Hello all, sorry for the late reply. For some reason I have not received e-mail notifications of the last four replies, so I did not see them until now. Thanks for answering in my absence, Ariegos. I have cleared these questions up for lostcosmonaut by e-mail since he contacted me there as well, but here is a summary for the rest of you:
The toolkit is already “open” in that everything is made in blueprint, all of which is available for anyone who purchases the toolkit, so there is no black box with inaccessible C++ code or something. I do not, however, plan to release the toolkit for free. I am unsure about how difficult it would be to convert the toolkit to C++ since I am not that great at C++. For me it would certainly be difficult, and I suspect it would be more trouble than it is worth for most people. Also, C++ projects cannot normally be submitted to the marketplace even though Epic is experimenting with allowing plugins. Working with a combination of C++ and blueprints would probably be a better idea if you want to use both C++ and this toolkit. If you want to work purely in C++ I would recommend starting your own project from scratch, though my forum threads and tutorial videos will hopefully still be of use to you.
@: In the newest version there are already nodes set up to end the game if the last unit of a faction has been destroyed. Take a look in the event graph of Unit_Parent in the part connected to the custom event “destroy unit”. This should be easy to modify so that the game ends when a particular unit has been destroyed.
Got some feedback for you about how this kit can be improved.
Defects that can be fixed -
Use behavior trees and Blackboard. This would greatly cut down on time needed to build AI for this kit.
Some form of example HUD (Heads Up display) with various functions hooked up. Such as End turn, Attack, etc.
Ehancements -
Written Docs - The video tutorials are great! But for people like myself who want to get specific information about the Toolkit or just look a function or somthing. This would be invaluable
Example requests -
Example: Run Time based Grid Snapping for Units that are not on the grid. - Example Fallout 1 Style Movement to Combat.
An example Area of Effect attack and/or Buff that can effect multiple tiles.
@HeadClot: Thanks for the input. Here are my thoughts:
I have considered this before, and I might consider doing this in the future. Personally I find regular event graphs to be easier to work with for turn based games so I have not made this a priority.
I intend to include example HUD in my next example map, though I want to keep this separate from the default toolkit functionality as UI varies greatly between TBS games.
I can see how this would be useful, though it would take a lot of time for me to make a documentation that covers everything in sufficient detail. I greatly prefer to make video tutorials, and since most users seem happy with this I have no current plans to spend a lot of time making a written documentation when I could spend the same time adding new features. I’ll consider writing a shorter documentation covering some aspects of the toolkit’s functionality, though. Could you give me concrete examples of the sorts of things you would want the most to be covered in a written documentation?
I’m not sure if I understand this one. Do you mean where you have a real time game where you can transition into turn based gameplay at which point all units smoothly snap onto the closest tile? I think units in Fallout 1 are actually always on the grid. They just don’t display the grid when not in combat and allow movement over arbitrarily long distances.
I have done one such example in one of my vide tutorials. I also intend to include such an example in my next example map. This is fairly easy to do if you need such an effect now. Just use the Get Units In Range function and apply whatever effect you want to all units found.
How would I go about giving the players moves like chesspieces instead of the movesystem they currently have? I want to make something more like a boardgame. How can I make a pawn move like a queen or a knight from chess?
First of all, thank you for this fantastic toolkit. Do you have a development plan and timeline for what you are working on adding and when you hope to release?
[MENTION=94285]Marius Irgens[/MENTION]: I actually spent some hours trying to implement chess style movement for the toolkit after reading your question and found it to be more tricky than I anticipated. You will need to make some pretty major adjustments to get this working well. I will see if I get more time to look into it later, but the general idea is to get all tiles in move range from a unit (perhaps using the Get Indexes in Range function).
Then, using the outputted array from this function you would loop through it and remove anything that does not fit your criteria. E.g. not being on a straight or diagonal line from your unit if it is a queen by comparing tile indexes, not being allowed to move to tiles behind another unit by doing a trace from that tile to the current unit using a channel blocked by the collision of the unit in between etc. It will take some pretty heavy modification so I would recommend you attempt this first when you have a really good grasp of the toolkit.
@stormhierta: Hello! I do not really have an exact development plan or timeline. I did make a list of planned features that is in the original post, but it is pretty outdated at this point (I should probably update this soon). I’m also very bad at estimating how long something takes, but I’ll tell you what I’m currently working on.
