• RPG item data table that contains item stats such as damage, armour etc.
• Subtitles for dialogue that can easily be accessed by character name.
• An enemy data table containing a list of pre made enemy types with enemy health, damage, stamina etc.

In this guide we will be showing you how to use Data Tables in your Unreal Engine 5 game.

Pre-requisites

To use Data Tables in Unreal Engine 5 you will need to know how to create and use structures.
Click here to read our guide on structures.

It would also help to know how to create and use an blueprint enum.
Click here to learn about enums in Unreal Engine and how to create them in your project.

What is a Data Table?

In Unreal Engine 5, a Data Table is an extremely useful tool that allows you to define a list of data and store different values for this defined list based on a key.

This data is stored as an asset in your project which makes it incredibly easy to retrieve and update the data from anywhere in your code.

The data is also remembered inside of the editor meaning you can create your data while you are developing your project, then use the data inside of your project during runtime.

A great example of this is data for items or enemies in your project. This data can be set by you when designing your items and enemies which is then saved and persistent.

Making and using Data Tables in Unreal Engine 5 is easy and requires very little work. In the next section we explain how to make your own data table inside of your Unreal Engine 5 project!

Making our Data Table

Creating an Enum

Before we create our struct, we need to create an enum. This is an item rarity enum which will represent the quality of our role playing game item.

Simply create your enum by right clicking the content browser and clicking Enumeration in the Blueprint category.

Then set the values as shown that you require. If you are following along with this guide, copy the values in the image below.

Creating our Struct

Now that we have our enum created, next we need to create the struct that our data table will use for the types of values it will hold.

Right click anywhere in the content browser, then click Structure in the Blueprints category.

Then set the values as shown that you require. If you are following along with this guide, copy the values in the image below.

Creating our Data table

Finally we can create our data table. This is done exactly the same way by right clicking inside of the content browser and clicking the Data Table option in the Miscellaneous category.

Next there is a popup asking which struct you want to use. In this guide we are using the ExampleStruct we made earlier.

Adding Values to the Data Table

Now that are data table is created and configured correctly, we can press the Add button to add a new row to our data table.

As you can see in the image below, the data table has a new row with some default values from our struct.

We can change the values in the “Row Editor” and the values in the data table will change above.

We can now create as many entries as we want!

Clicking the row name section in the row, we can change the row name. In this example we are using BronzeSword as the new row name.

The Damage, Rarity, and Sell Price values we defined earlier are in the Data Table view, and the Row Editor below.

Changing the values in the Row Editor will affect the values stored in the data table.

Don’t forget to Save often to prevent losing your changes!

Using your Data Table

Now that we have our data table created, configured, and filled with data, we can now learn how to access this data in our code.

We have create an Event BeginPlay node to our level blueprint and have created a Get Data Table Row node.

This Get Data Table Row node asks for a data table asset reference, and a row name.

Data Table reference is our data table we created earlier, and the Row Name is the row we want to try to find the data for.

If the row is found, the Row Found pin will run code and the Out Row will contain our data, if the row is not found, the Row Not Found pin will run code and the Out Row data will be invalid.

We can set the Data Table reference by clicking on the select asset drop down and selecting our data table from the list of assets.

Now we can split the Out Row struct by right clicking and clicking Split Struct Pin in the menu. This will split our struct into all the types and values in contains for easy visibility.

We can also see that our Row Name is now a drop down that contains all the available row names. This can be overridden by connecting a value to the Row Name pink pin.

Now that we have split our Out Row struct, we can see the Damage, Rarity, and Sell Price values we set earlier.

Looping over your Data Table Rows

Now that we can access a specific row in our data table, it is essential to know how to use a loop with a data table.

In the example below we have created a Get Data Table Row Names node. This returns an Array with all of the row names inside of the data table.

We can then connect this to a For Each Loop node. This will now run the Loop Body for each Row Name in the Out Row Names from our Data Table.

