I prefer this post to PMs anyway if the question is about the toolkit or TBS games in general. The PM system on these forums aren’t the best and if the question is about TBS games it might be of interest to other people viewing this thread. If the question is something you are absolutely sure is not of general interest or that you wish to keep private you can email me at knuteiliv@gmail.com, though I am generally quicker to respond in this thread as I always get reminded of all the work emails I should prioritize when visiting my inbox
Yeah, this is on the log of things to be fixed. I’ll need to change a few things to get this working correctly, so I won’t be fixing this for the coming update, as I want it to be done as soon as possible, but I’ll prioritize it for the next one.
I’m pretty sure I changed it in like 3 nodes by just making it set the delay has passed boolean whenever it takes a route that results in no action. Granted idk what your ai looks like now, but so far that worked for me.
Ok, that is the same thing I did a while ago, but it ended up crashing the game and I had difficulty locating the source of the crash, so I put it on hold. If you are not getting any such errors I might give it a new try. My many changes to the toolkit since might have resolved the mysterious bug. The new AI is very different, but it is separated from the old AI using child blueprints, so the main AI blueprint is still pretty similar.
I haven’t done any real testing beyond running it through a handful of times after making the changes, since the blueprint data loss issues make building a level exceptionally painful right now, but of the limited testing I did do I had no issues.
That said, I’ve done some pretty significant changes to the AI blueprints myself that may have affected something, but I can’t really see any of those affecting whether or not the delay being present was stable or not, but you never know.
No, it seems to cause no problems now. It has been a long time since I looked at this last, and much has been changed inbetween, so it makes sense. It sucks with the data loss issues. You’re talking about variables of child actors being reset, right? Epic should really focus on this issue. It has been a problem with the engine for ages.
Yup. It happens within levels too, and every time I change something it won’t even last the day. Hopefully they find a way to fix it because it makes it impossible to accomplish anything on the level design side before the blueprints are finalized.
Are you talking about variables you have set in the class defaults of child actors, or modifications to the public variables of individual actors placed in your scenes? If it is the latter, they keep resetting like clockwork in my maps as well, but if it is the first it is a very rare occurrence for me at least.
I have both, and same deal. Occasionally my child blueprints will lose data themselves, but it’s rare. Level actors lose their non default values multiple times a day.
Ok, I see. You could try to build around it and use unique classes for your different units (like the toolkit having separate child blueprints for enemy and friendly units with the only difference being the faction and allied factions). Though depending on what you are doing this might of course be too impractical.
My units have their own specific inventories that need to be set on a level actor basis, so that’s off the table. Fortunately I’m far enough in that I can just switch over to working on art until this stops being a problem, but I really hope they fix this soon.
Ok, I see. I’ve sent a bug report about this to Epic before, but you could also consider doing the same if you have not already. I’m impressed by your previous artwork on your site, so I’m looking forward to seeing your TBS game in motion.
Crossing my fingers for 4.16 as well, then. I’ve voten on the issue, at least. Seems like one guy in the thread managed to avoid the problem by setting all values in the parent blueprint to none (I’m guessing 0 could work for numeric variables?). You could check if this workaround works.
Awesome!
In other news I’m continuing to work on the update. As usual I keep creating more work for myself. After getting the new AI working I couldn’t help myself but tweak it for ages to make it more performant, but I think it is at the point where the skills are good enough for release. I still have a few more thins to add in the VR department and a lot of commenting before I’ll send it to Epic, though.
To give an impression of the amount of work put into the new update, here is a screenshot of the event graph of the Laser skill. One of six skills included in the coming update. Each skill contains a section for use by the player and one for use by the AI. The AI checks through every skill it has at its disposition to select the one that best suits its current situation, chooses the target it considers the best and moves to the best tile to use the skill from (based on cover, distance etc.). I’m looking forward to finally getting this stuff to you guys:
This is great work you are putting into this toolkit. I have small question: is it possible and if not, is it hard to change toolkit to be able to place few units on the same tile? I have map where one tile represent bigger part of terrain and I need to be able to place more units on one tile. Is toolkint flexible enough or it will require massive changes?
Hi tutkarz, that depends a lot on what you are aiming for. Is it something like in Civilization, where one unit of troops still pretty much functions like a unit in my toolkit only that it has multiple skeletal meshes, then no, that is quite easy. If you want something else, where two different units can move onto the same tile and you want to be able to selectively select one of these units while they are on the same tile, you would need to rework several core systems.
I think my post might have been missed due to being held up in moderation. I’ve been playing with a few delays on the setups to let the units spawn on BeginPlay before it looks for the units on the grid and that seems to work with a few problems, but I’m not sure it’d work once I get spawners set up. With your experience, do you know if there’d be a simple way to accommodate them, or would it require a major rework on the toolkit?
I’m not at my work pc right now so I can’t take any pics for you, but I did something similar in my project. Basically, I added a boolean variable to units that marked them as a spawner entity, and modified the grid manager function that adds pawns to the pawn array to ignore those units effectively hiding them from the game. It’s been a while since I played disgaea, so I don’t remember exactly how it works, but iirc you click your spawner and you get a menu of your units, and you can pick one to spawn.
If that’s what you want to do, you could pull it off by doing what I did, and then creating an array for your spawner(s) within the grid manager, and having it add your spawner to that array at startup (like it does with pawns). Then add the functionality within the player controller to call a menu that lists your available units when you click the spawner, then when you select one add it to the pawn array at the spawner location.
as long as you use the Spawn Unit function in BP_GridManager, spawning units during gameplay should not be a problem. What this function does is spawn a Unit actor and add it to the Pawn Array and Initiative Order array.
Thank you! That’s pretty much exactly what I’m trying to do. I’ll make some changes and try it out.
Yeah, that’s what I’ve been using. I’ve just had a few problems when trying to use it while starting with an empty grid. I guess the grid manager is looking for units on BeginPlay before they’re even being spawned and it’s causing some errors.
Hi ,
This looks very sophisticated and awesome! Would it be possible to show us some high detail screenshots of the ‘Activate Skill’ and ‘Player’ parts of one the skill Blueprints you are working on? Will players be able to choose between several skills from a UI menu like in XCOM? How will each skill interact with the ‘Unit’ blueprints? I’m really looking forward to getting this working!
