Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

[The_Chodesen_One]

Hi Matt,
I am using a classic mmo style control setup for my game, and I was wondering what you would recommend me doing to make a skillshot that is created at the location of the mouse cursor, mainly regarding the targeting. I have already made a system that creates a decal of the size and shape of the ability I want to cast, and the original idea I had was to basically pass the location of the decal when the player left clicks to the Able Ability, then the ability casts at that location and damages targets based on a collision query. I feel like I am over-complicating this, Is there a better way you can think of that I could do this?

Also, thank you for putting the time into making this plugin, it has been very useful for me so far

[GamerErrant]

Using UE 4.20.3 with latest plugin - I'm noticing that every time I recompile my custom task, those tasks already deployed in existing abilities get broken. They turn grey in the timeline, lose their visual representation/name, and I have to remove them and re-add the task. Worse still, if I close the project without replacing all the broken tasks the project crashes on load until I remove the ability asset referencing said task. Any idea why this would be happening - I can't imagine it's intended behavior?

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Using UE 4.20.3 with latest plugin - I'm noticing that every time I recompile my custom task, those tasks already deployed in existing abilities get broken. They turn grey in the timeline, lose their visual representation/name, and I have to remove them and re-add the task. Worse still, if I close the project without replacing all the broken tasks the project crashes on load until I remove the ability asset referencing said task. Any idea why this would be happening - I can't imagine it's intended behavior?

Yea, I'm looking into fixing that as part of the 3.0 update. UE isn't very good at replacing the old BP class with the new one. I may just have to iterate over all abilities and replace those references manually.

EDIT: Code written, going to start testing it while continuing on 3.0.

[jwyuen]

Hi

How far are you in 3.0?

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Hi

How far are you in 3.0?

Still going back and forth on the UI rework, but it's making some progress. It'll be worth the wait.

[jwyuen]

Aww i wont do too much yet until its done. Dont like restarting stuff.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Aww i wont do too much yet until its done. Dont like restarting stuff.

All your data will still work, there shouldn't be any need to restart or such. 3.0 will just plugin like every other Able update.

[jwyuen]

ahh thats ok just that you said new features gonna be added the move to thing will be good.
Are you gonna have an Input in blueprint or am i gonna still have to call datatable in all the able BPs?
made a D&D style system where it random generates rolls on stats if it suceeds to hit or not.
Might do it all in character BP (NPC and Characters share same parent class) So i might call all abilities in parent class then call able when success and pass damage out in parent class too.

[GamerErrant]

Yea, I'm looking into fixing that as part of the 3.0 update. UE isn't very good at replacing the old BP class with the new one. I may just have to iterate over all abilities and replace those references manually.

EDIT: Code written, going to start testing it while continuing on 3.0.

Awesome, thanks for the update!

I have another question: Is there a way to get the current phase of a task? Being able to get the current phase of a task from within the task itself (custom tasks) would be nice, as would as being able to read the current phase/start/end times for each task from the Ability itself. Basically I'm looking to drive other logic using the phase from a tag placed in the ability.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

ahh thats ok just that you said new features gonna be added the move to thing will be good.
Are you gonna have an Input in blueprint or am i gonna still have to call datatable in all the able BPs?
made a D&D style system where it random generates rolls on stats if it suceeds to hit or not.
Might do it all in character BP (NPC and Characters share same parent class) So i might call all abilities in parent class then call able when success and pass damage out in parent class too.

I'm still finalizing all that, but there will be a way for you to dynamically pass in a position (or Actor) at runtime.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Awesome, thanks for the update!

I have another question: Is there a way to get the current phase of a task? Being able to get the current phase of a task from within the task itself (custom tasks) would be nice, as would as being able to read the current phase/start/end times for each task from the Ability itself. Basically I'm looking to drive other logic using the phase from a tag placed in the ability.

