Here’s one that would help cut down on work a LOT for highly dynamic levels.
(Background)
My game makes heavy use of what I call a “Tier” system; each level is an open-ended arena with multiple combat zones. Clearing any combat zone will increase the “Tier”, which will change the layout of the entire level slightly (so that no matter what order you clear the combat zones in, the level changes as you progress; this way, each playthrough will feel different depending on which zone you clear first). These changes include things like spawning platforms, traps, and the like, as well as moving gates, lowering bridges, all that fun jazz.
Anyway, here’s the meat of it: The way I prototype Tiers is to lay them out in the level editor, WYSIWYG style. Then, when I like the layout, I have to undergo the extremely tedious process of creating a Spawn Actor node that refers to each of those actors, configuring all of the parameters of the actor to match up, and then manually copying the transform values by hand into the Spawn Actor node.
So, what I’d really, really like is a way to “Use This Actor’s Transform”, similar to “create a reference to (ThisActor)”, creating a MakeTransform node populated with the transform values from the currently selected object in the editor. This way, I could easily prototype several configurations for things like moving platforms, doors and gates, etc., and just create references to their existing transforms, which the level BP could then lerp between using Timelines or whatever else I want to trigger these changes in its execution paths.
Even better would be a way to create a reference to a specific actor in the level via the level BP, with everything from class to editable parameters intact, as a TEMPLATE, and then be able to tell the LevelBP to spawn it. So I could create an actor on the map, go to the LevelBP, select “create a template for (ThisActor)”, and then once I have that node in place, delete the actor from the editor, and connect that Template reference up to a SpawnActor node (or perhaps some derivative node, since not all editable parameters are exposed to Spawn necessarily; like a SpawnFromTemplate node) so that the LevelBP’s Event Graph can spawn it.
I know this latter would involve significantly more work on Epic’s end but it would shave hours off of every level design iteration for me; I simply place an actor where I want it at Tier5, create a reference to its Transform, move it to where I want it to enter the world, create a Template reference to it, and then under the Tier5 initialization execution path, I simply SpawnFromTemplate the actor, then use a Timeline to Lerp its transform from its spawn location to its intended location. Boom, instant laser traps floating out of pits.