Finally connecting our For Each Loop into a Get Data Table Row like before, we can then connect the Array Element pink pin to the Row Name pink pin.

This will now get the data for that row name each time the loop runs.

We can then use the Out Row values however we want in the project!

Conclusion

Now you have learned how to create, configure, populate, and implement data tables in your Unreal Engine 5 project!

Almost every Unreal Engine project benefits from using a data table to efficiently and neatly store data for use within the systems you develop.

Working collaboratively using data tables makes sharing a single source of truth for your projects data simple and does not require any C++ knowledge!

Further Reading:

• A more advanced look into Data Table merging and composite tables from Unreal Engine 5’s wiki
• A great visual guide for Data Tables by Gorka Games (Not affiliated with CouchLearn)
• The official Unreal Engine 5 documentation for Data Tables in Blueprints

The post How to use Data Tables in your Unreal Engine 5 game appeared first on Couch Learn.

Prerequisites

This guide expects a basic level of knowledge of C++ in Unreal Engine 5.

To follow this guide you also need to have one of the following:

• Visual Studio for Windows
  or
• XCode for MacOS

These programs are used to compile the C++ code into your project. If you do not have a IDE installed, the engine will prompt you to install one.

What is a C++ Blueprint Function Library

The C++ Blueprint Library is a built in Unreal Engine class that allows code to be written using the C++ programming language to be used in both C++ code or in Blueprints!

This means we can move our slow blueprints nodes into optimised C++ code then run these functions inside of our blueprint code.

This gives us the power of C++ inside of blueprints in an easily accessible form!

How to create a C++ Blueprint Function Library

C++ Project vs Blueprint Project

Firstly, we need to find out if our project is a C++ enabled project, or only a blueprint enabled project. Luckily this is easy to do!

Click the Tools drop down at the top of the screen, then click “New C++ Class“.

If you do not have one of the preqrequisite programs installed as explained earlier, the engine will instruct you what you need to install.

In our case, for this guide, we used a MacOS machine, and so we installed XCode.

Next, the dialog box will appear asking which type of “Parent Class” you wish to use when creating your new class.

As we are making a C++ blueprint function library, we scroll down near the bottom and click “Blueprint Function Library”. To move to the next section, we press the blue NEXT button.

We then are asked to choose a name for our new blueprint function library class.

In this guide we used the default name “MyBlueprintFunctionLibrary”. You can change this to your choice of name.

We recommend a clear name with capital letters for each word in the name to follow Unreal Engine 5’s naming convention.

After naming our class and clicking the Create Class button, our project then compiles the new files for us to use. Wait for this to complete before moving on the next section.

Inside your Code IDE

Now that our new class has been created, we can now open our IDE of choice and look at the files Unreal Engine has created for us.

As we chose “MyBlueprintFunctionLibrary” as our class name, we can see that we have two files. A .cpp file for our code, and a .h header file for our declarations both with our chosen name.

Add functions

Now we are ready to add our C++ code to add functionality to our Blueprint Function Library.

For this guide we are making a simple read and write system for strings. This will take our string and save it to a specified file, and can also read a file into a Unreal Engine string.

For your project, you can write the C++ code necessary for your required features.

First in our header file we can see that the engine has generated us a basic file with the correct includes and inheritance for our class.

Next we add our function declaration. We have added a basic function that returns a true or false bool based on if we can save the string to the file or not.

The most important part is to use the static keyword. This makes our function accessible anywhere without an object reference!

We then must add our UFUNCTION macro to make our function visible inside of our blueprint editor.

Next, we repeat the same as before with our loading string from file function. As before it is static with a UFUNCTION macro for blueprint compatibility.

Lastly, we open the .cpp file and add our function code.

This is a simple use of the FFileHelper library in Unreal Engine 5 to allow us to read and write strings to files.

Our Blueprint Function Library is now a powerful example of what we can do when we need access to C++ functionality inside of our blueprints!

Once you have completed this step, compile your project and relaunch the editor.

