I’ve done a lot of searching online to figure out how to increase the effective range of a projectile with no luck. Essentially I’ve created a projectile that I’m using for a space shooter. The range on the projectile seems really low though so I have to get incredibly close to a destructible mesh before it will be destroyed by the projectile. I can’t figure out how to make the projectile work from a greater distance. With the current settings if I’m not right near the destructible mesh when I fire, the projectile does nothing to it even though it seems like the mesh itself keeps traveling for a long time. Its like there’s a cull happening based on the distance from the camera.
If I understand correctly, you want to increase the distance traveled by your projectile before it hits the ground. I can think of two ways to do that
Set the initial velocity of your projectile to a higher value
Lower the gravity scale of your projectile component (If you set it to 0, then it is not affected by gravity and will keep on moving until it hits something)
Both these settings are available in the projectile component’s properties.
Sorry, not before it hits the ground… I’m making a space game so I turned off gravity… I literally mean before it stops working. For some reason my “torpedoes” just don’t detonate outside a specific range away from the camera. The projectile seems to travel forever but if I’m beyond a specific distance (no idea how far that distance is) they don’t detonate and trigger the destructible mesh to destroy. As I said, its like the projectile is being culled. Either that or the collision is somehow turning off and it just clips through the destructible mesh rather than colliding with it.
If the particles are indeed being culled, as you suspect, then maybe changing the “Net Culled Distance Squared” property under the “Replication” section of the blueprint’s “Class Defaults” menu will help.
Thanks , sadly I already tried this. Didn’t seem to affect anything. The projectile itself is a static mesh and the particles used are only the trail effect (flames out the back of the rocket) and the explosion particles. I don’t mind them being culled provided the projectile still destroys the destructible mesh, but its not doing so. Its the projectile itself (or its collision) that seems to be culled.
I tried to recreate your situation, but I did not encounter any problems with projectile collision. BTW I am using an older engine version (4.4). Anyway I will show you my setup here. Basically this is what I did:
To create my Bullet(torpedo in your case), I extended from an Actor BP. I added a Sphere collision component as my root. I also added a ProjectileMovement component. I then added a StaticMesh component under the Sphere.
In Sphere, I changed the collision to BlockAll and unchecked EnableGravity
In the ProjectileComponent, I set Gravity scale to 0.0 and set Initial Velocity to 5000
Within my Pawns Fire event, I simply spawned a Bullet infront of my Pawn.
Yeah that’s pretty much the exact setup I have. Did you test it with a destructible object? Cause that’s the problem specifically. Also I’m running 4.10 so that might be the issue? I think the only difference is that mine is set to collide only with destructible objects. I’ll change that tomorrow and see if it makes a difference.
I could not reproduce this. Can you try to shoot at a simple static mesh (with collision volume) instead of destructible mesh? See if that makes any difference.
PS: What happens to your torpedos at the moment, do they travel to infinity after going through the asteroids? Or do they simply vanish? Could not see that in your video
Thanks for your help trying to replicate this.
The problem is with the destructible meshes. It might just be that my level is really huge so the distance might be larger than what you tested?
If you look at my blueprint above, I’ve got it set to destroy the mesh component on collide, then play an emitter, a sound and then destroy the actor. So if I shoot a static mesh, it does just that. It will tavel into seemingly infinity if it doesn’t hit a destructible but if there is a destructible in the way it seems to not work. I’ll see about throwing a static mesh in the same place as the asteroid and see if that works.
I know its’ been a long time since you’ve submitted this question but when the projectile hits a meteor you could try adding point damage to what its collides too, I dont know if force deteriorates on projectile components.
Today I’ve found out that increasing network cull distance and setting every subactor’s lod to “never distance cull” works for me.
Or at least it seems to be working.
