Can't access public constructor

Development Pipeline & Plugins Plugins
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1

I’m creating a plugin for Unreal with a BlueprintFunctionLibrary. Since I don’t want to have functions that are too long, I want to delegate the different tasks to different classes according to OOD.
I’m rather new to C++, so this might be a stupid question.
So I’ve created this class which holds some positions with methods to get them :
I’ve created the class with Unreals ClassWizard and made it private. However I want the constructor to be public so i can create an instance of it inside my BPFunction.

UCLASS()
class UTracePosition : public UObject
{
	GENERATED_UCLASS_BODY()

		FVector start;
		FVector end;
		FVector Forward;
		USceneComponent* arrow = nullptr;

public:
		UTracePosition::UTracePosition(USceneComponent* Arrow);

		FVector getForwardVector()
		{
			return Forward;
		}

		FVector getStart() 
		{
			return start;
		}

		FVector getEnd() {
			return end;
		}
	
};

And here’s the .cpp

#include "TracePosition.h"


UTracePosition::UTracePosition(USceneComponent* Arrow)
{
	arrow = Arrow;
	start = arrow->GetComponentTransform().GetLocation();
	end = arrow->GetComponentTransform().GetLocation();
	start.Z += 20.0f;
	end.Z -= 20.0f;
	Forward = arrow->GetForwardVector();

}

When I try to create an instance of this class inside my BPFunction it says the constructor is inacessable.
Another error says
“‘{ctor}’: illegal qualified name in member declaration” in UTracePosition::UTracePosition(USceneComponent* Arrow);

UTracePosition pos = UTracePosition(Arrow);

What’s the mistake here?

2

I am not sure about the UE4 classes, some enforce use of SNew or the like.

For normal C++
there are two ways to use a class.
As normal variable on the stack or create it with “new” on the heap and point to it with a pointer.

class A
{
};

int main(int nArgCount, char* pSzArgs[])
{
   A a;
   A* pA = new A;
   return 0;
}

In your case that would be:

UTracePosition pos(Arrow);

or

UTracePosition* pPos = new UTracePosition(Arrow);

Like I said, I don’t know if you need to use something different than new or if UE4 prohibits you to create an UObject on the stack.
They have a lot of rules you have to know, there is no way to guess it. Sorry.
Perhaps someone with more knowledge about UE4 can help, if this is not working for you.

3

Might be easier to just use a struct to hold that data instead:

USTRUCT(BlueprintType)
struct FTracePosition
{
	GENERATED_USTRUCT_BODY()

public:

	FTracePosition() {}

	FTracePosition(const FVector& InStart, const FVector& InEnd, const FVector& InForward, USceneComponent* InArrow)
	{
		Start = InStart;
		End = InEnd;
		Forward = InForward;
		Arrow = InArrow;
	}

	FVector GetForwardVector() { return Forward; }

	FVector GetStart() { return Start; }

	FVector GetEnd() { return End; }

private:

	FVector Start;
	FVector End;
	FVector Forward;
	USceneComponent* Arrow;
};

Then you can use FTracePosition NewTrace = FTracePosition(Variables In Here); and not have to deal with creating a pointer reference or using the ‘new’ keyword to create a class instance.