Unreal Script - Advanced Lighting (continued)

Unreal Script - Advanced Lighting (continued)

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Lucas

The few niggles with the old system finally got to, and wore me down. After spending a bit of time on a few improvements, I now have lights with a persistent state, so you can leave your light on and switch weapons without artifacts being left behind – and it’s really dead simple.

Two lines in the code are identical:

bLightEnabled = false;

These two lines need to be deleted, and the following block added:

simulated state WeaponPuttingDown
{
 simulated function BeginState( Name PreviousStateName )
 {
  local UTPlayerController PC;

  PC = UTPlayerController(Instigator.Controller);
  if (PC != None && LocalPlayer(PC.Player) != none )
  {
   PC.EndZoom();
  }
  Flashlight.Destroy();
  TimeWeaponPutDown();
  bWeaponPutDown = false;
 }

 simulated function EndState(Name NextStateName)
 {
  Super.EndState(NextStateName);
  if (SkeletalMeshComponent(Mesh) == none || WeaponEquipAnim == '')
  {
   Mesh.SetRotation(Default.Mesh.Rotation);
  }
 }

 simulated function Activate();

 /**
  * @returns false if the weapon isn't ready to be fired.  For example, if it's in the Inactive/WeaponPuttingDown states.
  */
 simulated function bool bReadyToFire()
 {
  return false;
 }
}

During the development, there was a slight issue where the light wouldn’t turn on until you had switched away, and then back to your weapon – This was a simple matter of the Flashlight object not being spawned, and the addFlashlight function has been modified accordingly:

simulated function addFlashlight()
{
 if(bLight)
 {
  PlayWeaponAnimation('reload', 1.0);
  WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "Light removed");
  Flashlight.Destroy();
  bLight = false;
 }
 else
 {
  PlayWeaponAnimation('reload', 1.0);
  WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "Light added");
  Flashlight = Spawn(class'ZO_WATT_Light', self);
  Flashlight.SetBase(self);
  Flashlight.LightComponent.SetEnabled(bLightEnabled);
  bLight = true;
 }
}

I managed to surprise myself at how simple this was after walking away from it for a little bit and coming back with a set of fresh eyes.

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