Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

[SteamPunkProgrammer]

Seems the update dropped today but I cant install it :| I tell it to install and just nothing happens.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

ExtraLifeMatt you should have a discord channel setup where people can show what has been done with ABLE and support. Anyways love this plugin really helping me as a solo dev on giant projects thank you so much you work is great and can't believe how good this really is thank you for your time and effort Matt.

Thanks for the kind words.

I haven't tried out discord yet. I know some people love them. I'll look into it. It would be good for the community.

[SNAK3EY3Z_]

ExtraLifeMatt you should have a discord channel setup where people can show what has been done with ABLE and support. Anyways love this plugin really helping me as a solo dev on giant projects thank you so much you work is great and can't believe how good this really is thank you for your time and effort Matt.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Is there information anywhere that compares this plugin with Epic's GameplayAbilities?

Not really. I wrote Able because I found issues with the way GameplayAbilities was setup (it was very much tied to how Paragon was using it). I also never got their Gameplay Abilities Editor to work and the instructions / documentation were pretty lacking (granted this was wayyy back in 4.09-ish, so it may be much better today).

So rather than try to force that square peg into a round hole, I just wrote my own based on tools I used in the Industry and some of the lessons learned during that time. I'd love to see someone who has used both to give an in depth comparison / feedback.

[acxsasx]

Is there information anywhere that compares this plugin with Epic's GameplayAbilities?

[SteamPunkProgrammer]

A lot of other packages I own got approved for 4.19 on friday (nothing over the weekend) so I'd suspect stuff will start rolling out (And hopefully the update for this) today.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Any clue when 4.19 will go live for this? We just changed the number for now and it works, but wanted to know how long it might be before it goes live. Any choice to get it from you direct with proof of purchase?

No update email or anything on my end. Epic should be fully back from GDC tomorrow, I'd give them a few more days to process things.

I avoid giving out source directly because it becomes a pain to verify things. I'm as anxious as you are for it to go out. Hopefully it's in the next day or so.

[riuthamus]

Any clue when 4.19 will go live for this? We just changed the number for now and it works, but wanted to know how long it might be before it goes live. Any choice to get it from you direct with proof of purchase?

[jimmay.10]

I can check, but there should be no difference between passives and actives when it comes to playing particle effects. I use particles as one of my test cases since it's so easy to setup. One of the demos in the Showcase project actually has a looping passive that is just a particle effect.

You could put a breakpoint in ablPlayParticleEffectTask and see if it's getting called on the client. Otherwise I'll try this out later this week.

OK, it may have more to do with the way we were launching the passive more than the passive itself. We have an active ability (team haste) that you use to activate the passive on multiple actors. The active ability was using the PlayAbility task, which only executes on the server. If I instead use a custom event task on the team haste ability that runs on client and server, then in the custom event iterate over each target actor calling ActivateAbility with the passive ability object, pfx work on client and server.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

ExtraLifeMatt I'm working on a multiplayer game and have an ability that I want to make passive (haste buff). It plays a particle fx and temporarily modifies movement speed. If it is not marked as passive, everything seems to work, except I cannot activate another ability while the haste is active. If I mark it as passive, it works on the server side but does not seem to work on the client side. Meaning when the client activates it, the particle doesn't play and movement speed doesn't seem to change. Am I missing something or is this a bug?

Thanks

EDIT: Actually, the speed modifier does work but the particle fx doesn't work on the client. I'm doing the speed modifier with a custom event that probably executes on the server.

I can check, but there should be no difference between passives and actives when it comes to playing particle effects. I use particles as one of my test cases since it's so easy to setup. One of the demos in the Showcase project actually has a looping passive that is just a particle effect.

You could put a breakpoint in ablPlayParticleEffectTask and see if it's getting called on the client. Otherwise I'll try this out later this week.

[jimmay.10]

ExtraLifeMatt I'm working on a multiplayer game and have an ability that I want to make passive (haste buff). It plays a particle fx and temporarily modifies movement speed. If it is not marked as passive, everything seems to work, except I cannot activate another ability while the haste is active. If I mark it as passive, it works on the server side but does not seem to work on the client side. Meaning when the client activates it, the particle doesn't play and movement speed doesn't seem to change. Am I missing something or is this a bug?

Thanks

EDIT: Actually, the speed modifier does work but the particle fx doesn't work on the client. I'm doing the speed modifier with a custom event that probably executes on the server.

[jimmay.10]

@extralife

[SteamPunkProgrammer]

I hope the update comes out today on the store, I was planning on doing a stream of making a game just with assets I bought on the summer sale, lol.

[jfaz48]

Are you sure you aren't just stacking up a ton of passives or some such? There is a small amount of memory that is allocated for each Ability (the scratchpads), but those are super tiny and shouldn't be noticeable unless you are somehow generating 100,000's or some such crazy number in a very short time frame. And even then they should get immediately cleaned up when GC runs. The face that you are getting continual degradation screams that you're likely just applying a ton of Abilities over and over without any finishing. I'd check whatever logic you are doing to fire the Abilities.

Able 2.20 is almost done (doing the 4.19 build right now), so I'll post notes shortly.

Yep, the only ability called/enabled at all is the one I mentioned. Right now it stopped happening... I didn't change anything so not sure why, but I'll call it a win nonetheless hahaha. Also thanks, looking forward to 2.20

[SteamPunkProgrammer]

Able v2.20 has been submitted. Notes below:



NOTE: 4.19 Users, I had to disable the reflection component for the preview scene in the Ability Editor. The alternative was to have an annoying "You need to re-bake your reflection data" stuck to the top of the screen. You may or may not notice the component being gone (I didn't notice it). I'm going to continue trying to find out how to re-enable it in a way that doesn't spam the user, but for now it's turned off. Just an FYI.

The prototyping is intensifying.