Disclaimer: I’m quite new to UE4, so it’s entirely possible that this already exists somewhere, and that I haven’t found it, or that technical limitations make this impossible.
What I am referring to is some sort of debug window with a spreadsheet style of table where all the user created variables are listed. This list gets populated with values when gameplay begins. The variables could be grouped under their respective actor, similar to the Scene Outliner, and it could have a searchbar to filter down to the ones you are interested in. The values would be colored in accordance with the blueprint colors for the different variable types.
When testing with multiple players, each player gets his own column in this table, and values that are the same across all columns get a green background color so you easily can see which variables are replicated properly.
This would in large part replace the current method of debugging where one has to create a print string node in a blueprint, convert the variable to a string and hook it up to the print node. (Or right click and watch variables, which might be easier, but still not as easy as a table where all variables are automatically listed with their values across all clients).
Hi Acriax. I asked around a bit and, while there does not appear to be anything exactly like what you described available, there are several debugging options that allow you to fairly easily watch the values of variables as they change.
While playing in the editor (PIE), you can enter the console command editactor name=< actorname > which will open a details panel for that actor with all of the properties. You can do this for each actor for whom you want to track the value of its variables (though I imagine your monitor(s) will quickly become cluttered with details panels if you want to watch more than a few actors at a time). In this case < actorname >, is the fname of the actor, which you can get by hovering your mouse over the actor in the Scene Outliner. The tooltip will show the fname, which may not be the same as the name displayed in the Scene Outliner list. You can also directly modify variable values if you wish. Please be aware that this “feature” is not polished, and it may not be kept in the Editor in future versions.
Another option you can use if a property is editable, is to run PIE, then eject and select whatever you want to observe, then go back into PIE. You will be able to see (and modify) the values of the properties for the selected actor in the Details panel.
A final option, if you are using Blueprints, would be to right-click on the variable in the graph that you would like to observe and select “Watch this value”. Then, while in PIE, you can watch the Blueprint graph and see the value of that variable displayed above it (make sure you have the Blueprint selected in your Blueprint Debug Filter).
One of the developers that I got some input from seemed to like your idea of a spreadsheet type of approach to this, though I am not sure if that will ever be implemented in the Editor. If none of the options I mentioned above really work for you, you may have to create a Blueprint yourself that will keep track of all of the variables you want to track. There would be several ways to implement that, though I am not sure how efficient they would be and you would most likely want to make sure to strip that out before packaging your game.