(Resolved) - Custom Building Props I create don't give resources and don't show VFX

Fresnella · September 28, 2022, 8:20pm

11/28 Update:

Problem solved! So many thanks to @FunkinMonkey for walking me through the current process of converting a Static Mesh to a Building Prop. It appears there were a couple of steps that I was completing differently than the most recent version of the instructions recommend.

I do have a docs question now. Is there a reason why no instructions for Building Prop conversion currently appear in the UEFN Docs? The old instructions I had been using earlier are gone from the UEFN Docs page, and the new ones Funkin Monkey DMed me aren’t there either, although apparently they do show in the internal docs. Just surfacing this in case it’s not known.

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Clarification: This is the definitive post for updates about my ongoing Building Props issue. There’s a similar post I made before I realized the underlying issue was the same Blocker for 2 months - Building Props intermittently broken - don't take damage but at this point it’s redundant.

11/25 Update:

Today I was going to try creating Building Props again to see if this issue has changed for me, and I notice that the section in the UEFN docs covering how to convert custom static meshes into Building Props with Building Prop Blueprints appears to be gone. Are creators now unable to convert custom static meshes into interactable FN props that can be destroyed for resources and used with FN devices? Has this feature of UEFN been removed? Or has the process for making custom assets interactable changed?

10/25 Update:

Hey, is there any news about this problem yet? It’s been 29 days since I first posted about the Building Prop bug related to this issue. Blocker for 2 months - Building Props intermittently broken - don't take damage - #2 I still can’t create functional Building Props in my game, plus when I try to test the game with the building props I get infinite Downloading. Last update I heard was from @jay_villanueva 15 days ago, that the issue was going to be triaged with production.

Today I tried creating and testing a building prop again. I was able to get into Live mode to test the prop once, and I could destroy the prop but I didn’t receive wood and no VFX appeared. Then when I tried to reload the game after deleting some props, I got infinite Downloading message. Similar to how it’s always been for a month. Here’s a video of my process today. It’s not actually that long to watch, I left the infinite downloading going for a while at the end.

Logs:
BlueClairy_Logs_Oct25_BuildingProp.zip (311.0 KB)

I’m concerned because in Discord Jay and Cubed were talking about this week’s update being a candidate for the December release, but my Building Prop issue hasn’t been fixed, over the past month. In order for me to release a functional game alongside Public Beta, I need to be able to create Building Props. I know I may be the only person with this bug, which concerns me because maybe Epic doesn’t see much incentive to fix it for me before Public Beta. What should I do? My strategy has to been to focus solely on art not mechanics, but I didn’t realize I would be doing this strategy for a month, and indefinitely into the future. I’m really trying to be patient! I’m going to update my devlog later today, so you can see what I’ve been working on. I’ve made some changes to the artstyle and theme of the game I was formerly calling TidyPals, it’s pretty cool.

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9/27 Original Post:
It’s Wednesday and I haven’t been able to test my game, TidyPals, since Sunday.

I can edit the game, but every time I press Play or Refresh I either get the content beacon error screen, or I load into an empty UEFN project with “Downloading” stuck at 0% forever. Other projects of mine are testable. It’s hard for me to work on the art in my project without testing it, because the concept is a tiny player in a normal life sized apartment, and I need to test how the scale feels for the player.

If this project ends up being permanently broken, is it safe for me to copy my project content files to a new UEFN project, using File Explorer on my PC? If so, how do I do that? I’m worried that I might break things more, since I’m not very tech savvy.

Also, for the future should I be backing up my projects elsewhere? I saw some creators in the Discord talking about source control. I’ve used Github before, but it was a while ago so I would need to give myself a refresher on how it works.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Here are my logs from today:

BlueClairy_Logs_Sept28.zip (248.8 KB)

jay_villanueva · September 29, 2022, 12:22am

I’m following up on this one @Fresnella, I’ll let you know when I find something out. Care to post your project or DM me a link to it?

Fresnella · September 29, 2022, 1:13am

Hi Jay, thanks for following up! How do I generate a link to my project to DM to you? I’ve never tried sharing a UEFN project.

jay_villanueva · September 29, 2022, 1:17am

I mean to go do your Documents => Fortnite Projects folder.
Zip up the project (Using something like 7Zip or the windows zip tool)
Then send it to me or post it.

jay_villanueva · September 29, 2022, 2:12am

@Fresnella
Go into your project and delete the actor “BP_1Candy”
This allowed me to run your project. I’ve taken this reproduction case and we’re going to log it and investigate. Somehow a building prop was created that can crash the cooker. Additionally, if you try to add the static mesh to that prop, it crashes UEFN.

