As the title suggests, I managed to rotate a spring arm that is attached to a character when the game is paused through C++. I am not able to implement this behavior in Blueprint. Here is what I did:
I started with the TopDownBP template and added a function RotateSpringArm that takes two inputs, DeltaPitch and DeltaYaw, to the TopDownCharacter Blueprint. These float values get added to the current rotation of the SpringArm component. The player controller (defaults to tickable during pause) calls this function when the action for camera rotation is executed (execute when paused set to true). Both mouse axes (also set to execute when paused) are passed as parameters to RotateSpringArm. I also added a Pause action which is handled in the character controller.
The result is a camera that rotates around the character until the game is paused. The camera doesn’t update after that although the execution flows just fine to the “Set World Rotation (SpringArm component)” node within RotateSpringArm. Printing DeltaPitch and Yaw shows reasonable values. When the game is unpaused the camera snaps to a new view which demonstrates that an update ideed occurred during the pause.
There are several threads in the forums and on Answerhub with inconclusive/no reactions (e.g. Trouble rotating player camera when paused. - Blueprint - Unreal Engine Forums). With this question I want to point out that I don’t see the same behavior across BP and C++. This is either a bug or I am missing something. I also have problems making characters move during a pause (whereas projectiles and particles update just fine when set to tickable when paused) but I wanted to keep this question more focussed. A fix for the camera issue might apply to the rest as well.