hit (first result from breakhitresult)
{
Velocity = FVector::ZeroVector; (Don’t do this) //This is what sweep usually does by default. It sets velocity to zero. Instead, use the info contained within hit result to find the surface normal and perform calculations on that.

//You can rather do something like this (taken from Unreal Tournament code)

Velocity = Velocity + FMath::Abs(Velocity | Hit.ImpactNormal) * Hit.ImpactNormal;

//I have NOT tested this, but I do believe this will give you your new velocity with respect to the impact normal (it’ll conserve motion, so your overall direction is mostly the same, like whether you slide left or right along the wall, but change its direction based on the impact point). I might have the wrong snippet of code here, though (but I’m pretty sure it’s correct). Please test and get back to me.

//If you’re not sure what the velocity is, it’ll usually be the vector you pass into AddActorLocalOffset (a direction Vector multiplied by your movement speed). When performing that check for a blocking hit: if true, perform the math above on that vector and pass it into a new AddActorLocalOffset.

//Keep in mind that this will not change your actor’s current movement speed. If you want to simulate friction or some kind of slowdown when sliding along the wall, you can just multiply the resulting velocity by how much you want the velocity to be conserved (*0.5 to half it).

}

I hope this helped a tiny bit.

7

That’s so cool of you! I sure would appreciate it, I am way over any kind of expected time budget by 2 months due to this one problem,… and I can’t think about anything else becasue this invalidates all esle, If I don’t fix this, there’s no way to release,. . I have sat here literally 12 hours a day for 3 weeks trying everything imagine, unchecking sweep, adding impulse adding forces instead of ‘set physics linear velocity’, tried checking nearly every combination of every physics and collision check box, keeping a graph of what does what,. I have even been able to get my 'head/body to bounce lightly off colliders but then the very next collider I go through! (or get stuck in!! LOL OR I will hit some thing and start spinning 100 mile an hour in VR and make my self sick in an instant,… LOLOL Yeah if you can help I would be very happy to share whatever you need that I have…

I think it is all in the MotionControllerPawn BP, but when I am checking Physics and stuff I don’t even know if I should be on the MotionControllerPawn, the PhysicsRoot’ the VROrigin, the Camera OR the Head Collision,. Just not knowing that increases the complexity exponentially! I don’t have to try 1,000 nearly random changes, but 6,000,000,…

Here is a very small example of the locomotion relevant BP’s in the project (basically what I found out there as a starting point) I don’t trust my edits so I may as well go back to the beginning,… https://www.sendspace.com/file/fidelo

Thanks for trying, I will refresh here or you can email me directly, NextWorldVR (@) gmail.com and I can try anything you change on the Rift and tell you what happens ? :slight_smile: Thanks!

8

YEs exactly, Sweep and World Offsets and Set Physics Linear Velocity, etc. I sure appreciate your help, I will come back to this after more coffee, Honestly, the C++ kinda feels like I’m going backwards and adding major complexity, After sitting here for 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week for almost a month, I can’t imagine adding anymore at this point I am near maniacal from fighting the same thing every day for weeks, I’m trying random physics switches at this point, Nothing does what I suspect it will, I am utterly lost actually,… I tried switching from Set Physics Linear Velocity to Add Impulse, to Add Force, Half the trouble is I don’t know if I’m supposed to be worried about the MotionControllerPawn, the PhysicsRoot’ the VROrigin, the Camera OR the Head Collision They all have unchecked Physicsboxes, They all do something different, I can even get the exact behaviour I want by adding set impulse etc, so when I hit an object (with my head/body, hands are fine) I deflected off it lightly, no extreme spinning, but then the NEXT OBJECT I hit I GO THROUGH and get Stuck in! So,. once I was almost able to do it and the complexity went through the logic roof, I realized, like this is hopeless,… I am MILLIONs and MILLIONs of miles away from understanding this, HENCE THE OFFER ABOVE, The help I need is help fixing it,… I can spend time learning more about the BP’s, after I I get something out there, I’m an Artist not a programmer, It’s a process.,. I was able to manage everything, a whole game,. but this ONE THING,. It will be my undoing,. a cast of Triple A characters, most with recorded dialog already,… will sit on the shelf . I REALLY dislike Blueprints… (or the LACK of GOOD Training out there I have the LYNDA BLueprints lessons I have the Digital Tutors, I have the UDEMY, NO HELP AT ALL,…The best I could hope for is to copy the technique from the lesson for pickups etc. Thanks for trying though

9

Well ,I started out that way,. Succint, But I am a month into asking now, i’m an emotional artist, I feel it, I express it. the game industry could use a couple Artists with remnant Human emotion in this world and industry, maybe see something NEW other than the same 3 games made 3,000 times… !

10

I’m read through your idea again, even without the C++ parts, the stuff like Velocity = Velocity + FMath::Abs(Velocity | Hit.ImpactNormal) * Hit.ImpactNormal; it still looks kinda like hierogyphics, I wouldn’t know how to turn that into a blueprint, (or more accurately where in the blueprint to put it,. What to destroy, what to jeep, it’s all angry spaghetti and it hates me,. . I learn this stuff fine from other blueprints or using any help I get as a before / after and try to understand WHY something works,. , but just techie words in a row like that, I’ve never seen anything like that,. I don’t understand what the Colons mean even :: or what I’m suppised to do, (or where) do in order to get back to you,… thanks though, I’m guess I’m kinda of offering resources for actual coding help or sampke BP’s to try to understand, rather than what feel like vague clues for extreme Pros, I was fully prepared to keep learning BP’s, but for now, i’m already well out of time, either I get this fixed or shelve the thing I’m so disvogeafed at this point, all this for such a tiny little thing, It’s killing my interest, destroying any passion I had left at thus age,. .it’s so disheartening to build a world and characters, record dialog, even get pickups etc running, rewltjme cinematics, then be stopped by one VERY little thing, a game killer unexpected kind of problem. It’s pretty obvious after a month of asking, no one has done this (bounced off an object) in the at leaet not the people in the forums…it’s all guesses and clues with my sanity riding in the balance,. I know it’s my fault, I just plain don’t know enough BP, for those sorts of pro level text clues to be helpful, they only increase frustration at ypthus point,.make it seem even further away, FMath!!! It’s all so innacessible to Artists. I can’t get there from here… honestly they could have made some of these common ‘interact realistically with environment’ things more usable … thnx,. R.

11

Mighty Enigma, did you have a chance to look the the blueprint, I didn’t want to bug you but it’s been a few days,…

12

sorry i didnt realize you included a link in your last post so i sent you an email so you’d know where to send me a link. my bad. So it’s that fidelo link eh?

13

tomorrow i am putting in a new lawn but if there’s time after that i will take a look