WEBVTT 00:07.040 --> 00:08.030 Welcome back. 00:08.850 --> 00:15.870 Now we know that we can load in information from disk, but that information is a little bit limited. 00:16.200 --> 00:23.940 If we open our load menu and press play, we know that if our slot was just created, then its map is 00:23.940 --> 00:25.350 set to first Dungeon. 00:25.350 --> 00:29.220 And if we select that slot and press play, we go to the first dungeon. 00:29.550 --> 00:34.800 Okay, well that's great, but we need to load in more information than that. 00:35.070 --> 00:42.360 Now we know we need to load in all of our saved attribute values, at least the primaries and our spells, 00:42.360 --> 00:49.590 any abilities that we have and whatever abilities we have equipped to whichever slots all of that stuff 00:49.590 --> 00:51.570 definitely needs to be loaded in, right? 00:51.570 --> 00:52.410 Of course. 00:52.530 --> 01:00.570 But in addition to that, we need to know where to load in in any given map, because a map might have 01:00.570 --> 01:07.620 different entrances and exits, it might have a starting point, but you may wish to have some kind 01:07.620 --> 01:14.010 of staircase that goes down to another dungeon, and at which point you travel to the other map and 01:14.010 --> 01:16.320 end up at a specific location in that map. 01:16.320 --> 01:22.980 And if you come back, maybe you want to spawn in right at that entrance, as opposed to at the beginning 01:22.980 --> 01:25.230 of the dungeon where you first spawned in. 01:25.230 --> 01:32.940 So there needs to be a way to choose where we spawn, and by default we spawn at player starts, and 01:32.940 --> 01:40.200 the game mode has the ability to choose a player start and player starts are a specific kind of actor 01:40.200 --> 01:41.520 that can be identified. 01:41.520 --> 01:43.860 In fact, they have a player start tag. 01:43.860 --> 01:47.610 If we select our player start right here, we see the player start tag. 01:47.610 --> 01:53.250 It's set to none, but we can use the player start tag to identify player starts if we want to. 01:53.430 --> 01:57.450 So how do we discern what player start to choose? 01:57.450 --> 02:02.340 Well, we can go back to C plus plus into our aura game mode base. 02:02.490 --> 02:09.450 And because this is based on a game mode base, let's go to a game mode base and just take a look. 02:09.450 --> 02:12.090 And if we search for choose. 02:12.820 --> 02:17.740 There's a function called Choose Player Start and this is a blueprint native event. 02:18.070 --> 02:24.610 It says return the best player start for this player to spawn from default implementation looks for 02:24.610 --> 02:26.890 a random unoccupied spot. 02:27.280 --> 02:32.170 Now it says that the player is the controller for whom we are choosing a player. 02:32.170 --> 02:35.860 Start returns actor chosen as the player start. 02:35.860 --> 02:39.100 Usually a player starts, so it returns an a actor. 02:39.100 --> 02:40.390 It doesn't have to be. 02:40.390 --> 02:41.440 It can be an actor. 02:41.440 --> 02:44.680 But usually we choose a player start. 02:44.890 --> 02:49.900 So because this is a blueprint native event, we can override its implementation. 02:49.900 --> 02:54.490 And if we want to do that, we can choose what player start to spawn at. 02:54.490 --> 02:56.770 Now which one are we going to choose? 02:56.770 --> 03:00.310 Well, that's going to need to be something we decide of course. 03:00.700 --> 03:03.220 So let's see how choose player Start works. 03:03.220 --> 03:07.540 Let's learn a little bit about how we can use it and how we can choose a specific player. 03:07.540 --> 03:08.140 Start. 03:08.720 --> 03:10.070 Now it's a public function. 03:10.070 --> 03:13.220 So we're going to override it in the public section. 03:14.000 --> 03:20.930 We're going to say virtual a actor pointer choose player start implementation override. 03:21.410 --> 03:23.990 We can go ahead and implement this function. 03:23.990 --> 03:26.540 And we don't need to call super. 03:26.540 --> 03:29.270 We want to choose the player start and return it. 03:29.840 --> 03:34.190 So I'm going to get all actors of a specific class. 03:34.190 --> 03:35.870 The player start class. 03:36.170 --> 03:41.240 And from those player starts I'm going to find one with a given tag and return it. 03:41.240 --> 03:42.590 That's what I'd like to do. 03:42.590 --> 03:47.510 Before I bother with all that though, I'm going to see what happens if we return a null pointer. 03:48.350 --> 03:49.760 What ends up happening? 03:49.760 --> 03:52.880 If that's the case, does the whole game crash? 03:52.880 --> 03:54.680 Does the world come crashing down? 03:54.680 --> 03:56.210 Let's just find out. 04:00.290 --> 04:05.210 So I'm just going to press play in this dungeon map and look at what happens. 04:05.210 --> 04:07.700 Really, we don't get a player start. 04:07.700 --> 04:09.590 We spawn in right here. 04:14.490 --> 04:16.110 Right there in the ground. 04:16.110 --> 04:21.360 So returning null for our player start is probably not the best idea. 04:21.360 --> 04:25.020 We should probably always return at least something, right? 04:25.020 --> 04:26.910 We need some kind of player start. 04:26.910 --> 04:33.930 So what we can do when we get all actors of the player start class is we could find the first one and 04:33.930 --> 04:34.890 just set that. 04:34.890 --> 04:39.630 And if we don't find any player starts that have the tag we're looking for, we'll return that first 04:39.630 --> 04:40.050 one. 04:40.050 --> 04:44.850 So here's what we'll do is first we're going to call get all actors of class. 