I see that there was a feature request logged in March for supporting TMaps in Blueprint:
Does anyone know if this is on the cards yet?
Lack of TMaps is one reason I end up going back to C++ from time to time to setup TMap insert/get UFUNCTIONs (which is a bit jarring considering most of my work doesn’t need C++ and can otherwise be easily accomplished in Blueprints itself). I realize there are workarounds to emulate TMaps from within Blueprints but these feel less than ideal.
Map/Dictionary style support feels like a core data type one would need for just about any kind of programming be it visual or code based.
I agree, the lack of Dictionaries and even 2D arrays is kind of a pain, but their uses can be accomplished by using multiple arrays.
I usually use C++ for this as well, but that’s because I’m used to coding maps/dictionaries. Blueprint arrays are very quick to index, so there shouldn’t be any issues with speed. You can use the “find” node to get the “key” in one array and use its index to get the “value” from the other array. If you want to group them, you can even put them in a custom struct!