DEV Community: Liquefier

Unreal C++ Course Chapter 114 - 115.

Liquefier — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:13:09 +0000

Very straight forward blueprint and C++ use of attack montages, I also included a check to see if the character state was unequipped, which looks like it will be the next lesson. (I tend to get ahead of myself)

void AEchoCharacter::EchoAttack()
{
    UAnimInstance* AnimInstance = GetMesh()->GetAnimInstance();
    if (AnimInstance && AttackMontage && CurrentEquipState != ECharacterEquipState::ECS_UnEquipped)
    {
        AnimInstance->Montage_Play(AttackMontage);
        int32 selection = FMath::RandRange(0, 1);

        switch (selection)
        {
        case 0:
            AnimInstance->Montage_JumpToSection("Attack1", AttackMontage);
            break;
        case 1:
            AnimInstance->Montage_JumpToSection("Attack2", AttackMontage);
            break;
        }

Unreal Course Chapter 11 Challenge.

Liquefier — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:02:06 +0000

The challenge for this end of chapter was to get a 2 handed weapon and attach it to your mesh with an appropriate animation sequence.

Decided rather than using a new weapon for the time being I'd add different styles since I am using a katana. Lots of fun figuring out that my weapon pointer wasn't getting de-referenced, but that pressing a button to fire events goes faster than the engine can handle, and you need to add Pressed to your Input Action Trigger. Echo now can swap between Equipped, 1 Handed, or Two handed styles, but I need to fix the hand placement since the animation didn't quite line up.

I added additional styles to the state enumeration and bound a key to cycle through them. You absolutely cannot use digital bool as the input. There is likely a way to make sure you don't overload the engine with spam pointer dereference calls but the simplest path forward was to set it to respond in the "Pressed" state, not a continuous call to the Input Mapping Context.

My header file:

UENUM(BlueprintType)
enum class ECharacterEquipState : uint8
{
    ECS_Sheathed UMETA(DisplayName = "Sheathed"),
    ECS_Equipped1H UMETA(DisplayName = "Equipped One Hand"),
    ECS_Equipped2H UMETA(DisplayName = "Equipped Two Hand"),
    ECS_EquippedAkimbo UMETA(DisplayName = "Equipped Dual Weild"),
    ECS_UnEquipped UMETA(DisplayName = "Uequipped"),
    ECS_Count UMETA(Hidden),
};

ECharacterEquipState NextState(ECharacterEquipState State);

/*The NextState function:  */

ECharacterEquipState NextState(ECharacterEquipState State)
{
    const int count = static_cast<int>(ECharacterEquipState::ECS_Count);
    const int next = ((static_cast<int>(State)) + 1) % count;
    return static_cast<ECharacterEquipState>(next);

}

/*And the call to swap weapon style: ( I was reticent to use a while loop, but decided it was the most efficient solution, I was originally recursively calling the function, but moved away from that during debugging. ) */

void AEchoCharacter::EchoSwapStyle()
{

    const UEnum* Enum = StaticEnum<ECharacterEquipState>();
    const FText Display = Enum->GetDisplayNameTextByValue(static_cast<int64>(CurrentEquipState));
    if (GEngine) GEngine->AddOnScreenDebugMessage(2, 30.f, FColor::Blue, Display.ToString());

    ECharacterEquipState DesiredState;
    DesiredState = NextState(CurrentEquipState);
    while (!(EquippedWeapon->CanUseStyle(DesiredState)))
        DesiredState = NextState(DesiredState);
    CurrentEquipState = DesiredState;

    const FText Display2 = Enum->GetDisplayNameTextByValue(static_cast<int64>(CurrentEquipState));
    if (GEngine) GEngine->AddOnScreenDebugMessage(3, 30.f, FColor::Blue, Display2.ToString());
}```

Unreal C++ Course - Chapter 111

Liquefier — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 01:26:23 +0000

The only real hang-up I had with this chapter is that you must loop the animation when u add it to your blueprint graph, otherwise it only plays it once then your character will just slide.

Unreal C++ Course Chapter 109

Liquefier — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:02:37 +0000

In this chapter we set up the enumerations for the player character's equip state, in my case AEchoCharacter. I declared my enumerations in a separate header file CharacterState.h which can also be used for other states besides equipping items: Alive/Dead, Climbing/Swimming etc. I decided to specify my enum encapsulation as ECharacterEquipState.

Although I didn't fully agree with making the character variable private, I went along and will do all my state logic under the AEchoCharacter hood, using a const GetCharacterEquipState() getter.

I ran into an issue when adding it to the Animation Instance, as it had been written using the parent class's pointer ACharacter, casting an to it, I had to update the header pointer to AEchoCharacter so that I could call EchoCharacter->GetCharacterEquipState().

Unreal C++ Course Chapter 107

Liquefier — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 18:03:56 +0000

On doing Chapter 107. Attaching the Sword, I had some interesting bugs/hangups. I was using a different weapon asset which had it's own issues but the first thing that was happening is that when I picked up the katana, my character would just get ejected from the level. I had to turn off collision detection before I did the attachment. I included the adjustments I made in blueprint for reference to fix it. I also had an issue with my katana mesh, I had resized it to be appropriate for the character and when I would pick it up, it would revert to it's larger size. I had to switch "Scale Rule" to "Keep World" to avoid that, pic included for laughs.