Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

[AP_Studios]

What DOES NOT work:

1. getting github version, copying the plugin into the folder before first compilation of the engine and doing the first compilation after putting the plugin there. (so the two step compilation was neccesarry for me)
2. Getting the 4.19 from marketplace
3. instaling the plugin through marketplace.

Hope that helps someone.

2 and 3 works fine for me, i have had no issues with the plugin installation or use using 4.19.x from launcher and marketplace ABLE
I even have to zip ABLE and send out to my programmer and he decompresses and drops it into a folder and it works

[Roland_Price]

v2.22, UE4.19.1:

1) Playing animation:

Single Node mode is just plain broken - setting ability "Play rate" to 2 results animation cutting mid play because of the animation speed not scaling (Scale with Ability Play Rate is set to true). Setting animation Play Rate to 2 cuts it even further, result is - only 1\4th of the animation is played and ability finishes twice faster than with 1x play rate. Setting Finish All Tasks flag does not do anything - is it working at all?

Ability Animation Node mode - both Play Rates work, as well as Finish All Tasks flag

All blend options - are they tied to anything at all? Changing them does not trigger blending in any case (Single Node, Ability Animation Node, Dynamic Montage). Montage could be blended only via setting blend options in the montage itself.

Preview window works only in Single Node mode, in node and montage mode pressing Play simply doesn't do anything.
Pressing Reset Preview Asset spawns additional skeletons (up to 4) in ~30% cases.

2) Editor (4.19.1 mint) crashes with a 100% chance on play if you don't connect Get Ability Object from Class node to Create Ability Context. And it get's mystically disconnected by itself after editor restart

[fernmerc]

Able v2.22 has been submitted.

- BUGFIX: Blended animations when using the Ability Animation Node would run at 2x speed.
- BUGFIX: Crash when using standalone mode (Thanks barney87 ). NOTE: I tested this as thoroughly as I could, but please let me know if you see any weird behavior around packaging your game or anything else.

With regard to the Animation Blueprints in the Preview Asset selector, it looks like those classes are now considered "Internal Classes" for some reason. If you click the Options button in the lower right of the class selection picker window, and choose "Show Internal Classes", the Animation Blueprint class shows up like normal and then the assets will show up in the following screen.

Trying to figure out why that change occurred and I'll keep you all posted.

Update works, thank you!

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Able v2.22 has been submitted.

- BUGFIX: Blended animations when using the Ability Animation Node would run at 2x speed.
- BUGFIX: Crash when using standalone mode (Thanks barney87 ). NOTE: I tested this as thoroughly as I could, but please let me know if you see any weird behavior around packaging your game or anything else.

With regard to the Animation Blueprints in the Preview Asset selector, it looks like those classes are now considered "Internal Classes" for some reason. If you click the Options button in the lower right of the class selection picker window, and choose "Show Internal Classes", the Animation Blueprint class shows up like normal and then the assets will show up in the following screen.

Trying to figure out why that change occurred and I'll keep you all posted.

[fernmerc]

I believe you'd have to recompile the engine from source for it to pick that up. My plan is to get the update out on Sunday (which means Epic will process it Monday/Tuesday).

Ahh I see, looks like I'll wait until Monday then, thanks.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Glad to hear you fixed the animation blending! Any idea when the update will be out? I'm not sure how to recompile the plugin; I went into the plugin source and commented the line you said I should comment, and I rebuilt the entire solution but I still have the issue. I'm not building the engine from source.

I believe you'd have to recompile the engine from source for it to pick that up. My plan is to get the update out on Sunday (which means Epic will process it Monday/Tuesday).

[fernmerc]

Glad to hear you fixed the animation blending! Any idea when the update will be out? I'm not sure how to recompile the plugin; I went into the plugin source and commented the line you said I should comment, and I rebuilt the entire solution but I still have the issue. I'm not building the engine from source.

[Talanar]

ok I got some good news.
I finally managed to get the 2.21 working on 4.19.1. This is an instruction for people who just bought it and having troubles running it.

So here's what I did step by step to make it work (and below I will list what doesnt work):

1. download release version of the engine from github
2. hit setup.bat and then generate project files
3. compile the engine from source
4. close visual, put the plugin in Engine/Plugins/Able
5. Hit Generate Project files once again (the one in the engine folder, not the project one)
6. open solution, compile
7. run the editor - voila, the plugin is enabled by default, has proper events with context etc.


What DOES NOT work:

1. getting github version, copying the plugin into the folder before first compilation of the engine and doing the first compilation after putting the plugin there. (so the two step compilation was neccesarry for me)
2. Getting the 4.19 from marketplace
3. instaling the plugin through marketplace.

Hope that helps someone.

[barney87]

Thanks, I'll try this steps and see what I can find. If I had to guess, the SKEL is the uncompiled version of the Custom Task. When you compile a Blueprint it generates a SKEL version (which just has bare bones data - no actual data), and then a final compiled version which is the one you normally interact with. I can try and filter out those SKELs.


There is a Camera Target Type which looks in the direction of the player camera, as well as offsets available. If you look at my Shooter Game tutorial, I do exactly what you're talking about:

https://extralifestudios.atlassian.n...2419/Tutorials Watch the Shooter Game video.

ExtraLifeMatt
I am not sure that we are talking about the same thing. If I was to use the camera target type and spawn a actor projectile from an offset from the location it the projectiles would not line up with the crosshair. In order for the crosshair to be accurate the offset need to be variable, depending on the targets distance from the camera. Obviously this is not the way it works in the real world, however it feels more natural for the player.