Let me know if this fixes it for you.

If you remember how you created this prop, let us know.

Fresnella · September 29, 2022, 5:32am

@jay_villanueva Thanks for investigating! Hm I deleted BP_1Candy from my outliner now and I also deleted the Blueprint for that Building Prop, but I’m still getting a Content Beacon error. Is there anywhere else I need to delete it from? I quit UEFN and reopened it just in case, and I still got the Content Beacon error again.

It does make sense that the building prop might be a part of the problem, because the Content Beacon problem started after I created the building prop, when I was testing out the prop. I don’t know what I did wrong when I created the prop but it was behaving weirdly when I tested it. It wouldn’t give resources, and it intermittently wouldn’t take damage. And then I couldn’t test it anymore because I was getting the content beacon error. I actually wrote a bug report for it when it happened. Maybe I messed something up when I was trying to troubleshoot, I tried walking through the building prop instructions several times. Major - Building Props intermittently broken - don’t take damage
Here are my logs:
15628-seam_material_ans_hub.zip (22 Bytes)

Fresnella · September 29, 2022, 5:39am

Oh wait @jay_villanueva I tried it again and it worked!!! I don’t know why it took a few tries before it worked. I still don’t know what went wrong with the building prop in the first place though. But I’m glad to be able to test my game again, thank you!

Fresnella · September 29, 2022, 6:49am

Oh no. I added another building prop, and at first I was able to test the game fine and the building prop worked (well it kind of worked, it disappears when I hit it but I couldn’t get the death particles to show up). But after I tested it a few more times I started getting the Content Beacon error again. I haven’t been able to test my game since. I’m going to DM you the zip file again, could you check if the same issue is happening again with my building prop? @jay_villanueva

jay_villanueva · September 30, 2022, 12:58am

Thanks for the updates @Fresnella. I’ve reproduced the errors for one of our engineers and they’re on the job. I know it’s not optimal but I hope you can continue to work while we work on a solution. Thanks for your patience!

jay_villanueva · September 30, 2022, 1:08am

So one of the engineers suspects that this is happening because when UEFN enters Live Edit with the Fortnite Client, the static mesh component is getting cleared out on the candy. If you have a reproduction case for how we get into this state I can forward it to them. Either steps or video would be helpful if you can.

Fresnella · September 30, 2022, 6:12am

Thanks for helping me out, @jay_villanueva ! I guess this turned out to be pretty complicated! Has anyone else had this issue or is it just me?

For now I’m able to work on art for the game, I just can’t test the game as a player.

The building props definitely appear to be the problem, because I deleted all of the building props, and I was able to test the game. But then I tried creating a new one and the game failed again when I tried to test it, this time with a different error message, not the content beacon:

“CreateModuleVersions() failed with errors: ‘22.0.22026835’ is not an active client build. Unable to find an appropriate content -worker.”

After I got this error I deleted the building prop I had just created, and I closed UEFN and reopened it, but I still get the same “not an active client build” error now, whenever I try to test the game.

I recorded a video of my process creating the prop, based on the prop conversion docs: Download - TransferNow

And here are my logs:
BlueClairy_Logs_Sept29.zip (133.9 KB)

Fresnella · September 30, 2022, 7:48pm

Update: Today I was able to test my game! No error message like yesterday. I didn’t change anything from last time, except for finish this chair I’m going to continue to not add any building props for now and hope things will stay stable. @jay_villanueva . Sorry if it’s annoying I keep tagging you in addition to replying - I can’t tell if replies in the Forums register with users.

Fresnella · October 2, 2022, 1:50am

@jay_villanueva today I was able to replicate the Content Beacon error in a new project after adding Building Props, and I recorded it in a video. My plan was to start a brand new project where Building Props hopefully wouldn’t be broken, and the copy and paste all of my art from the original TidyPals game into the new game. I had some mechanics I wanted to test that I needed the Prop Mover and Prop Manipulator for. But it appears the new project has the same prop issue - at least I got video of it!

The first several minutes of the video are me creating a new building prop, to check if I got the steps right. Then I test the game. I can destroy the prop, but the prop death VFX never show up. I don’t know if it granted me wood resource because I accidentally left that resource infinite. Also the pivot point for my Building Prop is wierdly far away from the mesh? I don’t know why? At the end I get the Content Beacon error. After the game crashed once it continued to crash every subsequent time I tried to test the game.

