[SUPPORT] Advanced Turn Based Tile Toolkit

[Dansiff]

Hello, i'd like to start off with the Toolkit is awesome very useful in getting my projects going.

I did run into an issue with the VR supported mode. fantastic starting point but i cant figure out why some of the actors don't destroy themselves upon losing all health. they lay on the ground but still retain commands and movements making the mode unbeatable.

not sure what causes the bug however i have a video of it. I see the base models are HTC Vive controllers could that be whats causing it? I am using an Oculus Rift which everything works except that aspect. thanks for the great product.

[Monokkel]

Dansiff: Your video seems to be broken, but I've checked and confirm that the bug exists. It seems that in one of the updates, the call to the Kill Unit event from the parent Unit blueprint disappeared from Unit_VR. It is very easy to fix, thankfully. Open the Unit_VR blueprint and add a cal to Parent: Kill Unit after the Kill Unit event, like so:



that should do it. I'll make sure to fix this in the next update. The VR example has a few other issues as well at the moment. There are two VR_Pawn blueprints in the level, which is redundant, and BP_GridCamera is still spawned at the start of the game, which is unnecessary. Improving VR features is high on my to-do list for stuff to focus on after the coming update.

[Dansiff]

Thank you for the quick response that fixed it. glad to see you are interested in expanding VR assistance. look forward to the update!

[Monokkel]

Dansiff: Glad it worked

For everyone wondering what is happening with the update, I have started using Trello to organize and plan development of ATBTT, so anyone interested can check it out in the link below. The board is not entirely complete, but it has most of what I've added/am planning to add for the coming update, as well as some future plans.

[elec2ron]

Considering a purchase, looks very good.

I see on the trello board you plan on implementing multi-tile big units, how do you think this will work and what kind of time frame are you looking at? It would be really great to have a separate grid for different unit sizes.

[Albie_123]

Hey, just purchased this from the store page and have tried out implementing it in my game. So far, so good!

One little query I have is the use of '200' as a magic number in the "Set CollisionPlane and HeightmapBox Scale and Location" function in the construction script. From what I can tell, this is done because the bounds of a tile are expected to be 200 - does this mean that any other grid size won't work properly without these floats being changed?

[Monokkel]

The Advanced Turn Based toolkit is currently 30% off as part of Epic’s Cyber Monday Sale! For anyone considering getting the toolkit, now might be the time

Considering a purchase, looks very good.

I see on the trello board you plan on implementing multi-tile big units, how do you think this will work and what kind of time frame are you looking at? It would be really great to have a separate grid for different unit sizes.

Happy to hear you are considering a purchase. Multi-tile units are planned for the update after the next. I hope to have the next update done by the end of the year. The next update with multi-tile units should be done some months after, though I cannot give an exact prediction on when it will be done.

The planned solution for multi-tile units is not to have a separate grid per se, but to instead use a Map of integers that holds the maximum unit size that can occupy a specific tile. Multi-tile units would use a slightly modified pathfinding that checks this map for each search step during pathfinding. The multi-tile unit map would be generated at the game startup.

Hey, just purchased this from the store page and have tried out implementing it in my game. So far, so good!

One little query I have is the use of '200' as a magic number in the "Set CollisionPlane and HeightmapBox Scale and Location" function in the construction script. From what I can tell, this is done because the bounds of a tile are expected to be 200 - does this mean that any other grid size won't work properly without these floats being changed?

The toolkit does work with grids of arbitrary size. If you change the default tile mesh to one of a different size, the grid will resize appropriately and everything should work fine.

I do agree that this part is not very elegantly scripted, though. In my WIP build I have changed it so that the grid can be resized using UE4’s built-in resizing widget, and there are no more magic numbers. The current live implementation works well and without issue, though, even if it is admittedly a bit hacky.

[elec2ron]

Thanks for the information. I bought it before the sale but i am happy to give you extra The product is extremely well made.

I have another question. Could the route finding potentially work when moving multiple units at a time and how much work do you think it would be to implement that?

Also, would you consider freelance work to extend the system in particular ways?

[Albie_123]

No problem, it's still a lot cleaner and more well commented than a lot of other things on the marketplace. I'm thoroughly impressed.

By the way, when you move to maps rather than arrays to store grids, will you stick with individual indexes to differentiate tiles (i.e. in a grid 10 tiles wide the first row is 0,1,2,3, ... 9, next row is 10,11,12,13, and so on) or move to an X,Y coords system (first row is [0,0],[1,0],[2,0] ... [9,0], next row is [0,1],[1,1], and so on)?

I've started using the latter rather than the former as it helps a lot when doing maths later on.

