Spell Casting

[devomage]

I've been climbing the UCC mountain daily for about 3 months now. With everything happily working with UCC - here are a few questions/comments.

What is the best way to implement spell casting? Custom weapon or multiple abilities? Both?

Currently, I have overloaded UsableItem similar to ShootableWeapon. A few of the problems I ran into:

• Consumable shouldn't be required. IE Power/Mana regenerates
• ShootableWeapon doesn't allow multiple attributes. IE Power + Fatigue
• ShootableWeapon requires a Projectile. Destructible fits better for most spells. IE creating a 'Wall' spell.

What is the proper way to spawn a Projectile at a specific frame in the animation?

I've added a custom event to each animation - but this feels very hacked.

Any suggestions for these 2 questions would be greatly appreciated.



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Other notables:

• A dedicated video on First person arms would be super helpful
• Can't override SpawnPoint
• Like others have mentioned - you gotta be a pro animator to even look at the Jump ability
• Missing tooltips. I see random missing tooltips in the inspector. IE ShootableWeapon > Item Substate
• Where's the tutorials? Even though this is a 5 star asset - I wouldn't rate above 3 stars because of this. Up from 2 stars, only because I have experience now.
• "using System" often causes errors. IE add "using System" to ShootableWeapon
• It'd be great if you could copy/paste abilities. IE open Demo scene, copy ability. open scene X, paste ability.

 

[Justin]

For spell casting I would subclass IUsableItem and slowly add from there. I would not base my code off of the ShootableWeapon component as there are a lot of differences between spells and weapons that can be fired. Just a note that we are planning on adding spells in version 2.2 but this will likely still be awhile because we first need to get multiplayer/VR out.

A dedicated video on First person arms would be super helpful

What are you interested in on the arms?

Can't override SpawnPoint

I just made SpawnPointManager.GetPlacementInternal protected virtual so you can override.

Like others have mentioned - you gotta be a pro animator to even look at the Jump ability

Jumping is really a complicated action when you dig into all of the use cases. I wish that there was a way to make this simpler but if you don't want all of those jump animations you can replace the states with your own structure. I also recommend starting from scratch with the animator controller so it fits your game.

Missing tooltips. I see random missing tooltips in the inspector. IE ShootableWeapon > Item Substate

Which field is that? The Item Substate Index? I just hovered over that field and saw a tooltip.

Where's the tutorials? Even though this is a 5 star asset - I wouldn't rate above 3 stars because of this. Up from 2 stars, only because I have experience now.

What tutorial are you looking for? I took the approach of cover the general overview with the videos, and then add all of the in-depth information to the written documentation.

"using System" often causes errors. IE add "using System" to ShootableWeapon

Looks like there is a conflict with the event handler. If you add the following the errors will go away:

using EventHandler = Opsive.UltimateCharacterController.Events.EventHandler;

It'd be great if you could copy/paste abilities. IE open Demo scene, copy ability. open scene X, paste ability.

I have added that to my list. You can copy the component which will copy the abilities, but not the individual ability. If any ability references an object local to that character then you'll need to update that reference for the component copier.

 

[devomage]

What is the proper way to spawn a Projectile at a specific frame in the animation?

How to do this properly? Not so much specially a projectile. To look visually accurate, a spell needs to be released in the middle of the animation...

What are you interested in on the arms?

I know absolutely nothing (slightly less than nothing now) about models, animations and related topics. The arms appear to be almost required when creating a new item...

What tutorial are you looking for?

Nothing specific, more tutorials to offset the learning curve. Ultimate goal would be to learn UCC in a week or two - rather than several weeks.

 

[Justin]

How to do this properly? Not so much specially a projectile. To look visually accurate, a spell needs to be released in the middle of the animation...

You can use animation events - take a look at the Use Event Trigger for an example. Here's an overview of the Event Trigger system: https://opsive.com/support/document...controller/animation/animation-event-trigger/

 

[devomage]

You can use animation events

yep thanks. this is how i am currently doing it.