Something I noticed in the video, and also noticed in my old project at least once, is that there is a syncing discrepancy between the number of building props in my UEFN editor and in the Creative client. Have you seen this happen in your tests? You can see at around 9 min into the video, after I had deleted one of the copies of my building prop in the UEFN editor, I refreshed Creative and that prop was still showing up in creative, even though it was absent from my UEFN viewport and outliner. You can see there are two boxes (my prop) in the UEFN viewport and 3 boxes in the Creative map. Download - TransferNow

Is this info helpful? Thanks again for your patience with this.
Here are my logs too:
BlueClairy_Logs_Oct1.zip (138.6 KB)

Also another note, weeks ago I did create one building prop that worked fine, and even granted resources. But the project it was in broke a while ago and I can’t open the file at all, because UEFN immediately closes and I get a crash report. I forgot it was broken and I thought maybe I could repurpose that old project for TidyPals, but then I saw that it’s still broken. But I do know that I’m capable of following the instructions and making a working prop.

jay_villanueva · October 7, 2022, 12:48am

@Fresnella Are you still having this issue in the latest build? I was looking at your video and the error you were getting communicates that your UEFN client version didn’t match the content worker version which is very odd.

Fresnella · October 7, 2022, 1:10am

Oof @jay_villanueva I don’t actually know if I’m still having the building prop issue after the update! Because I was too scared to try making building props again, in case I break my game again and can’t get back into Live edit. After that incident from the video I posted, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t get back into Live edit even after deleting the building props. I could try making building props in a new project I don’t care about though. Would that be helpful?

I saw today that SnowSoftServe was seeing inconsistencies between how many devices showed in their map in UEFN vs Live Edit. Do you think their issue is related to mine? Normal - Inconsistences Between Creative Edit and UEFN - #3

jay_villanueva · October 7, 2022, 5:45am

Doing it in a separate project would be okay. As I said, after I looked at the video it looked sus because of the error you were getting. I think it can still happen but I think there were two errors and I’m not sure if they were connected.

Fresnella · October 7, 2022, 6:02am

Ok cool I’ll try making a building prop in a different project tomorrow. Ultimately I’m not even sure if I need building props for the cleaning mechanic? This is what I need:

player hits object with pickaxe
object disappears, and reappears on a timer.
player receives items and points.
VFX and SFX spawn.

I don’t need the player to receive wood, metal, or stone, and I don’t need the FX_Death stuff with the little images of wood etc, especially if I can’t customize those VFX. I was planning on maybe granting them an item that better resembles the trash they clean, like a bottle or a crystal. And to grant items or spawn VFX upon the player cleaning the trash I don’t think a building prop would help me, right? I would need to detect when a player damages the building prop. I know I can detect when they damage a trigger, so maybe what I actually want are triggers?

@Rynex_FNC suggested I place invisible triggers underneath each cleanable object, and use a cinematic sequencer to drag each object underneath the floor after the player damages the corresponding trigger. Moving objects under the floor looks smoother than just disappearing them. But there will be hundreds of cleanable objects, so hundreds of cinematic sequencers being activated frequently throughout the map by players might not be performant, and it will also be tedious to set up. Is this an example of where Verse functions for spawn/destroy/translate/scale would be useful? That’s how I would approach this in Core. The Prop Mover and Prop Manipulator are off the table because they require Building Props.

Fresnella · October 7, 2022, 7:21pm

Ok so I tried creating a building prop in a new project and I had a few times when I had to restart UEFN but I was eventually able to access Creative edit / gameplay. I didn’t see syncing issues with the number of building props this time. I can destroy the prop with my pickaxe but I still don’t receive wood resources or see the death VFX. I took a video of my testing process. I didn’t take video of me creating the prop but here are screenshots of the settings on both the blueprint and the building prop. I swear it seems to me like every time I create a prop I’m following the instructions word by word.

Like I said in my previous response yesterday, do you think I could/should try abandoning building props altogether for my cleaning mechanic and try using something else like the Trigger Device and Cinematic Sequencer Device? Seems like there are some features I need that I can’t get from solely destroying Building Props.

The first time I pressed Play I got this error but when I tried again it went away:

Failed to create a Server Session and Join it.

Matchmaking failed! Ensure account can matchmake in standard Fortnite Client then try again.

Please verify your backend, and net CL are compatible with a deployed server!

Your backend is: FortnitePublicTest

Your Build is: ++Fortnite+Release-22.10-CL-22240570

Logs:
BlueClairy_Logs_Oct7.zip (168.7 KB)
Zip of the new project where I tested Building Props today:
Test_BP (2).zip (168.2 KB)

Video: Transfer not found – TransferNow

jay_villanueva · October 11, 2022, 4:53am

Thanks for the update @Fresnella. I’m marking this issue as one I’m going to triage with production tomorrow.

Fresnella · October 11, 2022, 5:32am

Awesome, thank you so much!