Implement Custom Actor Component

Development Programming & Scripting
1

I created a custom UActorComponent call ArenaCharacterAttributes. The character of my game is called ArenaCharacter. I created the ArenaCharacterAttributes component because I didn’t want the ArenaCharacter to become blotted with code, however I wanted all of the characters variables to be easily edited from within the editor.

What I have done so far is I added the code below to my ArenaCharacter.h file:

	UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category = Attributes)
	UArenaCharacterAttributes* CharacterAttributes;

Then in the ArenaCharacter.cpp file I initialized the component with the below code:

	CharacterAttributes = PCIP.CreateDefaultSubobject<UArenaCharacterAttributes>(this, TEXT("CharacterAttributes"));

This did the job of showing all the ArenaCharacterAttributes variables in the ArenaCharacter blueprint, under the CharacterAttributes component.

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However when I edit the defaults of the CharacterAttributes in the editor, it doesn’t apply to the CharacterAttributes C++ counterpart. How do I make it so when I edit the defaults in the editor, those changes also apply to the code?

2

Hi Ky Mercer,

The reason this doesn’t work in the way you’re attempting is because the blueprint itself is a child of the C++ class. According to all of the code in the C++ class, this blueprint doesn’t exist and none of those values you’re setting have been set. What type of function calls are you attempting to make in code that use these values?

3

That’s what I figured was happening. I am mainly calling getters and setters functions in the code.

I read about some changes made in 4.8 to Actor Components. Would upgrading the engine version solve this issue?

4

I’m not 100% sure that it would, but you could try it risk free by downloading the engine and making a copy of your project before converting, in case anything goes wrong in the conversion process.

5

Unfortunately it appears that upgrading to 4.8 didn’t solve it. I miss understood what the release notes were saying.

How then can I go about getting a reference to the blueprint and assign it to “CharacterAttributes” in my code?

6

I tried doing this myself without any issues at all, even the ones I mentioned so I apologize for that. The following is what I did to recreate this:

First I made two classes, an Actor and an Actor Component. I then gave a couple variables to the component and gave the Actor the component itself. After that, I set up a debug message to print out one of the variables from the component on tick which updates if I change the variable in the details panel of the blueprint instead of the code, as you were attempting to do. Here are a few pastebin links of all of the code files.

http:///8tKPdgNt
http:///JK2tRVY1
http:///KXgqWAqb
http:///HX6pPzSv

I hope this helps!