There are several ways to create a cover system, and among the various methods I’ve tested in Unreal Engine, I believe the most optimized approach is to use the smallest amount of line traces possible. In this context, I choose to use only a single sphere trace. However, for this to work, it’s necessary to manipulate all the assets in the level. With that in mind, I’ve developed a constructor that calculates the positions and rotations for the pieces to fit together correctly. It’s worth noting that this approach limits the creative freedom of architects, but the benefit is that, with a good animation pack, you can achieve much greater realism in character locomotion.
Initially, I wanted to use the constructor with an Xbox controller, but I didn’t get to test it thoroughly because I didn’t fully understand how the Unreal shortcut definition API works.
Using this system can be a bit frustrating for people with difficulties in geo-location, however, if you’re not fond of using drag and drop, you might get accustomed to it. It’s similar to using the Vim text editor but without shortcuts as of now.
The entire project is open to discussion, data flow, new features, new ideas, and critiques. I intend to gather feedback and rewrite this plugin in the future because it lacks productivity tools, but the foundation needs to be well-established before proceeding. The initial idea was for it to be used by humans; however, I believe that the current asset format may have too many parts and could be somewhat difficult to use without an intelligent autocomplete feature. I plan to better understand Unreal’s machine learning tools and attempt to create something similar once the project’s structure is more solid and robust.