Unreal Possibilities

I had recently migrated some of the HUD workflow from Prototype Menu System to Tower Defense Starter Kit. While going through the HUD blueprints, I noticed that the Input Mode was being set to Game and UI when activating the Pause Menu. Since I didn't want the player to have the option to interact with the game outside of the menu in this state, I went ahead and changed it to UI Only, only to find out that the Escape button could no longer be used to quit the Pause Menu (in spite of it being set to Execute when Paused). It turns out that setting the Input Mode to UI Only also prevents us from interacting with the UI using keyboard. At first, it seemed like I'd have to revert it back to Set Input Mode Game & UI. But further inspection led to a workaround to tackle the issue: Handling the keyboard input directly through the widget itself instead of the player controller. The first step is to ensure that the widget can be focused. We can do this by setting its IsFocusable ...

Unreal Engine Tutorial: Setting custom Game Modes at runtime using Blueprints

For the longest time, I believed that it was not possible to change Game Modes at runtime through blueprints. That it had to be specified in the editor either through Project Settings or the World settings for individual maps. Fortunately, I was wrong and there actually does seem to be a method for overriding the default Game Mode through blueprints. I was recently involved in a project that required setting up completely different types of gameplay based on whether the player chose to play as the attacker or the defender. While it was definitely achievable by creating separate maps for each game mode, it just seemed redundant given that the maps are identical in all other respects. It made a lot more sense to have two separate game modes with their own player controllers and HUD classes. And after some research along that line of thought, I realized that the Open Level node had more tricks up its sleeves than just opening a new level. The Open Level node as the name suggests, is...

Unreal Engine Tutorial: Create Circular Ring Material without Textures

Hi, welcome back for another tutorial. It's been quite a while since I put up a tutorial as I've been busy working on toolkits for the Marketplace. One of my earlier tutorials [link: Unit Selection Decals for RTS Games ] had focused on how to create ring materials using textures, as well as using them to display unit selection decals for RTS games. However, a drawback associated with using textures was that it prevented the user from changing the inner & outer radius of the ring. And during prototyping stages of a product, it's far better to implement structures that can be changed easily from within the engine so that you don't have to create a new asset from an external package every time you need to test out a new idea. I've found this approach quite useful while working on my own products. Hence, this tutorial focuses on creating a ring material that can be adjusted both from within the material editor as well as dynamically at runtime. Alright before...

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