How to use the C++ Blueprint Function Library in Blueprints

Finally, we can open any blueprint editor and type the name of our new blueprint function libary.

We can see in the actions pop up box that our two “Load String to File” and “Save String to File” C++ functions are now exposed to the blueprints system!

Demonstration

To demonstrate our functions working, we opened the level blueprint, created a BeginPlay event, and connected our new Save String to File C++ Blueprint Library function to it.

We can specify any string to save, and choose a file name.

After running this with “Save Test” as the String to Save and textfile-test.txt as the File Name, we can see in the project /Saved folder our file and string!

Lastly, we can test our Load String from File function inside of the editor the same way.

We have created the loadtest.txt file in the /Saved folder of our project, and written the string “Loading Test” into it and saved.

Inside of the level blueprint we then add our Load String from File C++ Blueprint Function Library function and connected it to a print string node.

This will load of text file into a string and print it to the screen.

As you can see, after playing our project in the editor, our string from inside our file is show on screen!

Conclusion

Now you understand how to use C++ Blueprint Function Libraries in Unreal Engine 5!

The use of these function libraries gives tangible performance improvements and also unlocks the hidden functionality inside of the engine; exposing this to your blueprint code!

Further Reading

Official blueprint function library documentation from Epic Games
Click here to read more of our C++ guides for Unreal Engine

The post How to use C++ Blueprint Function Library in UE5 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Before we Start

This guide continues on from the CouchLearn guide “Setting up a NavMesh in Unreal Engine 5”.

Our previous guide explains how to set up a basic NavMesh and AI character in your Unreal Engine 5 project. Follow the previous guide found here or download the project files here.

Chasing the Player

In the previous “Setting up a NavMesh in Unreal Engine 5”. guide, we finished off with these blueprint nodes to move the AI character around the level.

Firstly, delete the “Get Actor Location” and “GetRandomReachablePointInRadius” nodes from the graph.

These nodes are currently trying to find a random position around the AI. We want the AI to use the player’s location so it is safe to delete these two nodes.

Next, add a new “Get Player Character” node to the blueprint graph.

Then, connect the blue “Return Value” pin to the blue “Target Actor” pin on the “AI MoveTo” node.

This will now get our “Target Actor’s” location for the AI movement.

As our AI might fail to move, if the player isn’t reachable in the navmesh, we now connect the “On Fail” pin to the “Delay” node.

This now retries the movement if the player is unreachable or the AI fails the nav mesh movement for any reason. This step will keep the AI following the player no matter the situation.

Lastly, make sure to Compile and Save the blueprint editor. This will ensure the changes are applied when we play in the editor.

Use Cases

Even thought these steps are easy and only a few blueprint nodes are used, this basic system can enable many types of AI in modern games.

A few examples of this could be:

• Companion AI following the player around an open world like Skyrim (Using the Unreal Engine dynamic open world navigation).
• Zombie AI chasing the player (Using the Unreal Engine damage system).

Demo Video

Download the Project Files

Conclusion

Now your AI character / enemy is following and chasing the player character around the level in Unreal Engine 5!

As explained in the previous step, this basic system can be expanded to implement many modern game AI behaviours into your Unreal Engine project. To learn more about the capabilities of AI and Navigation in Unreal Engine, consider reading further using the links below.

Further Reading:
How to smoothly rotate AI characters in Unreal Engine
Open world navigation in Unreal Engine
Dynamically generated navigation in Unreal Engine
Official Unreal Engine Navigation documentation

The post AI Following the Player in Unreal Engine 5 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Setting up the NavMesh

Firstly, click Window, then Place Actors. This will show the Place Actors window in the editor. This window allows you to spawn basic objects and volumes into your Unreal Engine 5 level.

Then, add a NavMeshBoundsVolume actor to your level. This can be found in the Modes panel under the “Volumes” category.

Scale and position the NavMeshBoundsVolume to fit around the area that you want the AI to be able to navigate.

This can be as large or as small as you require. Bigger nav meshes take longer to generate unless you use dynamic generation. Click here to read about dynamic nav mesh generation.

