MovementComponent->Velocity is uninitialized. How can I detect this?

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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1

I’m trying to predict where a pawn will be. So I’m trying to grab it’s movement component. If it’s got one, the AI should then lead the target.

if (FocusPawn != nullptr && FocusPawn->GetMovementComponent() != nullptr)
{
		FVector velocity = FocusPawn->GetMovementComponent()->Velocity; //THIS CRASHES!

Problem is, it’s got a movement component with an uninitialized velocity, which is a crash. Normally, you’d fix this by initializing it, but that’s EPIC’s code, and they don’t initialize it. I know I can’t check if a variable is initialized at runtime (other than seeing if it crashes.) But is there some other way to tell?

Can I tell if the owning pawn has moved?

The other thing is, the pawn this is happening on doesn’t have a MovementComponent, at least not one I can see in the editor, so why is it passing the nullptr check?

2

The problem was the AActor wasn’t a pawn, so I had to dynamic_cast it:

APawn* FocusPawn = dynamic_cast<APawn*>(AIController->GetFocusActor());