Using Engine built-in Widget Pool

Note

this post is base on Aura GAS Course

I found a built-in widget pool in the UE source code, so I think we can use it for the Aura Damage Floating Text. Because in some scenarios, characters may create a lot of floating widgets and then just remove them, which could cause a slight performance loss.

（Widget pool may offer minimal performance improvement, making it challenging to provide a quantitative comparison. Please carefully consider whether you need to utilize it.）

Scenario

Too many floating texts are being created and destroyed at the same time.

Main Functions

DynamicEntryBox(5.2-5.4)

UUserWidget* NewEntryWidget = EntryWidgetPool.GetOrCreateInstance(InEntryClass);

This is a piece of code from UDynamicEntryBox, showing us how to use a widget pool. We can use UDynamicEntryBox in Blueprint directly, without writing any C++. UDynamicEntryBox provides these two main functions to create and release widget entities:

BP_CreateEntry: Retrieves or creates a widget entity.

    UFUNCTION(BlueprintCallable, Category = DynamicEntryBox, meta = (DisplayName = "Create Entry", AllowPrivateAccess = true))
    UMG_API UUserWidget* BP_CreateEntry();

RemoveEntry: Releases the entity when not in use, removes it from the parent, but caches it for re-use.

    UFUNCTION(BlueprintCallable, Category = DynamicEntryBox)
    UMG_API void RemoveEntry(UUserWidget* EntryWidget);

Blueprint

create a UserWdiget, place a DynamicEntryWidget
set the box type to overlay
set the aura floating text widget class

CPP

Update AuraPlayerController, Update AuraPlayerController, no need to create and remove WidgetComponent anymore.
Since it's difficult to notify DynamicBox to release the widget after the animation ends in Blueprint, I tried but found it challenging, so I switched to implementing it in C++ . I Update UDamageTextComponent like so: Make sure the log doesn't keep increasing in size. If it does, then the configuration is correct. Otherwise, it means new entries are being created continuously.
Attention, the instances of DynamicBox will be automatically destroyed when the reference count drops to 0 upon the death of the character. If you have other references to the floating widget elsewhere, you may need to manually clean them up.