Zerol Dev Notes

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WARNING

this post is base on Aura GAS Course

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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)

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

Blueprint ​

  • create a UserWdiget, place a DynamicEntryWidget alt text

  • set the box type to overlay alt text

  • set the aura floating text widget class alt text

CPP ​

  • Update AuraPlayerController, Update AuraPlayerController, no need to create and remove WidgetComponent anymore. alt text

  • 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: alt text 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.

Usage ​

alt text

Other ​

The DynamicBox has some other interesting features, such as radial. alt text