The v2.20 update has gone live on the Marketplace.
New Features:
I. Added a Hero unit: In addition to the existing reinforcements ability, the toolkit now supports Hero units that offer a more permanent defensive solution compared to the temporary reinforcements.
II. Added a Hero Manager: The Hero Manager is tasked with spawning the Hero and passing on player commands to the Hero. The feature set will be expanded in the upcoming updates to include support for selecting a Hero of your choice from the Loadout menu.
III. Added Hero Movement Commands: The player can override the default Hero AI behavior by issuing movement commands for the unit. This can be used to deploy the Hero unit where it is most required as a defensive option. Here is a short preview of it in action:
Other Changes:
I. The Tower Function activation logic has been streamlined thanks to the new Add Component by Class BP function introduced recently to UE4. Instead of having to manually add components for each Tower Function separately, the system now directly retrieves the associated component class from the DataTable and spawns in a component of said class.
For comparison, here is a screenshot of the old workflow from v2.19:
And shown below is the new workflow from v2.20:
II. Moved all HUD update requests to the Player HUD class.
Any request to update the HUD will now be passed to this blueprint, which will then pass the required information over to the active widget.
Bug Fixes:
I. Fixed a bug that had caused some units to survive in spite of their HP being depleted. This happened in rare instances when a powerful single shot tower like the Sniper damages a weak unit like the Rusher just as it is being spawned, before the AI unit has finished its Begin Play execution. Now a new check ensures that the Towers only damage units after they have finished their initialization protocols.
Known Issues:
I. When a Hero unit gets destroyed when you’re controlling it, the movement targeting system doesn’t turn off automatically. This will be fixed in the upcoming update.
Additional Notes: Modifications to existing blueprints are marked with the boolean variable ‘Version2.20’ to easily identify all the changes introduced with this update.
Upcoming Features: HP Regeneration and Respawning system for the Hero unit. A UI button to select the Hero as an additional option besides clicking on the unit directly.