Now to confirm your Nav Mesh is setup correctly for your level, Press the “P” key on your keyboard to see the mesh visualized in the level.

Moving the AI Character

For this guide we are using the third person template that Unreal Engine 5 provides.

This means we can have an animated character to test the AI Navigation.

To enable our third person character blueprint to navigate the level, first drag your character into the level.
This can be found in the “Third Person / Blueprints” folder in the Content Drawer if you created your project using the Third Person Template.

In the blueprint editor of the character, create a “Begin Play” event and connect the “AI MoveTo” node as shown in the image below.

Next, create a “GetRandomReachablePointInRadius” node and connect the output yellow vector pin to the yellow “Destination” pin on the “AI MoveTo” Node.

Then create and connect a “Get Actor Location” node to the “Origin” yellow vector pin. This Origin position is where the random movement is calculated around.

Set the green “Radius” pin value to the distance you want your AI to roam around. In this guide we are using “2000”.

Create a “Reference to Self” node and connect this to the blue “Pawn” pin of the “AI MoveTo” node.

Finally, create a “Delay” node then connect it to the “On Success” pin. Connect the end of the Delay back into the AI MoveTo node. This will continuously navigate the AI character around the Navigation Mesh.

Now you can click “Play” and the character will then begin moving towards random locations in your level using the NavMesh.

Demo Video

Download the Project Files

Conclusion

Now your character is moving around the level all by itself! This AI behaviour is very basic but can be expanded upon greatly using many of the great AI features in Unreal Engine 5. To learn more about AI and Navigation in Unreal Engine consider reading further using the links below.

Further Reading:
How to smoothly rotate AI characters in Unreal Engine
Open world navigation in Unreal Engine
Dynamically generated navigation in Unreal Engine
Official Unreal Engine Navigation documentation

The post Setting up a NavMesh in Unreal Engine 5 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide you need to understand the basics of Unreal Engine, working with blueprints inside the editor and using a custom Game Instance. We have linked guides below to these topics.
The basics of blueprint actors.
Adding variables to blueprint actors.
How to use custom Game Instances.
Custom Events in Unreal Engine.

It would also be beneficial to understand how Input Actions work in Unreal Engine:
Click here to learn how to use input actions and axis.

How it Works

SaveGame is a class in Unreal Engine that is preconfigured to save and load the data contained in the variables you add.

The variables you set are then saved to a file stored on the user’s machine. This is then read and the variables can be accessed in your game.

The save file is located in these locations:
Windows: Local Appdata folder
MacOS: Library/Application Support
Linux: /home/username/.local/share

Almost every variable type can be saved and loaded using the SaveGame class.

Creating our Save Class

Firstly, create a new blueprint class from the content drawer.

Next, in the popup window, click the drop down arrow at the bottom. In the search bar type “SaveGame” and click the option from the list.

Then, give your new SaveGame blueprint a suitable name. We need to remember this as it is used later. In our case, we used the name DemoSaveGame.

Saving the variables

Now that your SaveGame class has been created, you can add any variables you need for your project.

For this demo we create a new Vector variable called “PlayerPosition”.

Once you have created the variables you need for your project, click Compile and Save to ensure your changes are applied and saved.

Adding Save and Load Functionality

Firstly, in our Game Instance, add two new custom events. “Save” and “Load”.

We also need to add a new variable on the Game Instance. Name this variable SaveGame and set the type to the class you created in the previous step.

Loading our Variables from the Save File

Now that our Game Instance is setup, on the Load event, create a new “Does Save Game Exist” node. The “Slot Name” pin needs to be given a name. This can be set to anything you want. Each different name you use saves to a different file.

In our case we just named this “savegame”.

Next, add a branch to the output pin of the “Does Save Game Exist” node. This will branch if our save file exists or not.

If the Save File Exists

From the “True” pin, create a new “Load Game From Slot” node with the same “Slot Name” as before.

