Equipment Manager
Last modified: 05 December 2024This component manages the equipment lifecycle.
It should always be added to the pawn used as the inventory's avatar.
Provides multiple query methods for Containers and Items along with functions to perform operations on them.
Pawns with an Equipment Manager must also implement
EquipmentManagerProviderInterface.The Equipment Manager needs to access an Inventory Manager.
The Equipment Manager works in conjunction with the Inventory Manager to represent items in the world.
Equipment Management
When an item is added to an Equipment Slot, its Equipment Fragment will communicate with the Equipment Manager to initialize or synchronize an Equipment Instance.
Once ready, the Equipment Instance will use multiple functionalities from the Equipment Manager to update its state:
Add or remove Skeletal or Static Meshes from certain Equipment Slots.
Hide or show Equipment Slots.
Add or remove Gameplay Attributes, Effects and Abilities.
Add or remove Containers granted by equipped items.
Asset Manager
An important responsibility of the Equipment Manager, that is transparent to the end user is its integration with the Asset Manager.
All assets set in the equipment's state are soft references, meaning they are not automatically load to memory. When a state activates, its assets are asynchronously loaded on demand, with high priority. Once they are loaded, they will be appropriately used.
The asset's handle will be kept until the state becomes inactive. When that happens, the handle is reset, allowing the assets to be unloaded.
Because of this, you might see some small delays when an Equipment Instance is being created for the first time. A common way to circumvent that is having important or recurrent meshes loaded in the map, in a hidden area.
Configuration
The following properties are used to adjust the Equipment Manager's operation:
Property | Description |
|---|---|
| A Gameplay Tag Query that will obtain all containers that can store equipment, including cosmetics. |
| A Gameplay Tag Query that will obtain all containers that can store equipment, excluding cosmetics. |
| Maps Equipment Slots to Sockets, which is necessary for slots that are not represented by Mesh Components (actors). |
| How often the Equipment Manager will poll for an Inventory Manager, during its initialization. |
| Maximum amount of time to wait for an Inventory Manager to initialize. |
| Configures default meshes for all equipment slots, that will be used when no equipment is currently assigned. |
| Default State Tag for new equipments, when no alternative was found in the container or equipment itself. |
Equipment Queries
Both Equipment Queries used by the Equipment Manager are used by functions that will look for Equipment Slots in the Inventory Layout. It's important to different cosmetic and non-cosmetic slots, especially while calculating the current Equipment Level.
Check the Equipment Slots page for more information.
Slot Socket Mapping
Equipment Slots are usually represented by Mesh Components with a specific Slot Tag. However, this is not the case for Actors that are added by the equipment.
Actors are only attached to a socket, yet the system has to be able to find them by Slot Tags, which is why this configuration is important.
Check the Equipment Slots page for more information.
Initialization
The Equipment Manager will asynchronously poll its owner, while waiting for the Inventory Manager to initialize. You can define the poll interval and the wait limit for this operation.
Default Slots
This configures default meshes for Equipment Slots without an item. This is useful to determine meshes that will represent the base character, such as a shirt or naked torso.
They are added and removed based on the presence of an item, or deliberately, depending on the state configuration.
Check the Equipment Slots page for more information.
Replication
Different from the Inventory Manager, the Equipment Manager replicates to all clients. This is necessary since all equipment representations must occur in all versions: authoritative, autonomous and simulated.