if there is no direct player character that exists, and you are giving commands directly to the Entities. you should probably be looking into an RTS controller.
you are probably thinking of your problem state is a far “too specific” (I want to do this specific thing, so if there is anything that will help it will be that specific thing), if that was the case then you should be looking to modify a template. If you need help with a mechanic they you should be looking for things that are similar, or looking for the conceptual pieces.
when it comes to tutorials and guides there are 2 flavors:
- demonstrating a specific feature, with a little bit of expansion, but mostly just a vehicle to show off the feature.
- mini-projects, which will take you through most of the steps to get to a specific target, and often just touching on each piece leaving it to the “student” to expand with variety
- both of these types make their revenue from the guides (outside of memberships, and selling courses), by having their tutorials/guides to be as long as possible, while not showing you how to finish things, which if the viewer is not fully learning, and just following along. the viewer will just be dependent on the guide creator, which is only really benefitial to the guide creator as it keeps that viewer coming back.
both of these can be helpful for different reasons, and neither should be the totality of your project (especially if you intend to release your title). The best suggestions I can give regarding tutorials, and guides:
- try to follow them until you understand what they are doing, and then try to apply it in some different way.
- The other way as a test of your understanding is to let them explain what they are going to do in the guide, pause the video, try to figure out how you could do it, and then either when you are frustrated making no progress, or have gotten something working then watch the video to see how they do it, and compare.
- ***if you only ever follow guides and tutorials exactly you might not actually be learning anything, unless you can apply it outside the tutorials and guides “holding your hand”. You are basically asking the other users of this forum and I to make you a tutorial/guide to follow for your idea***
Software engineering/development is problem solving at its core, and sometimes that means figuring out not just “how to solve the problem”, but “how can I break this down into smaller problems that are more easily solvable”
for how to Rotate and move an NPC entity, typically this is done with an AIController, but it can also be done in the Pawn itself. you can either modify the Transform directly, or you can talk to the MovementComponent for adding inputs thatway (rotation is only really supported out of the box in CharacterMovement, but is still doable with even FloatingPawnMovement)
for the matter at hand a “Player Character” is not absolutely required (in the project settings you can set the “DefaultPawn=none” and that is fine, it is only really highly suggested that there be a “Player Controller”, as a means to receive input from the player/user, but that is mostly for the purpose of being a “game” (a game with no input is a movie at the worst and a simulation at the best).
look for “Unreal Engine RTS Controller” (I have seen a couple floating around in both Blueprints and C++), if you are not making a true “RTS”, maybe you feel there are not that many entities, you are not going to have building, there are turns, or some other reason:
- no physical player character
- selecting individual or multiple Entities and issuing commands generally or granular, or directly or indirectly.
these are the basis for an RTS (if it shall be turn based then that could be your expansion point especially if it isn’t already in the tutorial/guide)
if you have a question about something more specific, particularly something not working as expected, or a specific concept that is not coming together, but “give me a tutorial/guide for my project” is probably better suited for google, youtube, or at last resort an LLM (the outline is probably more trustworthy then actual implementation because hallucinations)