How To Create a Skill Tree System | UE4 Tutorial
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- Опубліковано 13 жов 2019
- In this UE4 tutorial we'll learn how to create a basic but solid and very easy to customize skill tree system using blueprints and a lot of widgets.
A skill tree is one of those things that a good game can't miss unless the game genre doesn't support a skill tree in a logical way. Skill trees allow players to integrate a part of their personal preferences in their character making the effect of immersion more pronounced.
Skill trees can vary from game to game, depending on the complexity of the skill tree, it can make the overall gameplay more interesting but, if it's too complicated, it might confuse the player. With that in mind, it's an important aspect to make sure your skill trees are balanced.
♥ Patreon: / nitrogendev
This video makes part of the UE4 RPG tutorial series. Since this series was almost forgotten, I thought today is the day to revive with a neat system that YOU should definitely implement in your game! (Of course, as long as it makes sense to have a skill tree)
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If you want to learn more about Unreal Engine 4 and all types of game development related stuff, start right now by subscribing so you don't miss out on any of the upcoming projects:
/ nitrogendev. .
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All content on Nitrogen is available for free. We, as a community, support completely free education available to everyone. Any support is appreciated for me to keep making content for free and improving it.
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Oh no, 2 weeks have already gone since the last upload and I still haven't fixed my schedule to fit in at least 1 video a week.
I was thinking of making a scene design and a breakdown on that scene each week, so, even if I don't have time for a tutorial, there is something you guys can watch and learn. Let me know if that's something YOU'd be interested in.
As well, I wanted to say a HUGE thanks to all the people that watch my videos and support me and to patrons for sticking with me even through these less-active times. You all are the best! Once I'll get my hand on some free time, I will try to make a schedule to make sure I can fit a good tutorial each week.
Wanna try your hand at multiplayer level streaming?
@@scottlee38 Not really sure I want to get into complex multiplayer behaviours yet.
@@NitrogenDev Lol I understand
When I click the button, it does not buy or decrease. What should I do?
@@Chosenonefromthesky have you assigned the proper bindings?
Your attention to the plural of 'skillpoint' made me very happy. Cheers for a highly educational and useful video 🍻
ahhh that set neighbors pattern. I knew how to do everything from scratch up until that last bit. cheers.
Tutorials are better when you explain why you do things, not just what to do. Its the difference between teaching someone how to do something instead of what to do.
I definitely agree with what you said, that's the whole purpose of a good tutorial. Now, may I ask, were you by any chance referring to the fact that this tutorial doesn't include enough explanation of why I'm doing things or is it exactly the opposite?
YOOOO you have no idea how much this helped. I was looking for a valid skill tree that actually looked like ones AAA game studios use and this was the only tut that showed it. So thank you. Great tut and and good help. Keep up the good work
Amazing tutorial! Easy to understand and does exactly what I need.
Glad you liked it!
Good tutorial! Earned my sub. I'm new to unreal and trying to learn all I can
Love yout! Brazilian student here S2
5:20, that attention to detail/ fix for common "bug" :)
Great tutorial, with very good explanations, easy to follow and without extras, right to the point.
Glad to hear that!
Your tutorial flow is just flawless, clear, quick, smooth, nice!
Thanks!
Level up bank account 😂 btw great tutorial also would love to see a tutorial about waking up camera sequence like how most of horror games start .
You sir... Are a star! 🌟
Thanks mate! I appreciate it!
i really needed this thanks
Hope you'll find it useful!
This was by far the best tutorial on skill tries i have come across. I've watched so many tutorials, and most of them were buggy as heck, and all of them just showed you what to do, didn't explain how they actually worked. Your video did actually explain it, so much so i was able to easily figure out how to make a save function to store everything (Tested it and it worked perfectly. i'm so happy :D)
wicked tutorial!
Glad you like it!
thanks a lot man, you are the best
I'm glad to hear that, I really appreciate the support!
For those of you who are having a hard time figuring out how to make skills: On your UI_Skilltree, navigate to the Designer, then click on the skill you want to code. Scroll down on the details panel until you find "on aquired" (where you would find events for button presses/hovers etc)
Also Thank you for the tutorial! Very well done.
Dude.. This is fantastic.. I love your style of tutorial.. It's fast and to the point, and you still give the time to explain what you are doing.. Top quality stuff!
Glad you liked it! I appreciate it!
Hey nitro, awesome tutorial. It would be cool to make some of the skills for the skill tree and turn this in to a series?! Double jump being the first one :)
Maybe I'll do that as a lot of people seem to be having trouble with doing that.
went through entire video granted this is a older video but the pacing at which you (explain) things in the video makes me feel like i am watching it on 2x speed this was more of a hey this is what i found out i can do in blueprints video rather then a tutorial thanks for putting it out for those who can follow along but this over all was not a good experience
I have a question, if I bind something in a widget, will it be called every frame even if I don't currently have information to transfer over?