Next, from the blue output pin, create a “Cast to” node. This should cast to the class you created in the first step. For us this is “Cast to DemoSaveGame”.

Then set the Game Instance’s Save Game variable we created earlier to the output of the “Cast to” node.

From there, we create a “Set Actor Location” node. This will be used to move our character to the saved location.

From the variables list on the left of the editor, drag the “SaveGame” variable and drop near the the nodes. This will show a list of options. Click the “Get SaveGame” option to allow us easy access to this variable for the next few steps.

Dragging from the “Save Game” blue pin then typing “get player position”, we can see our “Player Position” Vector variable that we created earlier. Click this option in the list to add it to the blueprint graph.

Next, connect the “Player Position” vector pin to the “New Location” option on the “Set Actor Location” node.

Lastly, create a “Get Player Character” node and connect this to the “Target” pin of the “Set Actor Location” node. This now gets our saved player position and moves the player character to it.

If the Save File doesn’t Exist

If the save file does not exist then we need to create a new file. From the “False” pin create a new “Create Save Game Object” node. Then set the “Save Game Class” purple pin to the custom SaveGame class we created earlier.

Then, set the Game Instance “Save Game” variable to the blue output pin value.

Lastly, connect the “Set Save Game” node to the blueprint nodes above. This can be done by double clicking the white lines to create points.

Connect the blueprints nodes together as shown in the image below.

Saving our Variables to the Save File

Now that we can load saved variables, we need to save the variables!

Firstly, drag and drop the SaveGame variable and click “Get SaveGame” next to the Save event.

From there, we create an “? Is Valid” node. This allows us to branch the code if our save file has been loaded or not.

If the Save File is Valid

From our “Save Game” blue variable, create a “Set Player Position” node and connect it to the “Is Valid” pin.

Next, create a “Get Player Character” node and from the blue output pin, create a “Get Actor Location” pin.

Lastly, connect the yellow output pin of the “Get Actor Location” node to the yellow input pin on the “Set Player Position” node. Now if our save game object is valid we will save the player character location to the save file on disk.

If the Save File is not Valid

If the save game object isn’t valid, we need to create it before saving any data.

Firstly, create a “Create Save Game Object” node, set the purple input value to our previously created save game class, then connect this to the “Is Not Valid” pin as shown below.

Next, set the Game Instance SaveGame variable to the blue output pin of the “Create Save Game Object” node.

Then, connect the “Set Save Game” node to the “Set Player Position” node as shown below. This will save the player character’s position after the “Save Game” object is valid.

Finally, create either a “Save Game to Slot” or “Async Save Game to Slot” node from the blue SaveGame variable.

If your game needs to save lots of information, use the “Async Save Game to Slot” node.

If your game only saves a small amount of data, use the “Save Game to Slot” node.

Make sure to set the “Slot Name” variable to the name you used earlier. In our case this was “savegame”.

Saving and Loading the Player Position

Now that your Save and Load system is complete, we need to trigger this functionality.

In your Player Character class add an Key Press Event. For this guide we used the number 1 key from our ThirdPersonCharacterBP class.

From there, create a “Get Game Instance” node and a “Cast To” node to your custom game instance. Connect the two as shown below.

Next, from the blue “As Game Instance” pin, call the “Save” event we created earlier. Now when we press the number 1 key, our game will save the current player character’s position to the save file.

Repeat the previous step for the number 2 key as shown in the image below.

Finally, call the “Load” event from the “As Game Instance” blue pin. This will now load our saved player position from the save file and teleport our player to that position.

Demo

Download the Project Files

Conclusion

Now your project has saving and loading capabilities!

This is a very basic implementation but allows you to expand this further. Any data you want to save and load can be implemented into the events we created during this guide.

An example of this would be the player’s health. This variable could be created on the SaveGame, saved and loaded onto the character with minimal setup.

Further Reading:
Official UE4/5 documentation for the Saving and Loading in the engine.
Tom Looman’s great guide for implementing Saving and Loading for C++ classes

The post How to Save and Load in Unreal Engine 5 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Unreal Marketplace Plugins

Firstly, open the Epic Games Launcher and navigate to the Unreal Marketplace.

