Able Ability System Info and Support Thread

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Thanks. I watched the video again and picked up a bit more. I think that was the last video I watched when I was deciding on buying the plugin and was a bit glass eyed at that point.

I shied away from changing state in the calc dmg for actor method due to your warning about making it thread safe.

In your example you are setting Damage by Ability on the actor and I think I heard something to the effect if that is the only ability(?) that sets that variable then it should be safe? So if I have another ability, I would need to have a second (and so on) variable on the actor for the second ability to be setting in order to maybe(?) take advantage of async?

I am not really interested in trying async at the stage I am at, however I may want to not have abilities reuse the same ability variable on the actor for sanity sake. If having separate variables on that actor lends itself to using async in the future it would be good to start it now.

Yea, if you're doing async you'd have to worry about two abilities possible running at the same time trying to set the same variable, in which case one would likely just stomp the other - not ideal, but it wouldn't crash. Or you just use a queue, which is thread safe, and simply queue / dequeue the entries rather than directly setting a single variable.

It looks like Queue isn't exposed to blueprints by default, but there's a good step-by-step tutorial on adding that here: https://www.parallelcube.com/2017/10...to-blueprints/

[acxsasx]

Thanks. I watched the video again and picked up a bit more. I think that was the last video I watched when I was deciding on buying the plugin and was a bit glass eyed at that point.

I shied away from changing state in the calc dmg for actor method due to your warning about making it thread safe.

In your example you are setting Damage by Ability on the actor and I think I heard something to the effect if that is the only ability(?) that sets that variable then it should be safe? So if I have another ability, I would need to have a second (and so on) variable on the actor for the second ability to be setting in order to maybe(?) take advantage of async?

I am not really interested in trying async at the stage I am at, however I may want to not have abilities reuse the same ability variable on the actor for sanity sake. If having separate variables on that actor lends itself to using async in the future it would be good to start it now.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Goal: Whenever an actor takes damage, evaluate the type of damage and react accordingly for that actor.

First thought is to use UE4's TakeDamage's event "OnTakeAnyDamage" as a launching point for logic to respond to damage types for differing responses and logging. I would like to pass in a custom DamageType to have the different actors make decisions as this is a parameter of the TakeDamage actor method I am overriding and is included in the event being raised. Sadly, I see DamageTypes have to be a class and cannot be an instance.

Alternatives:

1 - add my own events in the blueprintlibrary call where damage is being calculated and pass the gameplay tag.

2 - I see you set gameplay tag task could work, but it does not fire off any event that I could respond to.

3 - Hmmm...maybe use the custom event task and have to remember to set it after every set gameplay tag is set?

I think I am going to try for the (1) alternative. Make a delegate off my class that inherits from actor and have the bluprintlibrary broadcast it.

Yea, I'm really not a fan of how the Damage type is setup by default in the engine (they're classes as you point out which is pretty heavy weight just for what amounts to a simple flag / integer).

I basically handle this in the Burning Man example ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cAP5eqTb2Y ) by explicitly passing the Gameplay Tags during CalculateDamageForActor, so when the Actor actually receives the OnTakeAnyDamage callback - they can then look at the incoming tags for that damage.

While not 100% ideal, since those calls happen back to back, you don't have to worry about some other damage call coming along and stomping your incoming tags (and if you are that worried, you could always store them as a queue).

[acxsasx]

Goal: Whenever an actor takes damage, evaluate the type of damage and react accordingly for that actor.

First thought is to use UE4's TakeDamage's event "OnTakeAnyDamage" as a launching point for logic to respond to damage types for differing responses and logging. I would like to pass in a custom DamageType to have the different actors make decisions as this is a parameter of the TakeDamage actor method I am overriding and is included in the event being raised. Sadly, I see DamageTypes have to be a class and cannot be an instance.

Alternatives:

1 - add my own events in the blueprintlibrary call where damage is being calculated and pass the gameplay tag.

2 - I see you set gameplay tag task could work, but it does not fire off any event that I could respond to.

3 - Hmmm...maybe use the custom event task and have to remember to set it after every set gameplay tag is set?

I think I am going to try for the (1) alternative. Make a delegate off my class that inherits from actor and have the bluprintlibrary broadcast it.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Hi Matt, revisiting Able after half a year of learning more UE4 Blueprinting. Finally understand the beauty of Gameplay Abilities! Is your dedicated server Example up to date?

It needs to be converted to the latest, but it should still work.Let me know otherwise and I'll do the conversion myself and update it.

[Celino Peiris]

Hi Matt, revisiting Able after half a year of learning more UE4 Blueprinting. Finally understand the beauty of Gameplay Abilities! Is your dedicated server Example up to date?

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Able v2.24 has been submitted.

- Fixed a crash caused by Animation Interrupts where there were no Animations queued up.

- When the Ability Component is Garbage Collected, it will now shut down all active Abilities / Tasks with the Successful result. Giving things a clean ending. (h/t Ruyi)

[Divistri]

Edit: Solved. GeneratedClass is the answer. I was simply casting incorrectly.