Nice!
Thanks!
( this can be complicated to create)Demonic magic tree
Lvl1. Abilities. : Demonic Lightning, demonic fireball
Lvl2. Invisibility, teleportation
Lvl3. Demonic thunder, self healing
And thx for tutorial
This was amazing! Definitely a huge amount of information in such a short amount of time!
I will definitely refer to this video when I arrive to this point in my game dev journey.
What fundamentals do you recommend to learn UE4?
I think an important part of getting comfortable in UE4 is simply playing around with it. Learn the UI, know where tools are placed, and be able to prototype quickly if you're into programming. There's no secret to learning UE4, it's purely practice.
@@NitrogenDev ok you lost me at prototyping. 😅
Thats definitely what I'm working towards, trying to familiarize myself with the software, and push what I'm learning to new levels little by little.
@@kayak118 Slow and steady, and making sure you profoundly understand what you learn is the way to go. Keep it up, and you'll become well-acquainted with Unreal very soon.
@@NitrogenDev will do! thank you for your insight!
Hello, I'd like to ask you if you know how to set parallax effect in the widget lmage in UMG
A good tutorial, thank you very much. Unfortunately I can't call Equal Note for strings. Unreal tells me that doesn't work. What did I do wrong?
minor question is ther a way to blend the skill tree in a ingame scenario like overlay it or use runes ona n axe for the skilltree?
Most likely yes. As long as you get the backend properly done, the frontend can be whatever you like if you link it to the backend.
Can you make a tutorial about the Skill system in C++? I think there are almost no tutorials about it in C++ in all the internet.
Thanks.
Cool!
Thanks!
Instead of using render opacity for each separate widget, you should use it for whole container ;) then you wouldn't have to use dirty timeline to change opacity of each slot :D
Good point, that'd be a lot cleaner.
I currently have a 70 page document based off of Dnd and Dark souls its a Tabletop pen and paper game but my players love it and I'm looking to see if i can develop the entire thing into some simple sprite-based (because I can only really make sprites) mmo then just add things to it over time.
Could anyone suggest any inventory systems tutorials for UE 4?
This was awesome! How do you learn these things?
There's no particular place I learn these thing from. It just requires imagination and knowledge of a lot of nodes. But that's why I'm here, to teach others these things. ^^
if i wanted to make my own icons how would i go about it
If I may make a suggestion, please do consider making a radial or Circle menu? It's the type of menu where the shape of the UI is a circle and all the buttons are part of a circle. It is a bit janky in that the pixels will stick out but it's not too much a big deal.
I've tried doing that before, I might give it another try, but I'm not really sure I have the knowledge to do that right now.
Hey my Open? boolean got bugged after i restarted UE4. now it always sets to false on the branch to the animation on the timeline and on the fade animation.
I like this system, and I learned some new nodes ! -> I've suscribed !
Everything work as expected and I've integrated this in my existing menu.
But there's one thing I can not make work and this is to save the acquired skills. I already have a saving system (life, mana, xp, even inventory) but I can't figure how to save with this set up.
Do you plan to add this feature in this course in a future lesson ?
Or maybe just point the right direction ^^'
Sorry for the late answer, I just noticed that UA-cam doesn't send notifications for comments anymore.
In order to save that, what I would do is save an array of integers. Index 0 is Q, 1 is W, 2 is E and 3 is R. The value stored by these integers is represents by the level of that skill. Then, when you load this save, you simply set the level of that skill. That should be the easiest approach to it.
@@NitrogenDev Hey no problem, thanks for the answer !
I've worked something out since I've asked, with an array, but not integers (but it is a good idea, probably simplier than what I've made lol). I don't even know if it is working because December was so big that I couldn't find time to code.
@@NitrogenDev Thank you for the tutorial, is it possible you are able to create a screenshot of a blueprint setup like this? Im struggling to understand how to begin with the array such as you said
hey, man thanks for tutorial, but I have 1 simple question, when I use my skill point, it works at it should, but I would like to know, how to save my progress with these skills so when I close the game and open it again, it will remain purchased... Any suggestions?
Have a boolean for each skill and always save those in an array. When loading, retrieve the array, load them in the skill tree and also load them in the character blueprint so the player can use them
@@NitrogenDev already figured out how to save them. I Added tag to every skill and then when I load game blueprint checks if I have tag of specific skill in array, if yes set true on Aquired for that skill and then check if that Aquired skill has neighbour, if yes set true so it can be Aquired
Anyone had an issue where it takes 2 clicks to start the fade-in animation?