I have drawn a quick diagram which I hope better illustrates how I currently handle projectiles from my third person character. Essentially I get a look at rotation of the hit location from the raytrace and fire the projectile from the character in that direction. (If there is no hit, the projectile will rotate so at the max range of the projectile, it will line up with the crosshair).

[ExtraLifeMatt]

ExtraLifeMatt I found another bug. After creating a custom task two tasks show up in the add task menu in the Able Editor. One of them will crash Unreal Engine Editor.

To reproduce.

1. Create third person project
2. Create new ability based on AblAbility class
3. Create new custom task based on the AblCustomTask
4. Click add task in Able Editor in the new ability
5. You will see two tasks with the same name, except one has a prefix of SKEL
6. If you click on the SKEL version and save, it will crash UE
7. If you click on the one not labelled SKEL it seems to work fine.

Thanks, I'll try this steps and see what I can find. If I had to guess, the SKEL is the uncompiled version of the Custom Task. When you compile a Blueprint it generates a SKEL version (which just has bare bones data - no actual data), and then a final compiled version which is the one you normally interact with. I can try and filter out those SKELs.

ExtraLifeMatt

Also, now that I can finally use Able, I am not sure where to get started.

I have a third person project, and my character shoots projectiles. I use the camera to do a line trace and then offset the rotation of the projectile so that it travels in the direction of my cross-hair. I was hoping I could move my shooting logic into Able.

Here is the current logic I am using (its not quite complete) but it will give you the gist of what I am trying to do.

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/gpilb1y6/

It doesn't seem like I can do this (cleanly) in Able, what do you think?

There is a Camera Target Type which looks in the direction of the player camera, as well as offsets available. If you look at my Shooter Game tutorial, I do exactly what you're talking about:

https://extralifestudios.atlassian.n...2419/Tutorials Watch the Shooter Game video.

[jfaztk]

It shouldn't be trying to load the AbleEditor portion anyway for stand alone (there's no reason for it if it's just launching the blueprint as a compiled asset). I'm still digging into it. Runtime is definitely not intended as that would load the Editor specific code when running the game - which you don't want. Developer sounds okay, but I'm still digging to better understand what is going on here and why that seems to fix it



I was able to repro it and track the issue down. Looks like if you have a queue'd up animation that you are blending to, that animation gets updated twice (and thus plays 2x).

The fix is to simply comment out (or remove) this line in the AnimNode_AbilityAnimPlayer.cpp:

//m_NextSequenceInternalTimeAccumulator += Context.GetDeltaTime();

The MakeSequenceTickRecord does that logic, so it's not needed to do it before hand. I'll push that fix out as well as soon as I understand the fix barney87 is doing and what can come from that. Feel free to make the change locally if you need it before then.

Yesss, this is great, thank you!

[barney87]

ExtraLifeMatt

Also, now that I can finally use Able, I am not sure where to get started.

I have a third person project, and my character shoots projectiles. I use the camera to do a line trace and then offset the rotation of the projectile so that it travels in the direction of my cross-hair. I was hoping I could move my shooting logic into Able.

Here is the current logic I am using (its not quite complete) but it will give you the gist of what I am trying to do.

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/gpilb1y6/

It doesn't seem like I can do this (cleanly) in Able, what do you think?

[barney87]

ExtraLifeMatt I found another bug. After creating a custom task two tasks show up in the add task menu in the Able Editor. One of them will crash Unreal Engine Editor.

To reproduce.

1. Create third person project
2. Create new ability based on AblAbility class
3. Create new custom task based on the AblCustomTask
4. Click add task in Able Editor in the new ability
5. You will see two tasks with the same name, except one has a prefix of SKEL
6. If you click on the SKEL version and save, it will crash UE
7. If you click on the one not labelled SKEL it seems to work fine.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

I also tried setting it to "Runtime" and that seems to work as well. From what I can understand of the UE docs, the developer type may not load module in shipping builds. I have absolutely no idea how any of this plugin stuff works, so it may break other things, all I know that changing it got standalone working.

It shouldn't be trying to load the AbleEditor portion anyway for stand alone (there's no reason for it if it's just launching the blueprint as a compiled asset). I'm still digging into it. Runtime is definitely not intended as that would load the Editor specific code when running the game - which you don't want. Developer sounds okay, but I'm still digging to better understand what is going on here and why that seems to fix it

If you press and hold F in the test project Fernmerc submitted, every other ability animation iteration isn't sped up? It is for me, and that's the same issue I have in my own project.

I was able to repro it and track the issue down. Looks like if you have a queue'd up animation that you are blending to, that animation gets updated twice (and thus plays 2x).

The fix is to simply comment out (or remove) this line in the AnimNode_AbilityAnimPlayer.cpp:

            //m_NextSequenceInternalTimeAccumulator += Context.GetDeltaTime();

The MakeSequenceTickRecord does that logic, so it's not needed to do it before hand. I'll push that fix out as well as soon as I understand the fix barney87 is doing and what can come from that. Feel free to make the change locally if you need it before then.

[barney87]

Interesting... I'm not sure what changing the Type to Developer does (maybe standalone doesn't consider itself an Editor app?), I'm slightly shocked that fixes it but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll do some digging and see what could come out of that, and if it seems okay - I'll push it in the next update.

I also tried setting it to "Runtime" and that seems to work as well. From what I can understand of the UE docs, the developer type may not load module in shipping builds. I have absolutely no idea how any of this plugin stuff works, so it may break other things, all I know that changing it got standalone working.