Next, in the “Browse” tab, click the “Code Plugins” option.

Then, choose the plugin you want to install. For this guide we are using the VaRest network plugin.

If you do not already own the plugin, click add to cart and complete the purchase.

Free plugins still need to be “purchased” but you are not charged.

As these plugins are installed to the engine, we need to click the “Install to Engine” button.

Then, choose the engine version you would like to install the plugin to.

Lastly, the plugin is now shown in the downloads tab of the Epic Games Launcher. Once the plugin has been successfully installed continue to the final step.

Enabling the Plugin

New plugins are not enabled in the project by default. This is to prevent all projects building unnecessary code and increasing your executable size. In this final step we need to enable the plugin on your project.

Firstly, to enable the plugin, click “Edit” then “Plugins”.

Once the Plugins tab has opened, type the name of the plugin in the search box to find the newly installed plugin details.

Finally, click the check box for the plugin, then click the “Restart Now” button. This will restart the editor and allow use of the plugin in C++ and Blueprints.

Manually Installed Plugins (Advanced)

Disclaimer

BE CAREFUL when downloading untrusted files and code online.

Only download Unreal Engine plugins from trusted sources.

CouchLearn is not responsible for any damage caused by downloading unknown files.

Make sure the plugin you are downloading is compatible with the version of Unreal Engine 5 that you have installed.

Installing the Plugin

To demonstrate the steps of installing a UE5 plugin manually, we will be using the Victory BP plugin by Rama.

Firstly, we need to make sure your project folder contains a “Plugins” folder.

If this folder does not exist, simply create a new folder named “Plugins”.

Then, copy your plugin’s folder into the Plugins folder shown above.

For example we copied the VictoryPlugin folder compatible with Unreal Engine 5.0 into the Plugins folder of the project.

Inside this folder is the plugin files downloaded from the Victory Plugin Unreal Engine forums page.

Enabling the Plugin

Plugins are not enabled by default. This is to prevent all projects building unnecessary code and increasing your executable size. In this final step we need to enable the plugin on your project.

Firstly, to enable the plugin, click “Edit” then “Plugins”.

Once the Plugins tab has opened, type the name of the plugin in the search box to find the newly installed plugin details.

Finally, click the check box for the plugin, then click the “Restart Now” button. This will restart the editor and allow use of the plugin in C++ and Blueprints.

Conclusion

Now your Unreal Engine 5 project has new functionality!

Plugins can infinitely extend the functionality of your project, the engine, and even the editor itself! The Unreal Engine Marketplace has hundreds of quality plugins that can give your project the features you need to realize your vision!

Further Reading:
Click here to read the official documentation for making your own plugins in Unreal Engine
Click here to see the code plugins on the Unreal Engine Marketplace

The post How to Install Plugins for Unreal Engine 5 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Accessing the MetaHuman Library

Firstly, click the Window tab in the Unreal Engine editor and click “Quixel Bridge”.

Once the Quixel Bridge has opened in the editor, click the MetaHumans tab.

Now you see all of the preconfigured MetaHumans available to download and add to your project.

Before you can download your chosen MetaHuman to the opened project, click one of the avatars in the grid. You should see the Sign In button on the bottom right of the window.

Continue logging into your Epic Games account to access the full Quixel Megascans and MetaHuman library.

Adding the character to your Project

Now that you are fully logged into the Quixel Bridge tab, click one of the MetaHuman avatars and click Download. Once the MetaHuman is downloaded successfully, click the Add button.

The editor will now be importing your chosen MetaHuman into the open project. If any notifications pop up in the bottom left of the editor, press “Enable Missing” to allow the editor to configure your project for MetaHumans.

Once you have enabled the missing settings and plugins, press the “Restart Now” button to restart the editor with the new settings applied.

