Sometimes a stray sphere appears in my level while play testing. I didn’t put it there and it doesn’t always show up (at least sometimes I don’t see it). It can appear in a random spot and I think I have even clipped inside of it at times. [Someone said they got rid of it by adding a player start][1], but my last level has a player start and that is when I first noticed the problem. If this isn’t a bug I’d certainly like to know what the deal is with this sphere. It’s quite annoying.
Edit: I noticed that it shows up when I play in a New Editor Window, but not when I play in the Selected Viewport.
I am looking into this mysterious sphere for you, but I need a little bit of information in order to proceed.
Are you running the Editor from the Launcher or have you compiled from GitHub?
Have you tried to see if this sphere will appear in a new project?
The Level you are working on, was it based on a specific new project template or was it a blank project (no code)?
Finally, from your screenshot above, it looks like the sphere is almost your player character, is that the case or am I seeing this from a first person camera?
Any additional information you might think of please feel free to share that as well,
Eric Ketchum
Engine Support Technician
I’m running it from the Launcher. I have not compiled from GitHub.
I currently have 2 projects where the sphere can show up. So far it hasn’t shown up in the two new projects I just made.
Both of the projects where I can see it were started as empty projects. One included the starter content and the other didn’t.
The object above the sphere (the Pixel Ship spaceship) is the player. It’s hard to tell because the camera is facing down on Z and the ship is rotated looking up at Z. My camera scrolls along positive X, so I’m pretty sure the sphere is where my player started in this case. However, I’ve also seen it appear further along X and off to the right as well.
Have you been able to make the sphere appear everytime or is it infrequently or just when you play in a new editor window. Also in trying to reproduce this I need to know a little bit more about the level itself, You pixel ship I understand and have been able to reproduce it, but what other meshes are in your world (generally speaking)? Are you using a landscape for the ground, a repeated mesh or a custom large mesh? It might be a bit too large but a quick screenshot of your Scene Outliner would help me solve this for you.
It definitely appears like it has something to do with player start. Maybe I was wrong about my last level having one. If I delete the player start and play in a new editor window, the sphere will appear.
I’m only using the BSP brushes in my level right now. I’m not using any landscapes or custom static meshes at all. I have a Pixel Ship Game Controller (actor class) set up just like the Pixel Ship Game Controller in the Content Examples > Blueprint_Input_Examples level that holds 2 ship meshes and a camera. Mine also has a couple of box shapes. However there is no sphere static mesh component in my Actor or the Pixel Ship one. All of my code is basically the same as the Pixel Ship code, except I made it so the camera faces down Z instead of down X.
To create the project all I did was make an empty project and then migrate the Pixel Ship blueprints into my own level. I also deleted player start because the Pixel Ship Game Controller spawns the player when the game starts. Here is a screenshot of my Scene Outliner:
I just added a player start back into my level and now the sphere will appear wherever the player start is, whether I play in a new editor window or not. If I move the player start around in the level, the sphere will appear at that location.
Awesome information, I think you’ve given me enough to try to track this problem down for you. I will let you know as soon as I have found the culprit.
I have solved what is causing your mystery sphere. Ok so the blueprint that you are using to function as your base character is pulled from a level which uses multiple mini games which can be started and stopped by clicking on the buttons. It is important to understand that because that blueprint was written with that setup in mind.
The sphere is because your new level has a unique gamemode and default pawn class which is separate from the player controller BP that you migrated over. The sphere is actually created by the new level’s default pawn class and if you watch your scene outliner during play you will see a Default_Pawn## in blue appear. To test this create a new Blueprint based on Game Mode and in the default settings change the Default Pawn class to the BP_Pixel_Player then in world settings change the Game mode to your newly created one. Now when you play a separate Pixel ship will appear instead of the sphere.
What I would recommend in your new level is to separate out the various blueprint components in the BP_Pixel_Ship_Game_Controller and setup the new gamemode with the BP_Pixel_Ship_Player as your default pawn class. This will require a bit of blueprint work to rearrange the various components using a default pawn class and ensure everything is communicating well again, but it will solve the problem with the mystery sphere.
If you need me to expand please feel free to respond -
Eric Ketchum
Thanks for taking the time to look into this. I can confirm that DefaultPawn## appeared in the outliner and an extra ship appeared when I set the game mode and default pawn. So, I guess default pawn always needs to be set? I realized copying the PS setup probably wasn’t the most standard approach but it appeared to work so I just went with it. At least I’m not too far in my game to rework some blueprints. Glad the mystery is solved. Thanks again, Eric.
I’m getting this issue also, very frustrating as i’ve setup everything in my game around not really using specific classes. Total noob alert I guess, time to do some more reading…
This happens in the content example project as well. All you need to do is change the default game mode in the world settings. For me, the sphere was showing up because there wasn’t a game mode selected. Selecting anything else fixes the problem.
Just wanted to add that you need to make a new game mode first, then you can set the default pawn class to none. You can’t use “none” for the game mode, and you can’t use the built in game modes.