My next update is planned to include a game example that is pretty close to XCOM. It will include things like accuracy, cover, skills you can choose from a HUD (including area attacks, overwatch etc.) and more. I will also be using many creative common assets to make this example look and feel closer to an actual game, including weapon meshes with particle effects etc. I have also recently gotten my HTC Vive so the next update may even include VR-support. I’m having a blast playing with UE4 and VR and already have a preliminary working demo of a VR enabled toolkit.
This is the initial plan, at least. Things may change as I go forward.
I have a project that needs meshes created in a grid but I don’t need any of the game functionality or the camera. How easy is it to re-purpose your toolkit to only create grids?
Should be very easy if all you need is a grid of instanced static meshes. You just keep the relevant parts of the blueprint BP_GridManager’s construction script that spawns the actual meshes and remove the parts you don’t need. Nothing of the gameplay nodes should fire as long as you don’t change the game mode to ATBTT_GameMode so that is really all you need to do. If you don’t want to buy the entire toolkit just for spawning a mesh grid I can walk you through the steps to make one for scratch, though.
Thanks for the quick reply! I’m really excited about what you’re working on and look forward to it. Maybe you could throw a little update into the first post every time you release a new version, just so people know what’s coming?
I’d love to know the timeline a little better, but I quite understand that it might not be viable for you to assess at this stage.
Hi again, I have updated the first post, which was long overdue. Many of the features on my planned features list were a bit misleading, as they are plans pretty far into the future and might cause people to buy the toolkit assuming they are right around the corner. Now the first post only contains the features I have planned for the next major update. I have also changed most of what was written in the first post, as it was better suited for when the toolkit was brand new. Thanks for giving me the push I needed to update it, as I had been putting it off for a while.
Hey ,
Do you think its possible to load a huge image into the game and lay your tile map on top of that? I was thinking of using a 2D map making program like Campaign Cartographer to create big map images and make a computer board game sim. Don’t know if it’s possible to load big images into UE4 though.
I am trying to replicate this and have got mostly everything apart from the two floats setup, is there any chance you can go through this step by step? or possibly let me know where I am going wrong?
@Ariegos: Sure! That is what I’ve done in the 2D game example that was included in the last update. Here I used UE4’s built in tile map, but importing an image file should not be a problem. However I’m not sure if you will be able to generate the appropriate collision for each tile using Campaign Cartographer, though I do not know the software. With the built in tile map I was able to only set the collision of walkable tiles to block PathTrace and in this way generate walkability automatically. I also used a similar trick to block visibility for walls. I think Tiled works well with Unreal Engine and can be set up with separate collision for each tile. Not sure with Campaign Cartographer, though. Worst case is that you will have to place invisible walls manually.
@Rob3342421: Looks mostly right except you are checking if an attack is a hit by comparing the accuracy of the attacking unit to its own dodge value instead of the dodge value of its target. You should be able to drag a pin from the blue reroute node you have marked on the left (which gets its input from the Attack Target custom event) and find the dodge value of the target by searching for “dodge”.
Glad to hear you got your Vive! I have really enjoyed using mines and can’t wait to see how you implement the Vive controllers into this template.
When I get home I am going to see how easy it is to add the Vive’s controller support to the current version. Being able to select and aim where you want the units to go will really make my project feel more like a board game.
It’s an impressive piece of tech! I have both the DK1 and DK2 as well, but the addition of roomscale and motion controllers takes it to another level. Getting the toolkit working with touch controllers is not very difficult and it does indeed feel like a living board game. If you run into any obstacles just ask me in this thread. It is still quite a while until my next update is ready for prime time.
Okay that has sorted it however after playing, it seems that units cannot get a hit, this effectively breaks the combat as it makes it impossible. It may need more work but I think it is technically working, it simply means that every attack is a miss. The only thing that comes to mind is that the variables of dodge and accuracy have to be set to the units? I am unsure if that is the issue but it’s is what comes to mind.
EDIT: I have found the accuracy and dodge variables in the unit details. After setting these to numbers, it is possible to attack units ingame. (I’m glad I was right, makes me feel good to fix this myself, sorry to waste time).
