UE Blueprint Fundamentals | Class #5-3 | Loops & Arrays Applied #3

[@legotimebombshorts4231]

This is probably the most challenging video to grasp so far, for me. Gonna have to watch this a few more times. Great video still.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I imagine as you work on your own stuff you will find more examples that apply and “click” for you you even more

[@BodySnatchers-v5f]

me too buddy

[@yslaar]

I got my A.S. in Computer Science with a focus on C++ Programming, and I just want to say the classes you've uploaded here for free, even just with the fundamentals being covered, far outweigh the hundreds of hours spent in a formal class environment. The aid of Blueprints in Unreal really helps solidify so much of that knowledge, especially here with the debug spheres. Thank you so much for all of this work you've put into making these classes great resources that are actually INTERESTING and immediately useful and practical. When I'm financially stable again, I'd love to tip you to properly thank you. Cheers.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

-Better than "hundreds of hours"....holy smokes what a compliment. Thanks for watching the vids and taking time to drop feedback. With that CS background you are in such a great spot to have fun making games! It's great to know they are helpful even for people with more XP. fish-orange-wide-eyes Very much appreciate your support. ty

[@Rezaghanbari_gohari]

Who else tried to pause the screen at 10:22 ? :)))) Thanks by the way. These tutorial series are amazing and very informative.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Glad you like them!

[@kenechukwuuzongwa1423]

Hearing those last three words "Take it Easy " feels really good. This is both thorough and detailed. Thank You Prof!

[@livinfreestyle6727]

no worries. Have a great weekend and thanks for the comment/watch

[@Elnaz_Heydari_22]

A little more challenging compared to the previous tutorials so I needed to watch it more than once to understand it completely but it actually contains very great lessons and that made me feel great at the end that I finally understood what was going on. The practical examples that you provide alongside the lessons are also really handy. So, just like your other tutorials, this was also highly beneficial to me and I am very much grateful of that. Bests ✨🙏🏻

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Great to hear!

[@rzaozhan7480]

As a beginner to BP I had a hard time but I am beyond proud of completing this video and also applying it to myself. I will watch it again in the future.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Nice work!

[@sentientgypsy8370]

Just in case this happens to someone else, on the last method, make sure that you grab your Local Variable "Out Actors" and not the "Out actors" under Variables, The particular place where I accidentally swapped them was right after the set "node" with an index of max and which is then connected to the Get node connected to Local variable Out Actors, accidentally used the other one. Great video!

[@JerryKid72]

strange i thought i was making this mistake but i still get the "Blueprint Runtime Error: "Accessed None trying to read property CallFunc_Array_Get_Item_1". Node: Draw Debug Sphere Graph: GetSortedObjectsMethod D Function: Get Sorted Objects Method D Blueprint: BP_ThirdPersonCharacter"

[@erichorton1440]

Good vid. Class 5 is advanced. I'll need to watch it again once I've used the engine more.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

A bunch of the "workbooks" basically all the "dashes" x-1,x-2,x-3 can be watched at any time. Thanks again for going through all these

[@ashskyqueen]

Another great class. I stumbled a few times with this one but thanks to the way you structure these videos I was able to find out where I went wrong pretty quickly. Your teaching style is spot on for me. Jumping right in to the next one :D

[@livinfreestyle6727]

You all are ripping through these. No way I can keep up!

[@Notgzus]

I recommend everyone to give it a shot first, and work out the problem before Kevin dives into the solution. It's exciting to get it done, or get stuck, and then watch it get solved maybe differently, or understand what did you miss. You'll sink in the knowledge so much faster and develop your problem-solving skills so much faster and stronger. Cheers!

[@livinfreestyle6727]

That's a cool idea. Self solving will help you for sure and you will probably solve things in your won way

[@Notgzus]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Funny thing is I went for a 'while' loop :-) I emptied items from the 'loc distances' (fully empty as stop condition) as well as the 'out actors' array where the index of max distance position. Would you vouch for this alternative? I know 'while' statements are considered a bad practice for some people; failing to meet the stop condition would lead to an infinite loop, but I would say it can solidly be justified if it shows better performance than other implementations.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

@@Notgzus I haven't really found a case where I needed a while loop in the last couple of years. I know its for cases where you have an undeterminite number of inputs for example, but I can't think of a time (that wasn't education related) where I used one lately. I think the potential for infinite loops probably creates a bias for me to not think of while loops, but I can't think of any cases that I have created worse performance by not using one.

[@ez6314]

When you said there's a "Find Nearest Actor" node, I was like "are you kidding me! I spend the past hour trying to understand your last two videos to later learn there was one node that did all that" lol but I get it, wax on wax off.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

This definitely made me laugh. Perfect response. But yes, there is a nearest one, but it can't do all the cool stuff like reverse etc

[@DarkSession6208]

Learning Blueprinting for the most part is just learning what C++ Functions they made available for us to use (So what stuff got exposed to Blueprints). Epics documentation is junk and does not explain much besides what you can visually see. When i started i literally made functions that took hours to make just to find out by accident that unreal has this function implemented already but the naming was nothing you would think it would actually do. The whole Unreal Engine is built asymetric. Theres really not much that is self explainatory, everything is also inconsistent. Once you understand this you completely change the way you use UE as a whole and even change how you code, hours were wasted because i assumed i know how things work by just lookin at it or thinking "A=A, B=B" , in reality A can be anything that epic it wants to be, so theres no boundary.

