I’ve just started using unreal engine and am currently using 3rd Person Game with Blueprints tutorial to acquaint myself to this software. I’m on video 14: “Game Mode and Testing” in which we load our game for the first time to ensure that everything is working as planned. Unfortunately for me, everything is NOT working as it should. I’ve been dutifully following along with the tutorials however when I start the simulation, my character never spawns. Being so new to the engine, I really have no means of debugging this myself, I’ve tried googling for some answers but nothing seemed to apply. Help would be appreciated.
After further testing, I’ve learned that when playing the game as a stand alone process and not “simulating”, everything works as expected. Is there any kind of options I should be looking into so I can enable this functionality or have I stumbled onto a bug?
First: I am a newbie too, could be inaccurate.
When you simulate, you don’t spawn any PlayerControllers (and therefore you have no pawn because that is spawned by the controller). Documentation states following:
While simulating, gameplay begins, including the execution of Blueprints and C++ code that do not rely on a player’s interaction with the game.
[…]
However, because you are not using a PlayerController while simulating, you cannot enter game controls.
So this is expected behavior. In the video he always used the PIE (play in editor) on the selected viewport, not Simulate.
Thank you very much, that seems to address the issue perfectly.
You always have a player controller for each player and it persists even between level loads.
The Pawn is the mesh and visual appearance of the player in the scene.
The pawn is ‘throw away’. For example if your player dies you might destroy the pawn and spawn in an Actor that is the corpse.
You also might have an empty pawn with no mesh for when they are in the menus.