Switching Possessed Actor for Movement

anonymous_user_e105d1911 · October 27, 2017, 11:49am

Hey there.

My Question is whether what I do make sense, because it feels like ugly programming.
I believe there should be a better solution than what I arrived at.

In my RTS game, I want to be able to move the camera freely -using FloatingPawnMovement- while the middle mouse button is held down.
While the mouse is not held, mouse movement should not change the camera, however pressing wasd will move the camera.

The way I am currently doing this is by having two different Actors, one with the FloatingPawnMovement and the other without, and the PlayerController will unpossess and destroy the current actor, and spawn and possess the other, when the middle mouse button is pressed / released.

I have been tinkering around this for a while now, and this is the first result that actually worked out (I was disabling tick on the movement component before…).

If I can solve this in C++ that’s perfectly fine too, I tried to extend FloatingPawnMovement, but I didn’t manage to figure it out…

Cheers

Flash7 · October 27, 2017, 10:16pm

but what is the problem by using only 1 actor? just use flags saying what actions are permitted.

anonymous_user_e105d1911 · October 28, 2017, 12:23pm

Hello Flash,
the issue was that when I disabled ticking for the movement component, the camera would still rotate when I moved the mouse. I couldn’t find a way to disable just that.

Flash7 · October 28, 2017, 3:23pm

For what do you need a movement component? can you post a screenshot of your camera actor?

anonymous_user_e105d1911 · October 28, 2017, 3:37pm

I’m not on my work computer until monday…
I’m using Unreal’s FloatingPawnMovement component because it is the exact movement I want to use. The Camera is attached to a DefaultPawn, other than that it’s empty.

anonymous_user_e105d1911 · October 28, 2017, 4:04pm

Alright, I’ll do that once I get home.
But for the FloatingPawnMovement Component, I enabled the default movement bindings, so for the freecam, I do not handle input manually.
(this image is from another unreal forum post)

https://forums.unrealengine.com/filedata/fetch?id=1064874

anonymous_user_e105d1911 · October 28, 2017, 4:29pm

Yeah that would definitely make sense.
Is it simple to define the input then? I had a quick look around for that before, but I don’t remember seeing it.
I really want to avoid having to basically rebuild the exact same behaviour

Flash7 · October 28, 2017, 3:47pm

I see, but that should be more to that, like how you handle input. Can you make a screenshot of your whole blueprint?

Flash7 · October 28, 2017, 4:18pm

I see, honestly, I would use a different approach, and I would process all input events manually. Like that I would get greater control over camera.

anonymous_user_e105d1911 · October 30, 2017, 1:08pm

Alright I managed to create the behaviour I wanted, I just had to create my own input events, as Flash7 said.
For everyone who doesn’t know how to do that here you go:
(note this was done on a fresh DefaultPawn)

Step 1:
Create the Axis you want in the Project settings.

Step 2:
In your PLAYER CONTROLLER (not the player asset) create the input event behaviour for movement and Rotation.

Step 3:
Finally, in the same Blueprint, also create the behaviour for switching between default and free camera.

Thanks Flash7 for pointing me to the best solution