Is there a way to get a BlueprintGeneratedClass from a UBlueprint that is a UAblAbility?

When using TSubclassOf<UAblAbility> in a UDataTable, the entry can look like:

BlueprintGeneratedClass'Game/Player/Reactions/ABL_Flinch.ABL_Flinch_C'

Is it possible to get this in C++ from a UBlueprint?

Something along the lines of what I've tried so far is:

UBlueprint* FlinchBlueprint = GetFlinchBlueprint();
TSubclassOf<UAblAbility> Flinch = Cast<UAblAbility>(FlinchBlueprint)->GetClass();

or

UBlueprint* FlinchBlueprint = GetFlinchBlueprint();
TSubclassOf<UAblAbility> Flinch = Cast<UAblAbility>(FlinchBlueprint)->GetBlueprintClass();

or

UBlueprint* FlinchBlueprint = GetFlinchBlueprint();
TSubclassOf<UAblAbility> Flinch = Cast<UAblAbility>(FlinchBlueprint)->GeneratedClass;

However, in all of these cases the result of Flinch is:

Class'Script/AbleCore.AblAbilityBlueprint'

Is it possible to have Flinch be the same as the BlueprintGeneratedClass like above?

[ExtraLifeMatt]

I had a bug report come in on email with a crash related to Animation Interrupts, it's a stupid error on my part and I'll get a fix out - but in the meantime, if you want to apply the change locally you can:

AnimNode_AbilityAnimationPlayer.cpp

void FAnimNode_AbilityAnimPlayer::OnAbilityInterrupted(bool clearQueue)
{
if (clearQueue)
{
m_AnimationQueue.Empty();
}
else if (m_AnimationQueue.Num()) // This is the line to fix the crash.
{
m_AnimationQueue.RemoveAt(0);
}
}

Sorry for the hiccup.

[acxsasx]

All good now. I deleted the UE4Editor-Able.dll and recompiled. The other dll's compiled so I assumed the one in error did to. It didn't.

[acxsasx]

Able v2.23 Submitted

Notes:

I updated the plugin from the launcher to the 4.19.2 binary engine after getting notified of an update available. Copied over the plugin directory to my source build. Compiled successfully.

Went over to my project. Deleted the Intermediate and Binaries directories (habit after I recompile the engine). It compiles with no error. Try to run the editor and I get an error of

LogModuleManager: Warning: Found module file ../../../Engine/Plugins/Able/Binaries/Win64/UE4Editor-Able.dll (API version 3944462), but it was incompatible with the current engine API version (0). This is likely a stale module that must be recompiled.
LogModuleManager: Display: Found up-to-date module file ../../../Engine/Plugins/Able/Binaries/Win64/UE4Editor-AbleCore.dll (API version 0).
LogModuleManager: Display: Found up-to-date module file ../../../Engine/Plugins/Able/Binaries/Win64/UE4Editor-AbleEditor.dll (API version 0).


This is the first time applying an updated plugin. I tried searching to see if I needed to do something else but so far not finding anything.

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Able v2.23 Submitted

Notes:

- Fixed Play Single Node Animation not working with a modified Play rate.

- Rewrote Ability Animation Node to be cleaner. Functionality should be the same, if not more predictable / better.

- Fixed an issue where blending sometimes wouldn't occur when using Ability Animation Node.

- Blend Out has been disabled for Ability Animation Node (it doesn't look like it ever worked in the first place). Currently exploring a few ideas.

- Force Ability Editor Preview Actors out of the world before cleanup. This should fix the duplicates hanging around for no reason.

- Fixed an issue where the current time marker in the Ability Preview would show up even if the Ability had branched and wasn't playing the currently opened preview anymore.

- Dynamic Montage Slot can now be specified (previously it always used "Ability" - which is instead now the default value).

[Roland_Price]

Ah, yea. The "Events" aren't events in the BP sense. They're merely methods that are called. So, all Custom Events come through the OnCustomEvent callback. You can use the name parameter to define which event is doing the calling, that's the entire purpose of that parameter.

Actual BP event creation based on a Task name would be a bit tricky (but it might be do-able, haven't looked into it honestly).

Ok, thanks. That clears it up a bit. Still have no idea how to trigger an actual BP custom event from that function override (that probably has to do something with me being not so enlightened). It says that I can't use reference to self in a custom event and fails to compile

[ExtraLifeMatt]

Ah, yea. The "Events" aren't events in the BP sense. They're merely methods that are called. So, all Custom Events come through the OnCustomEvent callback. You can use the name parameter to define which event is doing the calling, that's the entire purpose of that parameter.

Actual BP event creation based on a Task name would be a bit tricky (but it might be do-able, haven't looked into it honestly).

[Roland_Price]

That's the plan. It's on my list.

Cool, thanks. The blending thing so far is the biggest issue since it ruins the setup for me completely.

Custom Event Task takes in a name parameter, you can use that to identify what event is firing - rather than using two different events. Or am I misunderstanding your question?

I'm trying to make a custom event fire an event from graph. I feel that I'm missing something - does a custom event named Test1 suppose to fire when a custom event with a name Test1 is triggered on timeline?