Unreal Gameplay Ability System - #1 Ability System Component

Unreal' s gameplay ability System, better known as GAS, is a fantastic system to create actions for your game characters. almost any real-time Combat system could benefit from using it. It's just sad that there isn't much documentation from Epic games to make this easy to learn. Which is why I will try it myself, to take you through all this step by step and learning how you can set up this plugin to work for your game!
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[@lolaswift111]

The best I've seen. thank you so much. please make more about GAS and gameplay tags

[@klovvin]

🔥 so excited you are covering this

[@thegamedevcave]

me too! after all the pain it took me to wrap my head around it all, i'm super excited to go through it step by step over the next number of weeks! :)

[@Rlifshitz19]

Can you make a video on how you set up VScode for development with UE5? Ive tried like 100 times and never get it to work

[@ryansandvik]

Riot Nu has a good video on his channel that will walk you through it if you're still looking to get VS & UE5 working.

[@profsrXP]

Do you have to remove the input code in protected or is that just because you already made the inputs prior?

[@thegamedevcave]

your input code isn't really relevant to GAS (at least not at this point), so you can keep your input code working just as you like.

[@omerhatay2676]

How can your code editor do code completion like this? Is there a plugin you use? 5:31

[@thegamedevcave]

github copilot

[@MegaMiley]

Would have loved a quick introduction on what GAS actually is and what it’s used for, I’m sure it’s useful but I have 0 idea what it can do even 😅. That said, I also appreciate the no fluff, let’s just start approach :)

[@thegamedevcave]

I assume that most people finding this would be somewhat familiar with what this plugin is, that much is decently easy to find and figure out I think, learning how to use it is a pain in the ass though so that's why I'm making this series :) In short, This system let's you make blueprints that execute an ability. Could be something as simple as a basic attack animation, up to a complex sequence of timed inputs. It also comes with it's own systems for gameplay attributes such as HP/stamina/MP and so on that's more intelligent than simply using float variables for those kinds of things. Of course this alll is very over simplified, because there is a lot to this plugin and how it works :)

[@GreyManFaustus]

I created a new C++ character for this because Blueprint-project. I got it to build and all, but the created character is nowhere to be found within the editor. Any idea what might be the problem here? Google is not particularly helpful.

[@thegamedevcave]

c++ classes need to be created through the unreal editor, not in your IDE, otherwise unreal wont pick them up.

[@GreyManFaustus]

I did create it in the editor, though. @@thegamedevcave

[@GreyManFaustus]

@@thegamedevcave I did create it in the editor, though. It refuses to show up.

[@thegamedevcave]

you do have a c++ folder in general? they should show up in there, if not i'm not exactly sure. try to see if you can make a blueprint class based off it, if it doesn't show up there either unreal is not picking up the class all together. it shouldn't make a different but make sure you also build from source (with the project closed in your IDE) instead of using Live Coding. just to be sure

[@GreyManFaustus]

@@thegamedevcave After tinkering for quite some time now, I think it's a bug. It works in any newly created project, just not in my main one. How do I derive a BP class, if I can't access the C++-class? Also not using live coding, because it throws me the "Can't parse livecoding.json"-error.

[@F0r3v3rT0m0rr0w]

hmmm .... there isnt a third person character in C++ classes. my character blueprint is in the normal content. not in C++ content. can i not do this with a normal blueprint ?

[@thegamedevcave]

Sounds like you might have made a blueprint project instead of a c++ project. For a few parts of GAS you need to use c++. For the purposes of following along with this series its probably easiest to just make a new project so your thirdperson character class is c++

[@F0r3v3rT0m0rr0w]

@@thegamedevcave ive done to much work to simply set up a new project. i think ill pass on GAS then. cheers cheers.

[@thegamedevcave]

@@F0r3v3rT0m0rr0w probably not a good idea to start learning a whole new system like this in an existing project. For learning purposes I'd just make a new project, you can enable c++ in existing projects , make a new character class to set up all the GAS and just set your third person character blueprint to be a child of that class instead. but that adds some extra complications that you really dont want to have to deal with while you're already learning something new. Once you have a feel for GAS, then dealing with applying c++ to existing blueprint projects isn't as big a deal, just gotta focus on 1 problem at a time though.

[@skal3802]

YEEEEE. GAS. Finally. But i really need to stop watching tutorials and make some games xd

[@thegamedevcave]

yeah actually putting tutorials into practice in the end is the best way to learn for real ;)