[SUPPORT] Advanced Turn Based Tile Toolkit

[Ariegos]

Thanks for the detailed answer. Make Tile Passable works great.

[Monokkel]

Happy to help

I got a question by a user by e-mail that I think other users might also be wondering, so I'm posting my answer here. He was wondering whether it was possible to make it so that diagonal movement is 50% more costly than straight movement on a square grid. Here is my answer:

The easiest way to do this is to make the cost of straight movement 2 and the cost of diagonal movement 3 and then doubling the movement attributes of all units. Here is how you can add this in the Generate Gameplay Grids function in BP_GridManager:

[Gugenheimer]

Monokkel, I believe my issue is I have not set up the grid manager Ref in my pawn correctly. The message I get is " Accessed None trying to read property Grid Manager Ref", same for the player controller ref.

[Monokkel]

If your units are parented to Unit_Parent and you have not modified Unit_Parent itself they should stil access the correct references. Have you perhaps overridden the construction script or Event Begin Play where references are normally set up?

[Nightraiyven]

First of all, Great toolkit.
This is helping me alot with my time travelling RTS project.
I do have a few brief questions however to see what the more optimal way of doing this is.

First off my levels occur across multiple eras from prehistoric to the future (land unit and vehicle rts combat).
I want to limit my units to certain eras only but have both factions using them. (ie populate 4 units for my player and then spawn the exact same units for the NPC player with a different colour skin) Do i need to create each unit twice (faction blueprintper unit) for this to work in the toolset or is there a function i could call so that both factions would use a single character blueprint to call the functions.

[Rob3342421]

Not sure if this has already been answered and if it has, I'm sorry.

I am trying to make text that will rotate with the camera so that the text is facing the camera at all times.

A friend has shown me one way of doing it however I don't think it works with the spring arm or isometric camera. This is what I have so far:

So currently I have a blueprint with a text renderer in the viewport saying what I want it to. Then in the event graph is what you can see in the image. While it is rotating it looks a little strange, I was hoping you could help me make it work with the spring arm. I'll continue to try and fix it and if I find a fix then I'll post a reply myself.

cheers

[Monokkel]

@Nightraiyven: So you are making a real time game with my turn based toolkit? It is not really what it is designed for, but I hope you can find it useful nonetheless. As for your question you can use the same unit for both the player and the AI. Just make sure to set their faction, AI Controlled and Allied Factions to the appropriate values when you spawn the units.

@Rob3342421: You are on the right track. However with the nodes you have posted above the actor will face the location of the player pawn, which may or may not correspond to the location of the camera (in the case of BP_GridCamera they will never be the same). Therefore you need to cast to BP_GridCamera, get a reference to the camera on that actor and use its location. Since casting is expensive it is best to not do it every tick, so in the nodes below I cast and set up a reference at the Event Begin Play:



Hopefully that should do the trick

[Da Stranger]

Does your toolkit support units that take up more than one tile?

[Monokkel]

Not at present, no. If I add it in the future it will be in an example map and not as a general feature of the entire toolkit. The thing is that adding multi-tile units is not terribly difficult in itself, but it becomes increasingly complicated depending on how many other features I need it to work together with.

For instance, adding one new type of unit that is 2*2 tiles on a square grid that can only be controlled by the AI is the simplest take. If I want it as a generic feature I would want to add multi-tile units of arbitrary size for both hexagonal and square grids that work on multi-level grids and can be controlled by the player in a way that makes sense in how tiles in move range are displayed for units of any size. I have experimented with this quite a lot, and any solution I can think of that solves all of these problems becomes extremely convoluted and inefficient. It is a lot better to tailor the solution to whatever game is being made, which is why I will add it as a feature of an example map when I add it.

[Rob3342421]

@Rob3342421: You are on the right track. However with the nodes you have posted above the actor will face the location of the player pawn, which may or may not correspond to the location of the camera (in the case of BP_GridCamera they will never be the same). Therefore you need to cast to BP_GridCamera, get a reference to the camera on that actor and use its location. Since casting is expensive it is best to not do it every tick, so in the nodes below I cast and set up a reference at the Event Begin Play:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]94037[/ATTACH]

Hopefully that should do the trick

Hi, thanks for the quick reply and this has done something however the text is not correctly displayed. I've tried inverting the results to get the text to show the correct way but I cannot get it right. I'm not sure if its something I've done or if its just not working right, this is what I have:

And this is what it does, the text seems to rotate the wrong way:


I'm not sure whether an axis needs to be ignored or if the results need to be inverted but its strange.

[Monokkel]

Seems like you are getting the capsule from BP_GridCamera instead of the camera. Try getting the camera instead and see if that works.

[Da Stranger]

Not at present, no. If I add it in the future it will be in an example map and not as a general feature of the entire toolkit. The thing is that adding multi-tile units is not terribly difficult in itself, but it becomes increasingly complicated depending on how many other features I need it to work together with.

For instance, adding one new type of unit that is 2*2 tiles on a square grid that can only be controlled by the AI is the simplest take. If I want it as a generic feature I would want to add multi-tile units of arbitrary size for both hexagonal and square grids that work on multi-level grids and can be controlled by the player in a way that makes sense in how tiles in move range are displayed for units of any size. I have experimented with this quite a lot, and any solution I can think of that solves all of these problems becomes extremely convoluted and inefficient. It is a lot better to tailor the solution to whatever game is being made, which is why I will add it as a feature of an example map when I add it.

I understand its' not trivial because of pathfinding, unit turning and positioning issues. I'm looking forward you implementing these features because if you don't, in July I'll have to code everything from scratch to work like in this project:

[rob33]

Seems like you are getting the capsule from BP_GridCamera instead of the camera. Try getting the camera instead and see if that works.

Yes! That sorted it, thank you. I'll be honest I didn't know exactly what I was doing but I managed it in the end thanks as always!

[Monokkel]

@Da Stranger: I can with almost certainty say that this feature will not be added by July. I am working on a lot of other features and they will take quite some time to get done. I will gladly help you add it yourself, however. If you are making something exactly like the image you are showing there are some things you do not have to worry about, such as walls between tiles or multiple height levels, which should make it easier. Is that the only form of large ship or are there others that take up more than four tiles? If there is only one type it also becomes a lot easier to add.

@rob33: Good thing it worked and I hope you understand my reasoning for why this worked when your previous solution did not

[Da Stranger]

I can with almost certainty say that this feature will not be added by July. I am working on a lot of other features and they will take quite some time to get done. I will gladly help you add it yourself, however. If you are making something exactly like the image you are showing there are some things you do not have to worry about, such as walls between tiles or multiple height levels, which should make it easier. Is that the only form of large ship or are there others that take up more than four tiles? If there is only one type it also becomes a lot easier to add.

Thank you for your answers. There will be larger ships and obstacles ("walls") on the map. The "height level" will be the same.