A Watcher

• References
  • I got some informatin from these two videos.
  • WTF Is? Line Trace By Channel Node.
  • Line Trace Applying Damage
• I would like to bulid a "Silent Watcher" like those watching the enterence to Cirith Ungol.
• Just to make life better, I downloaded the Medieval Dungeon pack.
• I started with the First Person Shooter
  • I deleted a bunch of block.
• The watcher
  • Has a skull for decoration.
  • Has a text render box, so it can say things to you when it sees you.
  • 
• I declared two variables

  • bool TextIsVisible = false;
    int SightDistance = 100;
             

  • I marked the sight distance as public
  • And set a range from 10 to 5000
  • 
  • This will allow you to change it in the world, but only the given amount.
  • 
• My general algorithm

  • OnTick() {
        vector endDest = Location+lookat*SightDistance;
        If Trace(Location, endDest) {
           if (not TextIsVisible) {
              DamageCharacter()
              TextIsVisible = true;
              TextRender.SetVisible(TextIsVisible);
           }
        } else {
           if (TextIsVisible) {
               TextIsVisible = false;
               Wait(2 seconds)
               TextRender.SetVisible(TextIsVisible);
           }
        }
    

  • The blueprints
    • 
    • 
      • I want the Trace channel to be camera.
        • This is way deep in the FirstPersonCharacter
        • In the Collision Section
        • In the Mesh area
        • For collision presets
        • For Trace Responses.
        • 
        • The object is ignored by visibility traces.
        • But visible by camera traces.
      • I turned on the Draw for Debug type so we could see the ray.
    • 
      • I split the struct pin of Out hit
      • Return Value is true on a hit.
      • Hit Actor is the thing that was hit.
    • On a false for Return Value.
      • 
      • I don't want to fire this every time, just when the text was visible.
      • Note the Delay function is "new"
    • On a true for Return Value
      • 
      • I only want this to fire when I enter the beam.
      • Note, the reroute node between Branch and Branch.
      • 
      • 
        • ApplyDamage will cause the ApplyDamage Event to fire the the selected actor.
        • Inside the FirstPersonCharacter blueprint
        • 
      • 
• I decided to add a scoreboard
  • This is not necessarly the way to do it but.
  • The scoreboard has a single integer, the score, initialized to 0.
  • It displays this score in a Text Renderer.
  • I have a UpdateScoreboardText function
  • 
  • This is called by the constructor
  • 
  • On an event tick, The scoreboard will get all of the FirstPersonCharacters,
    • There is only one, so I don't worry about this now, but in the future, I would need multiple scoreboards.
    • And loops through all of them (it)
    • 
  • The body of the loop
    • Get the HitCount score from the character.
    • And if this is a new score for the scoreboard
    • Store it and update the scoreboard.
    • 
• Finally, Doug didn't like it that I could shoot a ball through the beam.
  • So I found the FirstPersonProjectile instance
  • And added a tiny little script to destroy the item on a hit.
  •