I have been in unreal for 3 months and you are supposed to be a teacher and so far with this course I have seen so many bad habits especially casting continuosly in the same Blueprint. OMG Just create a refarance to the Player Teach people this… And also when stopping your animations in the Player blueprint the way you do this is frustrating There is a easy way in the player blueprint in the Viewport in the top left side you have 3 dashes next to perspective and Lit click that and click Realtime Or use the Shortcut Ctrl+R and also why copy and paste with Ctrl C And Ctrl V you don’t need that in UE5 To duplicate something it is Ctrl +D Also here is some shortcuts for you Hold down B Key and left click this gives you a branch or if you want to type just type if it gives you a branch… O Plus left click is a DoOnce… S Plus left click is a Sequence I could Go on but i won’t , So far not impressed.
Hi, thanks for the feedback.
I would like to address the casting issue as I have an explanation for why casting is used in this way.
There are really 2 reasons. The first is to get at the object in question. This can be handled as you suggested by a variable but then thr second reason makes this risky and potentially buggy. The second advantage of casting is that it tests the validity of the reference. You should never assume that a reference is valid and while you could cali date it every time separately, casting does this. It is a defensive coding technique to ensure you don’t throw an exception.
As for the keyboard shortcuts, they are a personal preference and certainly not bad practice. Some people prefer using the copy paste and others use duplicate. In fact, when dealing with massive blueprints, copy paste is actually easier to work with as you can copy, then scroll to the area where it is being copied and then paste it.
As for the others, again it isn’t really what I would call bad habits but preferred approach. Given this is a beginners course, then techniques shown are perfect for starting out as there is a lot to remember. When teaching beginners, the simplest way is the best and remembering dozens of keyboard shortcuts is not simple.
Unreal has many different ways to achieve the same thing and it will take many years to master them. I’m still learning and have been using the engine for 6 years now and I know the instructors have many more years experience than I have.
Well We all have different ways of scripting I have been told by many people to cast once and if you have to cast again in the same Blueprint then use a Referance, As you said it is always not Valid so use a check Is Valid? i have no problems with the code i write i debug if i have issues but is very rare, Also for large code if it is getting that big then i will Collapse to a function or a Macro this way it makes the code more readable, But that is personal preferance . As for shortcuts tell people or add it to your screen as if they really want to be more efficiant then they can do what i did Write it down on a piece of cardboard and place it beside there monitor
Is valid is a good way to check as well, but then you also need a branch.
It really is down to preference and yes, in an ideal world you could assign to a variable safely but also it depends on the frequency of the cast. Is it tick or is it a one off like begin play and when the player is hit for example. Also, like I said, cast is quite compact and handles the fail case too and is valid needs a branch so increases complexity.
Big blueprints. By this, I mean many many handlers and this means it is spread out. Collapsing helps to functions or macros and I tend to do this myself but not while prototyping as it is easier to debug. It’s about the spread. Think about handling keyboard, gamepad and mouse inputs. Often mouse and gamepad needs handling separately so you double up the events.take a look at one of the paragon assets for example. They aren’t complex but there’s a lot there.
Again, shortcuts. As a beginner, less is more. Throwing 5 or 10 additional keypresses at them can be overwhelming. This course is targeted at those with little or no unreal experience so I would argue against overwhelming them as unreal is huge. The keyboard shortcuts are also different in different areas so suddenly it gets even more complicated. I hope this makes sense.
What might be more appropriate is a cheat sheet showing the keyboard shortcuts.
Hi! Thank you for the feedback! While some things like keyboard shortcuts are more preference-based, I definitely understand your concerns on standards. As this is a beginner course, I had to weigh out creating overly complex blueprints over more simple, but functional blueprints. It’s tough to find a perfect balance, but I like to aim for quick prototyping to get the game working, and then do iteration passes to add new functionality or add more flexibility with variables and such.
You’ll notice with our AI, for example, we start with simple single-function AI with blueprints and even level blueprints to give direct instructions. Later in the course though, we iterate on those examples and create Behavior Trees to bring in a more standardized approach allowing for more advanced behaviors.
Hopefully this helps clear up what I was aiming for with the course, and I do hope you enjoy the rest!