You can get the current Ability time from the AbilityContext, as well as a list of Tasks that the Ability has - from which you could likely figure out what current tasks are running (or I can add a function to the context to get all running tasks). I'm not sure about adding an explicit "phase" to Tasks. Tasks have a start, an optional tick, and an end - and if the Task is single frame then the start and end run back to back so there's no real way for any other system to query that.

[GamerErrant]

Telling when a task is running isn't a problem, but without knowing the range of time the task is slotted in the timeline you can't calculate a phase. "Start" and "end" are inaccurate names I guess, what I'm really talking about is the "Timeline Start" and "Timeline End" value of a task (the range of time a user set for a task). Barring something like that, what about a pre-fab 'Phase Driver' task? A task that tracks a simple phase (minValue->maxValue) over the range it's set in the timeline, and spits that value out in some usable manner?

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Telling when a task is running isn't a problem, but without knowing the range of time the task is slotted in the timeline you can't calculate a phase. "Start" and "end" are inaccurate names I guess, what I'm really talking about is the "Timeline Start" and "Timeline End" value of a task (the range of time a user set for a task). Barring something like that, what about a pre-fab 'Phase Driver' task? A task that tracks a simple phase (minValue->maxValue) over the range it's set in the timeline, and spits that value out in some usable manner?

You can get the range of a task right now (GetStartTime, GetEndTime) - it's just not exposed to Blueprints. You can also just grab the current ability time from the Ability Context (which you can grab at anytime from the AblAbilityComponent). Or, use custom task that just returns that value during the OnTaskTick call (which is what I suspect you're doing already).

[jwyuen]

Thanks matt will wait until this is done. A lot of trickery on abilities and stuff. Using datatables to contain info on everything basically. J

[LopikyLabs]

You could just use the "On Actor Overlap" on the Projectile to apply damage (or even run an ability that plays some effect and applies damage there). Basically just treat it like a normal projectile.



Custom Task is a pure Blueprint driven task that behaves like it's C++ counter parts.

You can override / use various BP methods to build the task:

- OnTaskStart is called when the Task begins. You would want to do any task setup here (You can use GetActorsForTask to get a list of all actors your task should affect according to how the user set it up in the ability editor). If your Task is just a single frame, you'd do the logic here as well.
- OnTaskTick is called when the Task is running.
- OnTaskEnd is called when the Task is completed. You would do any clean up logic here, if needed.
- IsDone is a logic check, that by default, just checks if the task time has been met but you can add special logic.
- IsSingleFrame let's you return true if you want the task to be a single frame (so OnTaskTick won't be called), or if it's a multi-frame long task.
- GetTaskRealm let's you modify what realm you want the task to be (Client, Server, or Both).
- CreateScratchPad let's you return a UAblCustomTaskScratchPad based class that you can use to store any state information (various variables, actors, etc). These scratch pads are allocated per ability execution.
- GetTaskCategory is what category you want the task to appear under in the Ability editor (you can use '|' to do sub category: MainCategory|SubCategory).
- GetTaskName is the name of the Task in the Ability Editor.
- GetDescriptiveTaskName is a more elaborate version of GetTaskName that is built at runtime when the Tasks are placed in the Ability Editor (e.g, "PlayAnimation:<animation name>" is the descriptive name).
- GetTaskDesciption is just a one or two line summary of what the task does. This appears in the Task selection dialog at the bottom of the window.
- GetTaskColor is just the default color you want to assign to this Task.




Able isn't going to do movement / pushing / etc for you. It's more a tool you can use to help tie animations / sounds / particle effects / damage all together into a single discrete asset - which we normally just refer to as "Abilities". While you can certainly do a shooter with Able (I even did a quick tutorial using Shooter Game, you can see the tutorials here ). I will say your goal is rather ambitious, and no one tool is going to help you cobble it together. Instead, you should take things step by step. Follow some YouTube tutorials on building a 3rd party action game, add features (vaulting, climbing, interacting with buttons, etc). Don't try to run before you can walk. Instead, eat the elephant bite by bite.

Thanks for the info it helps a lot :3