Passing a non-default UPROPERTY to an Actor's component variable at construction time

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

To hide some implementation details in my actors and ease the designer’s workload, I intend to not show some C++ ActorComponents in the editor while still allowing some of their properties to be set. I do this by defining a smaller subset of these component properties directly as the Actor’s UPROPERTYies. At some point I obviously then need to pass these Actor UPROPERTYies to the Component.

Using the constructor doesn’t work, because it will set the variables before any BP-modified UPROPERTY values are applied:



AActor::AActor() :
    test(1), {
    component = CreateDefaultSubobject<UComponent>("component");

    component->test = test;
}

If I change “test” to 2 in the editor (in the BP archetype, or a spawned instance), component->test remains 1 both in the editor and PIE.

Using PostInitializeComponents() partially works:



AActor::AActor() :
    test(1), {
    component = CreateDefaultSubobject<UComponent>("component");
}

void AActor::PostInitializeComponents() {
    Super::PostInitializeComponents();

    component->test = test;
}

This correctly passes the property in PIE, but not in the editor (the component’s property remains the component’s default).

What should I use to make sure that each time the property changes in BP, the value is passed to the component? Is it possible at all?

2

I have used ‘PostEditChangeProperty’ before, but you need to wrap it in WITH_EDITOR tags. This is used for if you place a blueprint of an actor in the scene, then change a property, you will see the effects change in the editor. It depends on what your end goal is with the changing of these values?

3

To be fair, I’m not changing anything in the scene and only need these values to be set correctly ingame. I was mainly wondering if there was a better method of doing this with UE’s actor lifecycle.

4

BlueprintSetter = functionName

Google how to use custom bp setters.

5

Setters don’t seem to trigger when the value is modified through the editor’s interface though.