In the Content Drawer, click the “MetaHumans” folder and find the folder name of the MetaHuman you chose in the previous step. Your downloaded MetaHuman can now be found setup in the asset starting with “BP_”.

Conclusion

Now your project has a ready to use MetaHuman blueprint! As you can see in the blueprint, there are multiple meshes that make up the full character. These meshes can be used as your player character as they are fully rigged!

In the future you will be able to make your own custom MetaHumans using the MetaHuman creator tool.

Further Reading
Custom MetaHumans using the MetaHuman creator

Official MetaHuman Unreal Engine page

Unreal Engine 5 MetaHuman documentation

The post How to add MetaHumans into your UE5 project appeared first on Couch Learn.

Before we Start

To make this guide easier to understand for new developers, we are using the Unreal Engine 5 Third Person template which is found in the New Project window.

If you already have your project setup with a Character blueprint, skip to the “Adding our Double Jump” section below.

Creating our template project

Firstly, we want to click Third Person, choose a project location on your computer in the bottom left, then give the project a name in the bottom right. Once this is done, click the blue “Create” button in the bottom right of the window.

Once the Unreal Engine editor has opened your new project, open the “Content Drawer” in the bottom left of the editor and find the BP_ThirdPersonCharacter object in the Content/ThirdPerson/Blueprints folder.

Adding our Double Jump

The first step to add double jump functionality is to open our Character blueprint and select the name.

In our case this is the text labelled “BP_ThirdPersonCharacter (Self)”. Once this is selected the text will go blue as shown below.

On the right side of the blueprint editor you will find the “Details” tab. Look through the details tab until you find “Character” and the “Jump Max Count”. This value is set to 1 by default.

Now as we want to have our character double jump, change this value to 2. If you require more than 2 jumps for your character, change this value to whichever suits your needs.

Once this is done, remember to click the “Compile” and “Save” buttons in the top left of the blueprint editor.

Simple Double Jump Demo

Your character is now able to double jump! As you can see in the demo video below the character is double jumping successfully.

However, one problem you can see is the animation only plays once. In the next section we will be fixing the animations so they play correctly for all jumps.

Animation Improvements (Intermediate Difficulty)

As the double jump doesn’t look right in the previous demo, we now are fixing the animations.

Firstly, open the “Content Drawer” and find the ABP_Manny object in the Content/Characters/Mannequins/Animations folder.

Now the animation blueprint editor is open, find and double click the AnimGraph text in the left of the editor window.

Next, with the animation graph now open, click the “Main States” state machine. This is where all of the animation transitions are held for our character.

Inside the Main States state machine, drag from the state named “Fall Loop” to the state named “Jump” as shown in the image below. If done correctly you should see an arrow and text stating “Create a transition”.

With our transition now created, click the icon to open the transition editor.

Finally, in the transition editor add the blueprint nodes shown in the example image below.

These nodes allow the animation state to return back to the jumping animation once you trigger the double jump.

Advanced Animated Double Jump Demo

Your improved double jump is now complete! As you can see in the video below, the animations are much better and the player now gets visual feedback when they double jump.

Download the Project Files

Conclusion

Your Unreal Engine 5 project now has a double jump capable character! For a challenge, do try to follow the optional animation improvement steps as it really make a difference to the experience!

Further Reading:
Official blueprint guide to setting up a new character mesh in UE5
Full ACharacter documentation for advanced jump settings in C++

The post How to add Double Jumping in Unreal Engine 5 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Before Installation

To reduce the install size of a new install of Unreal Engine, firstly click the plus button next to “Engine Versions”. This is found in the Unreal Engine / Library tab of the Epic Games Launcher.

From there select the engine version you would like to download and click the “Install” button.

In the popup box, choose the directory to install the engine to then click “Options”.

Finally scroll through the list of options and remove the ones you do not need in your install then click “Apply” and “Install”.

We recommend keeping the templates and editor symbols to aid in development and debugging.

The easiest to remove are TVOS and HoloLens2 as most users do not build for these platforms.

