Equipment, States, and Actors
Equipment is the physical representation of items in the game world.
Equipment Definition
The Equipment Definition specifies the equipment's behavior for each state. Each state can modify the user in many ways, such as:
Modify Skeletal Meshes assigned to certain slots. For example, replacing a shirt with an armor vest.
Hide Component Slots conflicting with the current state. For example, hiding facial hair when a mask is added.
Spawn Actors with additional features needed to represent an item. For example, spawning weapons with their own logic.
Link or unlink Animation Layers, which is useful to modify stances for certain types of equipment. For example, switching from unarmed to sword and shield animations.
Apply gameplay elements, such as Attributes, Effects, and Abilities.
Equipment Definitions are a Primary Data Asset, represented by the class NinjaEquipmentDataAsset. You can create new definitions using the Context Menu and navigating to the Inventory category.
Once configured, the Equipment Definition is set to an item via the Equipment Fragment. You can reuse Equipment Definitions across different items.
Configuring Assets for States
While configuring your assets for each state, keep the following general concepts in mind:
Unused Slot Tags: These are Slot Tags that will be hidden while the state is active.
Slot Tag: Refers to a Container/Mesh Component or Socket that can be used as the placement anchor.
Socket Name: Applicable to Mesh Components that must be attached to different sockets.
Compatibility Checks: You can use or create checks that must be valid for the asset to be used. This is useful to handle things like different body types.
Scene Component Selector: Allow you to determine where a given Slot should be encountered. By default, this is the Character Mesh, but you might want to use other selection rules.
Equipment Instance
The Equipment Fragment is responsible for monitoring the container in which its owning item is currently stored.
Once the item is stored in an Equipment Slot — a container with the Equipment tag — its Equipment Fragment will initialize the Equipment or synchronize its state.
Initializing the equipment involves providing the item along with its Equipment Definition to the Equipment Manager, which will create a new Equipment Instance and replicate it to all clients.
The Equipment Instance is responsible for managing the equipment's state and performing any changes to the owner, as per the state's configuration.
State Management
Equipment Instances can change their current states in one of two ways:
By being moved into an Equipment Slot that sets a default state for its items. This is tracked by the Equipment Fragment.
By activating the State Gameplay Abilities, which target a specific Equipment Instance.
Once these events are detected, the Equipment Manager will synchronize the correct Equipment Instance, ensuring that the appropriate state is updated.
Equipment Actors
Equipment Actors are used when an item's Equipment requires more complex logic or visual representation.
A common example would be creating weapons, which may require additional logic, such as performing melee traces or executing their own Animation Blueprints.
Equipment Actor Interface
Any Actor can be used for this purpose, but they must implement the EquipmentActorInterface. This interface includes a few important methods:
Getters and Setters for the Equipment Instance that manages the actor, allowing access to the item, manager components, and pawn.
A function that marks the equipment as the Effect Causer when Gameplay Effects are applied from it. For example, weapons should typically be marked as the Effect Causer of a damage effect.
Default Equipment Actor
The framework provides a base implementation of EquipmentActorInterface, which can be used as the parent class for specific Equipment Actors.
This class provides the following features:
Configures minimal replication settings, including replicating the Equipment Instance.
A default boolean property that can be toggled to determine if the equipment is an Effect Causer.