04:44.850 --> 04:47.010 That's a you gameplay statics function. 04:47.160 --> 04:49.380 It's called get all actors of class. 04:49.380 --> 04:52.020 Now it requires a world context object. 04:52.020 --> 04:54.030 I'm just going to call Get world here. 04:55.790 --> 05:02.570 We can pass the world in itself as a world context object, and we need to pass in an actor class to 05:02.570 --> 05:06.470 filter this by, I'm going to use a player start. 05:08.610 --> 05:09.930 Static class. 05:11.210 --> 05:14.480 Now that means I need to include the player start header file. 05:14.480 --> 05:15.950 So we'll go ahead and do that. 05:16.160 --> 05:21.860 Now this function also needs a t array of actors called out actors that it can fill in with actors. 05:21.860 --> 05:25.250 So I'm going to make a T array of a actor pointers. 05:27.820 --> 05:29.650 Called actors. 05:29.650 --> 05:31.900 And we'll pass in our actors here. 05:35.150 --> 05:47.180 And if actors dot num is greater than zero, then we have actors, but otherwise we need to return a 05:47.180 --> 05:47.840 null pointer. 05:47.840 --> 05:51.230 So we're going to return null pointer here at the end. 05:51.230 --> 05:59.660 And if actors dot num is greater than zero, I'm going to first start off creating an a actor pointer 05:59.660 --> 06:01.130 called Selected Actor. 06:01.430 --> 06:04.280 And I'll start it off with actors of zero. 06:04.280 --> 06:05.570 So the first one. 06:06.470 --> 06:08.720 But then I want to loop over actors. 06:08.720 --> 06:18.290 I'm going to say for a actor actor in actors, and I'd like to cast it to a player start. 06:18.650 --> 06:25.430 So I'm going to say a player start pointer player start equals cast to a player start. 06:27.170 --> 06:27.980 Actor. 06:29.470 --> 06:33.430 And I'll go ahead and wrap this in an if statement. 06:35.850 --> 06:38.820 And I'll check that player starts player start tag. 06:38.820 --> 06:42.090 We can say if player start. 06:45.110 --> 06:50.360 Player start tag and we can check to see if it equals a specific F name. 06:50.360 --> 06:53.060 For now, I'm just going to hard code it to see how this works. 06:53.060 --> 07:00.620 I'm going to say the tag the tag, and if that player start matches this tag then I'm going to set selected 07:00.620 --> 07:04.160 actor equal to this player start. 07:05.390 --> 07:10.550 And by the end of this for loop, at the very end of it, I'm going to return selected actor. 07:11.600 --> 07:15.980 And of course, if we find a player start, there's no need to continue this for loop. 07:15.980 --> 07:18.050 We can break out of the for loop. 07:18.570 --> 07:24.270 So now we have choose player starts that is going to return the first player start. 07:24.270 --> 07:28.110 We find if none of them have the tag and it'll return null. 07:28.110 --> 07:34.170 If there are no player starts in the world, but if there is one with the tag, it'll return that one. 07:34.170 --> 07:38.100 If there's multiple with the tag, it's going to return the first one it finds. 07:38.340 --> 07:42.120 So we can test this out by running in debug mode. 07:43.860 --> 07:47.070 Okay, so first thing I'm going to do is press play. 07:47.670 --> 07:50.490 Now I see that we spawn at that player start. 07:50.490 --> 07:55.560 If we take that player start and delete it and press play, well, we just spawn in. 07:55.560 --> 07:57.180 We don't have a player start. 07:57.180 --> 08:01.980 I'm going to control Z though and keep that player start, but I'm going to duplicate it and bring the 08:01.980 --> 08:03.570 duplicate over to here. 08:03.570 --> 08:07.470 And for this one I'm going to set its player start tag to the tag. 08:07.470 --> 08:09.270 So right there in the details panel. 08:09.270 --> 08:12.000 And if I press play I spawn it that one. 08:12.000 --> 08:16.860 And if I have more than one with the tag it's just going to take one. 08:16.860 --> 08:18.270 The first one it finds. 08:18.780 --> 08:23.430 But we should never have more than one player start with the same tag, because that's ambiguous. 08:23.430 --> 08:29.430 Unless you don't care and you want a random player, start from among those player starts that all have 08:29.430 --> 08:31.740 the same tag, that would be fine too. 08:32.010 --> 08:38.160 But now at least we know that if we specify a tag we'll spawn in at the player start that has that tag, 08:38.160 --> 08:41.010 provided that there is one with that tag. 08:41.010 --> 08:46.860 If we take this tag and set it back to none, then if we press play, it's just going to pick one. 08:46.860 --> 08:48.990 So really no harm done. 08:48.990 --> 08:52.260 But now we can control where we spawn in. 08:52.260 --> 09:00.420 And this is pivotal to spawning in at checkpoints or places that we've saved, or even determining where 09:00.420 --> 09:01.800 to spawn in to a level. 09:01.800 --> 09:08.820 If we go into a dungeon entrance, for example, and we need to figure out how exactly we can know what 09:08.820 --> 09:13.290 that tag should be when we spawn in because we're spawning into a new level. 09:13.290 --> 09:16.560 So how are we going to know what the player start should be? 09:16.860 --> 09:19.410 We're going to figure that out in the next video. 09:19.860 --> 09:23.340 So until then I'm going to delete this player start. 09:23.340 --> 09:29.910 And I'm going to remove these enemies from this world as we're just going to start working on saving 09:29.910 --> 09:31.290 and loading. 09:31.940 --> 09:34.130 And I'll see you in the next video.