The Character Capture & Character Inhibitor Components

A duo of components that can be used to immobilise a Character or limit it's actions

Experimental - Usable, but you must talk to us to understand the implications

Overview

The M2_CharacterCaptureComponent works in harmony with the M2_CharacterInhibitorComponent to allow developers to lock out functionality temporarily in a straight-forward way. Currently the component supports disabling a character's movement and ability to jump. This would allow a developer to prevent unintended movement while a character is interacting with different elements in a scene.

This guide will show you how our example content uses these components and will feature a brief explanation of how you might implement this without using the M2 Platform's default Character class.

Integration

To use an M2_CharacterCaptureComponent , you will need the following setup:

• Enable the live config value in Game schema: Character.InhibitorComponentEnabled

• A Character inheriting from J_CharacterBase

  • This will give us an instance of UM2_CharacterInhibitorComponent and our J_CharacterMovementComponent has preconfigured hooks to block attempts to move or jump if there's a valid Inhibitor on the Character and the Inhbitor is in a Captured or QueuedForRelease state

BP_CharacterCaptureTest

This asset has been provided as an example of how you might use an M2_CharacterCaptureComponentto prevent a player from moving or jumping, and releasing them in fixed conditions.

In this example you must either select the options in the menu to change state, or moving whilst Captured will queue your release.

Interacting with the object

Image shows logic in BP_CharacterTest for how the interaction system triggers our Character Capture logic

• Capture - When this option is chosen, character will be unable to move until released

• Release - Characters in the Captured state will once again be able to move

• Queued Release - Character enters a "Release Queued" state, triggering a visual indicator that progresses until time elapses and the Character is Released

Here you'll see that when we choose the "Capture" option, we use the Capture component attached to this example object to Capture the player that interacts with it. We raise a cube on the sphere as a visual indicator of state.

Releasing the Character

Image shows how we handle queueing a player for release in the example

Image shows how we handle directly releasing a player in the example

Release happens three ways in our example:

• Player selects "Release", this releases them immediately

• Player has attempted to move or jump, this queues their release

• Player selects "Queue Release" from the menu, this releases them after a short wait

Image shows how we use Character Capture events to queue release of the character

Under the hood

We recommend inheriting from J_CharacterBase as this already has the hooks set up in J_CharacterMovementComponent for checking against inhibitors when we call RequestDirectMove or DoJump. If you don't use our base, you will need to configure these yourself to block attempts to move or jump.