Hi Guys,
Do we have the equivalent of the old ladder volume in UDK in the new UE4? I have a need for ladder climbing in a new project I am working on.
Nope, we don´t have it, but that´s very easy to recreate (havn´t tried and i´m not an expert, but i´m pretty sure it works. But this is NOT a very good solution, if you ever want to release your game you should google it. Or you could have googled already, finding out if a Ladder volume exists is not that hard 
)
Line Trace for Objects (you need to define the Ladder in the input) OR Line Trace by Channel -> Cast to MyLadderBlueprint
->
Input_W (i hope you can do that by youself): get actor location:self_Z + 0;0;50 (or something else, depending on how fast you want to climb). Then use this Value for SetActorLocation_self
Input_S Same but yousubtract the value instead of adding it.
I hope you can Wiki info like that in time Fragment. I expect 95% of us would never call that an easy recreation
I used to cry when old threads would get binned if there was an iota of helpful info in there so seeing what you said pinned under ‘Ladder volumes’ somehow would help a lot of people. Or can we really rely on the forums to stay intact?
I had actually “recreated” the ladder. It didn’t work super well, and has since broken with successive updates of UE4. The old ladders were awesome, you just stepped into that volume and you the W key made you continue upward. It was a no-brainer.
the one i created you had to hit the E key… so it lost it’s intuitive flavor, and even if i had it working i kept falling out of the volume.
i have to return to this, but truly the old ladders were awesome in UDK.
I am amazed that we’ve reached the tenth version of this engine with no ladder or elevator that I can find. Why can’t we get these features implement in engine?
In my opinion, something like that is too high-level, and I’d start to question how long before this is Unreal Engine 4 cough Game-Maker 2.0 Cough if they implemented something like that.
Jamen I know what you’re saying, but this is the same accusation that I used to get when I would ask for some automated processes in VFX. I would get the inevitable roll of eyes and asked, “Do you want a big red button on your computer that says DO EVERYTHING that you can press and go home?”
The answer is no, just like writing our own blueprints and utilities that speed up our processes for making games, some things are incredibly helpful in just even imagining what you can do with a game, and often just a waste of time to get stuck on (especially when there was a perfectly good ladder in UDK). I’ll give you an example. I’ve taught game development in colleges with Unity and with Unreal.
My students invariably did more creative work with Unreal because there was a sense of dimension that they could explore, and gameplay, by using a simple thing like ladder easily. Making a ladder in Unity was not something that was automated. To me NOT having a ladder, is like telling users that this is the game engine, it’s really fantastic (which it is) but you all must program WASD to move the character around yourself, and btw, you can’t jump unless you program it yourself.
It is that essential to a 3D world, the movement of going up and down. The thing is, it was really well done in UDK, it was one of my favorite features. Does that mean that thirty people here haven’t made their own ladder utility? No, many have, and probably many more aren’t willing to share their work, no judgements about that.
So in defense of the just having a nice ladder blueprint that works out of the box. I’ve created thousands of models for my games. I have created dozens of test games. I have created AI, i have working Save Game now after much bashing of my brains on my keyboard (and i won’t even get into my argument about how Save Game should also be something that just works out of the box - imagine working in a word processor that didn’t save).
I have painted and sculpted creatures and done all the design work myself. I have notebooks full of drawings and ideas, and every thursday when I’m out with my son and we draw together we come up with game ideas and sketch together. Like many, I’m one single developer making games, and I think i have some good ideas (mostly around education and science) that i would love to bring to the world in a meaningful way).
Getting stuck on a ladder when I have limited time in my studio as a lone developer is not one of the things that I feel proud of, and is not one of the things that I feel greatly enhances my skills. But i’ll probably have another go at it, just to put it to rest… but I wish Epic would just take some ladders and put them someplace for folk to try out.
So the accusation that some things we can use out of the box like ladders, and you know Save Game, will make us into just amateurs who play at making games is not really accurate. Unless I suppose I followed that logic, and every time I saw someone painting i sort of snorted derisively because they used paint out of a tube. My god, who uses paint out of a tube? I claim that you are only an artist if you make your own canvas, and grind your own pigments out of raw materials like they did during the renaissance, and sharpen your drawing stick (not pencil) with a knife. You also have to render your own linseed oil (I know how to do this but do all painters?) and make a concoction that will not drip off the canvas or alternately crack and fall to the floor when you are done painting.
I would say it’s not outrageous to expect certain things to just exist already, but the system itself just isn’t meant for hand holding either, which is what I’ve seen a number of posts here and on the subreddit about (people that basically just want a “make game” button). I’m not saying that’s what you’re asking for, but there are plenty of cases where that is just that.
The big difference between this and UDK though, is that UDK was really just an extension of the mod tools we already had for UE3, and all of those things existed in-engine already because they were already developed for the long-since release UT3. When they made, and subsequently released UE4, UT4 had barely entered development because it was intended as a community project, so none of those features existed yet in a pre-made form.
Now on topic, why not just use a volume that triggers the player to attach to the ladder on contact and when they leave the volume it disconnects, rather than having them hit a key?
Or alternatively, this topic has a wall climbing mechanic: Grappling and Climbing BP - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums
Re-purpose that to a specific mesh?
Plenty of systems like these exist, and even quite a few are free, but the marketplace doesn’t currently support free plugins, so tracking them down can be a bit of a task. I like to check r/unrealengine for stuff occasionally.
You could always just open up the static mesh editor.
Override the walkable slope for the ladder mesh, and handle climbing sound as a footstep sound.
If you want to make it more advance e.g: animations add a interaction like press Use (E) or a trigger volume and set animation state to climbing.
Probably I go to make a basic ladder system for free.
yeah, for everything we had for free and good working in UEd3 we now Need at least a marketplace pack that does the same Job worse in Terms of Performance and Looks than what we have had already.
Yeah but we had this functionality in the UE3 because of Epic implemented it for their games, the UE4 branch we get is decoupled from their internal projects. Sorry but i’m with Jamen here, such high-level features aren’t needed and would bloat the engine only more up for projects that don’t need such features. Besides that it can be done efficiently and performance friendly with little to no hassle.