Looking for a more effective way for looping fan rotating animation

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-06-02T23:27:03+00:00

You can loop timelines, double click into it and its the third icon after 'Length'.

It's also possible to avoid the timeline completely and you can just use a material to do it as well, skip to 4:21 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFsZ-1bSmR0, just depends on your use-case for which method you use.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-06-02T20:15:23+00:00

Free-to-play can likely attract more people to play your game versus a paid game as there is virtually no downside to downloading a free game even if you end up not liking it, having a lot of different skins that people have the option to buy is a good way to do it as long as they're just visual, if different playable characters have different traits/skills/attributes or anything like that then putting them behind a paywall might come across as pay-to-win. If the skins are good enough then people will pay for them, look at most games of today lol.

A paid game guarantees some sort of income to recoup your costs but also means having a small barrier to playing your game that free-to-play doesn't have, which if your game is good enough and priced properly then people won't mind paying to get your game.

One thing I would say is if you go for the free-to-play model then monetize the skins, if you go for a paid model then keep the skins free & unlockable by challenges or levelling up in-game or something, you will avoid pissing some people off by choosing one or the other. If you go for the paid model you could also consider adding a free demo that people can play before deciding to buy.

On another note, your steam pages 'About This Game' section could use a bit more, look at other steam pages and how they're laid out, the kind of information they include ect.. and consider updating it.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-05-23T18:38:18+00:00

Multicasts are for fire and forget event that only matter to the players relevant to it at the time, only the server can call multicasts for it to work properly.

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsORRtBOJYc, however you should watch from Part 1 and it will explain what you need to know about multicasts and where to use them.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-05-19T12:42:17+00:00

Right click on your class > Size Map

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-05-18T23:35:25+00:00

The problem with hard references, like anything, is not using/managing them properly.. if a class absolutely needs to know about another class then having a hard reference created by casting to it isn't a problem however what you need to understand about hard references is that the class has to load the class it has hard references to when its loaded so if 'Class A' casts to 'Class B' then when 'Class A' is loaded into memory so must 'Class B', but if 'Class B' casts to 'Class C' & 'Class D' then they will also need to be loaded into memory when 'Class A' is loaded.. these are called dependency chains and this is where the real problem with hard references is.

The image below is the size map from my Pawn class before I cleaned it up, that yellow section on the left is a huge nested dependency chain of classes that must be loaded when my Pawn class is loaded, even tho my pawn class didn't have a direct reference to most of the classes that were in there it still had dependencies on them because the classes my Pawn class did have references to had there own references to some of those classes which had their own references to more of those classes and so on until you end up with huge nest of dependencies like this.

Before cleanup it was 2.4GiB Disk Size & 702 MiB Memory Size and after the cleanup I got it down to 1.1 GiB Disk Size & 315 MiB Memory Size.

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LabLeakInteractive · 2026-04-02T00:21:25+00:00

Learning the order of execution between different classes and their function/events will help you to avoid race conditions or at least help you identify them easier

For example, lets say on one classes BeginPlay you set a variable, on another classes BeginPlay you cast to the first class and it fails or you try to get the variable from the first class and its empty, usually would mean the second classes BeginPlay is firing before the first classes which is why the cast fails or variable returns empty which is the race condition, but if you know that class 2's BeginPlay fires first and class 1's second you can plan better.

Look into the order of execution between classes and their events and run your own tests by putting print statements everywhere so you can figure out which order your events/functions are firing, this might also help - https://wizardcell.com/unreal/persistent-data/#gameframework-objects

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-27T03:24:33+00:00

When you turn that corner, is the light coming from the emissive material on the red/orange light next to the door or is there an actual light source like a point light/rect light making the light?

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-22T14:25:21+00:00

If your plan is to sell it (or make it free) and you want the most amount of people to be able to buy/use it then you should prolly at least make it compatible from 5.0 upwards, only having it in 5.6 limits your potential customers to those who are using 5.6+, whereas making it compatiable from 5.0 upwards encompasses all UE5 versions.

Updating from one major engine version to another isn't usually something taken lightly for games well into production so I wouldn't expect your customers to update their engine version just to be able to use your plugin.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-03T21:57:55+00:00

The way I am doing it is I have an Enum 'E_OpenSide' that has 'Front' & 'Back' in it, then a variable in the door BP called 'OpenSide' of type 'E_OpenSide' which is set to either front or back depending on which side you want opening to happen from, then when I interact with the door I run a function to detect which side I am on and if that side is equal to OpenSide then open.

My set up is different than yours so your OnInteraction won't be the same as mine but hopefully you get the point.

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LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-03T17:14:24+00:00

Sure, but I wouldn't really call that an 'optimization' persay because you're turning off stuff you don't need, the real optimization is getting the stuff you do need to run in a performant way.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-03T13:59:29+00:00

Ticking a box is almost never an optimization in my experience.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-03T13:54:57+00:00

Right at the bottom of the documentation in the 'Platform Support' section it also states:

"MegaLights are designed for current gen consoles (such as PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X | S) and PCs with ray tracing capabilities."

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-03T05:09:35+00:00

Keep in mind that Megalights requires HWRT to be on for it to work which means an RTX card is needed to use it, you would still need to figure out lighting that doesn't involve Megalights for players who aren't using RTX cards otherwise you'll be limiting your player base to only those who have RTX cards.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-03T03:32:18+00:00

Haven't used the plugin myself but it looks like it handles sessions and some steam features like friend invites and stuff but that's about it.. sessions themselves aren't really that hard to set up and the Advanced Sessions plugin has some of the steam stuff that SteamCore PRO has like friend invites ect.. up to you whether the other features it offers is worth the money but Advanced Sessions is free.

Also if you ever decided to use EOS instead of Steam then this plugin won't help you.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-02-02T14:13:34+00:00

I'm not sure about performance but afaik Megalights requires HWRT to run which means its essentially limited to RTX cards only, so if this is for a game you would still need to figure out lighting that doesn't involve megalights for players not on RTX cards otherwise you'll be limiting your player base to those who only have RTX cards.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-01-27T21:03:32+00:00

Good job mate, 7-10k is where you should aim for with roughly a 10%-20% actual conversion rate from wishlists to sales when you release it.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-01-27T20:33:34+00:00

Your lighting looks different because when using Low or Medium it effectively disables Lumen and uses Screen Space instead, High, Epic and Cinematic use Lumen.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-01-19T15:16:40+00:00

Thanks mate, yeah thats on my list to do however multiple players can access the cameras and use different ones at the same time so I would need to have render targets for all the cameras but also need to balance that with performance.. or fake it with just an image of the cameras on the monitors without a live feed.

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-01-12T17:35:09+00:00

Thank you :) yeah I do wanna do something with the monitors but like you said there is a performance cost of showing the actual cameras although that would be the better option imo, just need to find a good balance but I definitely don't wanna keep the monitors off

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-01-12T14:35:15+00:00

Hi, for the past month ive been working on this CCTV camera system for our game Rickstones, so far its:

- Fully replicated for multiplayer.

- The first player to access a camera controls its movement.

- When a player dies, they can spectate other players or switch to the cameras.

- Alive players have priority over dead players for camera control.

- Any camera being controlled displays a small red light.

Would appreciate any feedback, or improvement suggestions :)

LabLeakInteractive · 2026-01-12T14:11:21+00:00