EDIT: Also, a more important question: How can I designate a tile as 'walkable' when Collision Plane Walkable is disabled? I've tried setting tiles to block all, but the trace doesn't seem to have any effect (every tile remains unwalkable).

EDIT EDIT: Worked it out myself, it was just an issue with having pregenerated game maps (you need to make sure the grid manager has a chance to re-construct).

[Monokkel]

Thanks for the information. I bought it before the sale but i am happy to give you extra The product is extremely well made.

I have another question. Could the route finding potentially work when moving multiple units at a time and how much work do you think it would be to implement that?

Also, would you consider freelance work to extend the system in particular ways?

Sorry you missed the sale, but I’m glad you think it’s worth it

If you had asked me about moving multiple units at a time a few months ago I would have said no, but with the next update I think this might be within reach. One of the things I’ve worked on is to make sure all math and grid manipulation is done first (server side), and then all the visual actions are played out (client side). With this disconnect between calculations and animation it will become a lot easier to order two units and then have them play out their animations simultaneously. It will still take some work, but it should become a lot easier.

As for freelance work, thanks for the offer. I have gotten a few such requests, but have rejected every one so far. Truth is I really want to get all my planned features for the toolkit first, and I have a hard enough time finding enough time for that as it is. I’m not opposed to doing freelance work, but my schedule is usually too packed, and what time I have left I like to spend on my own projects (mostly ATBTT :P ). Of course, if the scope of what I need to do is relatively small and the pay is good you can always e-mail me at knuteiliv@gmail.com. No guarantees, though, and certainly not before the next update is done

No problem, it's still a lot cleaner and more well commented than a lot of other things on the marketplace. I'm thoroughly impressed.

By the way, when you move to maps rather than arrays to store grids, will you stick with individual indexes to differentiate tiles (i.e. in a grid 10 tiles wide the first row is 0,1,2,3, ... 9, next row is 10,11,12,13, and so on) or move to an X,Y coords system (first row is [0,0],[1,0],[2,0] ... [9,0], next row is [0,1],[1,1], and so on)?

I've started using the latter rather than the former as it helps a lot when doing maths later on.

EDIT: Also, a more important question: How can I designate a tile as 'walkable' when Collision Plane Walkable is disabled? I've tried setting tiles to block all, but the trace doesn't seem to have any effect (every tile remains unwalkable).

EDIT EDIT: Worked it out myself, it was just an issue with having pregenerated game maps (you need to make sure the grid manager has a chance to re-construct).

Thanks! Glad you like it.

I have actually already tried to switch to X,Y coordinate (or more specifically X,Y,Z). I was super hyped to get it working right after I switched to maps, but quickly discovered that it comes with a pretty big hit to performance. Pathfinding was slowed down by roughly 30% and even more in a packaged nativized project, so I decided it was not worth it. Too bad, though, as it is more intuitive to work with.

Happy to hear you managed to figure out your issue on your own. Pregenerating the map should generally only be done before packaging or if you want to check grid indexes and edges for debugging purposes.

[Albie_123]

I have actually already tried to switch to X,Y coordinate (or more specifically X,Y,Z). I was super hyped to get it working right after I switched to maps, but quickly discovered that it comes with a pretty big hit to performance. Pathfinding was slowed down by roughly 30% and even more in a packaged nativized project, so I decided it was not worth it. Too bad, though, as it is more intuitive to work with.

Yep, I'm only just now realising this as well. Wasn't that noticeable on my work PC, but I moved to my not-so-good laptop and performance slowed right down. I'm going to keep with maps for now, but I may have to move back to arrays eventually if I can't work out how to optimize the pathfinding.

[Monokkel]

Yep, I'm only just now realising this as well. Wasn't that noticeable on my work PC, but I moved to my not-so-good laptop and performance slowed right down. I'm going to keep with maps for now, but I may have to move back to arrays eventually if I can't work out how to optimize the pathfinding.

I didn't actually think the performance hit would be large enough to be noticable. The pathfinding is pretty efficient, so I would think it would need to be quite a bit slower before you actually noticed anything.

[GEE-1]

Hello, thanks for this great toolkit. Is it possible to use decals for spline (arrow) meshes? Thanks.

[atarax]

Just wanted to say got the toolkit and it is a great starting point for my game. This is my first time using unreal engine and I appreciate all the youtube tutorials as well.
I am really looking forward to the multiplayer implementation as we are planning on a multiplayer game.
Thanks for the hard work!

[GEE-1]

Hello again, I want to setup a specific zoom and position for the camera when the game begins but I couldn't find where you setup the camera. BP_Grid_Camera Blueprint is not setting up any location at event begin play nor the BP_Grid_Manager at Construction script. Thanks again.