How to display an area range around a pawn

Development Programming & Scripting UI
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1

I’m working on essentially a miniature wargame where units can move an inch/cm range per turn. I don’t fully know how I would go about displaying that range to the player. I mainly need some pointers or directions to some tutorials or the likes that can help me figure this out.

I need the range to:

  • “Stick” to the ground due to hills
  • Take into account distance travelled when displaying ranges around buildings or other obstacles.
  • Display terrain modifiers like [Road 2x movement] [Mud /2 movement]

My initial idea is to send out some number of A* “tendrils” from the model to a point on a circle some distance away. These tendrils can snake their way around terrain until they run out of their “movement”, then I can somehow draw a range connecting all the endpoints of the tendrils.

I don’t know if this is the best or even a good way of doing it. Despite its validity, I can definitely find some tutorials or guides online for the A* part, however have no idea how I could draw a line connecting all the end points.

I’m relatively new to this so any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

Hi MrMunchkin, Welcome to the Forums.

Building a simple system that does what you describe is a very good and valid path. But, I just wanted to make you aware of ‘Game Systems’ for purchase on Fab (This one seems relevant, but maybe overly complex)

There’s also a ‘Top Down’ template included with UE that demonstrates some design patterns when it comes to input/controlling pawns/characters.

3

The game system does look really nice and would probably save a lot of time so I am noting this down. However, I am going through learning UE5 and am enjoying the figuring out.

The validation that the idea works will keep me alive through the learning trenches. That, and I now have a fall back if it all goes up in flames.