[@nahueluchaolmedo5373]

truly a masterclass!!! thank you very mucho

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@JerryKid72]

great video, following this playlist and its better than any other tutorial series ive seen. although i would like to see what exactly the output of each change we make, print string of the sorted array of distances maybe? i dont know if anyone else is like this but i HAVE to know exactly whats going on visually i might try to throw in some breaks and print each step as a string for myself but just an idea.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Ill keep this stuff in mind for future vids. Thx for watching

[@JerryKid72]

@@livinfreestyle6727 thank you! Btw next episode you do the print string thing again so all good 😅

[@63OO]

Thank you so much, is get all actors heavy on the game ? if i keep using this method for more than 1 object

[@livinfreestyle6727]

We did a test with it and it wasn't a noticable difference in our test kzbin.infoDmsvTXmYSnk?feature=share BUT I have been brainwash into not using it (and we still don't use it at work for example) so general try to find a different way. For learnign, it's totally fine but astute question

[@OliviaPourzia]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Is there a particular reason you avoid using GetAllActors in real-life applications? If it's not something you can easily get into, no worries - just curious!

[@DazaDragon]

You mention finding the closest actor with something else. Would that involve branches within the for loops, or a preliminary sort of the array before moving into the main script? ie. Does Object A have gun, if false, remove index from OutActors. Does object B have gun, if true, store into SortActors index and remove from OutActors index?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

OH....I think I understand. I was talking about the closest actor with an item for example. The case that the "elephant' doesn't handle. So basically yes....you can sort and then go through afterward and see if the closest one has it....if not then go to the next. OR you can go through as you say and only add it to the list if it has the item in the first place. I think the later being faster....prob even faster with tags

[@DazaDragon]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Thank you. :)

[@graham8624]

Thank you.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

of course!

[@sleepycritical6950]

Say hypothetically, two items were EXACTLY the same distance away. How would the method sort it out? Would it just default to the first item read in the original distance array, or would it crash?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

No crash (at least not cuz of the search). It simply takes whichever one was first or second depending on if you use < or

[@michaelluo5619]

@30:41 why did you need to change the sorted actors node?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Sometimes if you copy paste, esp between graphs, it doesn’t know that the arrays of the same name are actually the same. So when I copied it, it looked grey and just to be sure I deleted it and selected the actual sorted actors to ensure it was the correct one.

[@NicolasRoy-vm8ez]

Question: Is there a way to attach a collision sphere + a draw debug sphere onto a specific bone of a character for exemple a fist in order to have a precise collision overlap event for example when you hit another actor during your animation? I know its odly specific haha I'm just curious to know if that would be possible.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

There are multiple ways to do this, but you can drag a collision sphere onto the mesh and set the socket to be the left hand for example. Then just check the overlap/hit. Only thing to keep an eye on with this is sometimes you can "Miss" depending on frame rate and animation speed and the way your game is setup (like a drop frame for example)

[@mohamedel-gazzar5818]

For anyone watching this video for the first time, Other then just following along I would recommend going through the code more than once because there is a lot of things happening here. Also there has to be an easier way to do this.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

When you say easier way to do "this" what do you mean by "this"

[@livinfreestyle6727]

I ask, because...for example the "elephant in the room" part is an "easier way", but it wouldn't be a good practical way to teach you about arrays and go through the excercise of using them. Also, 100% there is a lot going on here

[@mohamedel-gazzar5818]

@@livinfreestyle6727 I’m so sorry. I meant sorting the items. Now that you mention it isn’t there a function that sorts through the values of the array and you can even sort by ascending and descending?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

general sorting for arrays would sort them alphabetically or numerically. But we're taking this to the next level so depending on the program a predefined function that does that might be available. But if its not...Now you can do it yourself!!

[@michaelluo5619]

@20:07 because of gotchas with indexes starting at 0 and needing to add 1, why don't indexes start at 1?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Over time as you get use to it, I think the gotcha factor will go away. Also numbers start at zero and there’s actually some cool stuff with knowing it’s the first element cuz you start at zero.

[@user-hehhe]

how do you make your blue Sphere blink ?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

it's not actually "blinking" I think it's just redrawing. So if you set your debug draw time it will probably appear to blink

[@michaelluo5619]

9:22 my Add Node for some reason says "Promoter Operator nodes cannot have containers or references" ?

[@livinfreestyle6727]

It sounds like you may not be using the proper add. Are all your variable types correct and are arrays actually arrays etc.

[@ez6314]

This video is missing from your UE Blueprint Fundamentals playlist

[@livinfreestyle6727]

ooo...thanks for the heads up. I'll add it

[@ez6314]

@@livinfreestyle6727 Another heads up, you added the video on your playlist but it's out of order. This video is last on your playlist, when it should be the 13th video.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Yeah, unfortunately, it appears as though I have to remove ALL the videos and add them back in order. Still trying to sort that out. Also the "Map" is coming so that will hopefully help as well

[@ez6314]

11:07 I don't understand, why is there nothing left on index 2? Isn't the D&C something?

[@ez6314]

Nevermind 27:05 explains it. Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I understood, "For Loop" node starts at zero index however an array starts at 1 item. Referencing 0 items in an array means to reference nothing. In your example you -1 from the array to make the array from 1234 to 0123 for "For Loop" to properly index the array.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

Not quite. An array starts at index 0. The "first" item in the array is at index 0. A "for each" loop will access everything in the array starting with the first item. A for loop (if you want to include the first item) should start at zero and go to length of array minus 1....

[@mohamedel-gazzar5818]

The last 2 classes 5-2 and 5-3 are small but packed.

[@livinfreestyle6727]

good to hear you are finding lots of info within. Thanks for the watch

[@user-hehhe]

Its getting Hard but i will never give up

[@livinfreestyle6727]

You got this!

[@Kota-Kombo-876]

Couldn't you explain about cycles and arrays in a simpler way? Why is everything so complicated?