After Installation

It is still possible to reduce the install size even if you have already installed a version of Unreal Engine.

First find the version you would like to reduce in size then click the arrow next to “Launch”.

Next click the “Options” button in the drop down menu underneath the editor version you are editing.

Finally scroll through the list of options and remove the ones you want to remove in your current install then click “Apply”.

We recommend keeping the templates and editor symbols to aid in development and debugging.

The easiest to remove are TVOS and HoloLens2 as most users do not build for these platforms.

Conclusion

Your Unreal Engine 5 editor install size is now reduced!

Newer versions of the editor are considerably larger than older Unreal Engine 4 installs and this most likely will continue to grow as more features are added.

For the best development experience, we recommend installing Unreal Engine to a separate 512GB SSD. This improves the speed of the editor and allows you to have all the features and files installed in case you begin to develop for separate platforms or need to use the standard assets.

Click here to read the official UE5 install documentation
Click here to read the official required and recommended hardware for Unreal Engine 5

The post How to reduce Unreal Engine 5 editor install size appeared first on Couch Learn.

Prerequisites

To understand this guide and implement timers into your project, you will need to know how to use custom events and functions in Unreal Engine 5 before starting.

Click here to read our guide on custom events.

How to create Blueprint Timers

Basic Timer Settings

Before we create our timer, we will look at the basic timer settings that all timers have. These allow us to set the frequency of the timer and if the timer repeats or not.

The green Time pin is the time Unreal Engine will wait to call your event. If this value is less than or equal to 0, the timer will be cleared and will not call the event.

The Looping check box will repeat the timer if set to true and only run once if set to false. Ticking this box is best for functionality that you want to run repeatedly.

Timer by Event

When you want to create a timer that uses a custom event in the event graph, you need to use Set Timer by Event.

As shown below, your custom events can be connected using the red event delegate square. Any custom event are connected to this pin to trigger on the time set. Only one event is connected at a time.

Timer by Function

If you want to use a function instead of an event delegate, we have the Timer by Function Name blueprint node. This has function name and object pins replacing the red delegate pin.

Object is the reference to the object that you want to run the function on (e.g. FirstPersonCharacter or your own custom actors). If you want to run the function on this actor, you can leave this pin empty.

“Function Name” is the name of the function found in the function list in your object.

In this example we have created a new function in the My Blueprint panel on the left of the blueprint editor. Our new function is called MyCustomFunction.

Now our function has been created, we then add the functions name into the Function Name pin.

The blueprint node above now run MyCustomFunction after 5 seconds without looping.

Saving the Timer

If you want to change any properties about a timer, you need to save a reference to the return value. The easiest way to do this is to drag from the return value and click Promote to Variable.

Pausing and Unpausing Timers

Now we have a reference to our timer, we can pause and un-pause the timer. The nodes below show the handle and function versions of pausing and unpausing your timer.

Function timers can be paused and unpaused using the function name and do not need a timer handle.

Removing a Timer

When you need a timer to stop, use the clear and invalidate timer blueprint nodes. These nodes will stop the timer and destroy the specified handle object.

When using a Function Timer, you will need to clear and invalidate the timer separately if you want to use a function name.

Checking a Timer’s Status

With the handle or function name, you can check various properties about a timer.

Firstly we have Does Timer Exist. These nodes check if the timer exists in memory. If the timer is cleared and invalidated this value is false.

Is Timer Active will return true if the handle or function name has a timer that is actively running and exists.

“Is Timer Paused” returns true if the timer is not actively running but does exist.

Conclusion

Now you have all the knowledge to use timers in your blueprint code in Unreal Engine 5!

Having all of these nodes at your disposal allows code and functionality to run at specific times and at certain frequencies. This will overall improve the readability of your code and can bring great performance gains. We recommend setting the Time value to 0.1 or 0.05 seconds instead of running every frame on tick.

Further reading:
In depth use of timers with gameplay example from Unreal Engine documentation
Click here to read how C++ Timers work in Unreal Engine

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