The first click only opens up UI skill slots on my viewport
hey Nitrogen can you do a video explaining how to link health regen to a purchasable skill using the skill tree system since i really want to lock health, mana, and stamina regen behind a purchasable skill
I might do that since so many people seem to request it.
Your going to lock stamina Regen...
I know im a little late on this but do you know to make gain skill points from doing quests or leveling up?
That should be as simple as tying the amount of skill points to another system (for instance, a level up system), and adding X skill points when certain events take place.
Ok i figured it out thx
how i can save after i up skill when i close skill tree skill is reset
Wish , You were my neighbor , So Anytime !! I can learn from you. Be my Mentor !! ♡
Haha, it would be nice if one day I'd be able to teach UE4 ,
professionally, but currently I can't do that.
How do you put the skill icons on your actionbar after you 'buy' them to assign the action keys 1-9 (or whatever input you use)? I have 3 classes which have their own unique set of available skills when the game starts. Within this set they can pick between 3 'trees' in order to specialise in a certain area. They get skill points when they level up and can buy a new skill once they have enough points. I then want to allow the player to choose which skill to assign to which slot on the action bar. Each slot has a fixed allocated key of 1-9 so the skill is activated when the player presses one of these number keys during the game. I can't find any tutorials covering this method, yet I've seen it used in countless RPG games.
Also, do I have a different skill UI for each class and on pressing the key to open the skill tree I just ask which class the character is and display the matching tree? Or is there another way?
For your second question, yes, that should work but instead of checking every time you open the skill tree, do that when the class is spawned and create a class-specific widget that contains the skill trees of that class. Not much of a difference in performance, but it's good practice.
For your first question, that is quite a specific system you're looking for, so I doubt you will find tutorials on it. You will need to come up with your own solution to this problem. Personally, I would get creative with it and try different ways of tying the skill system to inputs and other UI elements. For instance, you could store all the bought skills into an array which you use to display them in an "Available Skills" panel. Then, you could code a drag and drop system, so that players can freely assign them to another widget that stores selected skills from 1-9. And finally, tie this widget to specific inputs and fire the skills when they're pressed. This is one solution that may or may not work/be optimal, so I recommend exploring other ways as well.
@@NitrogenDev Ok, thank you for your help. And your videos are really useful (and easier to follow than a lot of others online).
The skill slot thing I was thinking of games like WoW, where you have slots already assigned by default to 1-9 (or whatever the number is) but can switch them around. Although I might just assign each slot to a set row in the skill 'trees' and then it can automatically update the skill shown in the actionbarif the player picks skills in acertain branch. Just thinking out loud.
But yeah, thank you again!
What button are you pressing to straighten node?
The button I press is Q. I don't remember for sure if that comes with the engine or if you need to set the key bind yourself. For that, you go to the editor settings, search for something along the lines "straighten nodes" and set a key for it.
Hello! I have question regarding the part 27:54... when testing the icons, I click on the first one but the other two don't unlock and skips directly to the last one. And I have done the tutorial twice and I don't know what I am doing wrong. There is no error messages either. By any chance, do you know what could be? I am learning how to use UE4 and I am also learning programming so is hard for me to see what the problem is. Could you please help me with ideas of what could be the issue? Thank you soo much!
At 26:27, make sure that your for each loop is set up correctly. As well, make sure that your connections between the skills is right, so that your first skill isn't the parent of the last one. Let me know if that worked!
@@NitrogenDev Thank you so much for your reply. The issue was in the connections between the skills. Now I have my skill system working properly. Have a lovely day!
For anyone that might be interested in a less painful way of adding the next unlockable skills; your "neighbor" arrays inside the skill slots can be made instance editable and at the for each loop, you can instead have a for loop where you get the last index of the array as the last index of the for loop and voila. Inside your skill tree, you can add an array element inside the widget any of the skill slots inside the widget
He explained in the video why this method wont work.
I have problem with the part where we are rendering our slots. Ue4 sends an error "accessed none while trying to read property CallFunc_Array_Get_Item".
Am i missing array elements? I checked the slots variable and its empty.
My fist skillslot is working fine. Its shown when the skill tree menu pops up.
What should i do to see the other slots?
Amazing tutorial btw!
This is a bit of a late response (have been abroad for some time, sorry!) but it might helpful. Yes, you are probably missing array elements if that error gets triggered. I'm not really sure where you're getting this error from, so unless you can give me a time stamp from the video, I'm going to be giving you some general advice.
Firstly, obviously make sure that you're using the right array and that you're adding elements to it when necessary. Check that, whenever you add elements to that array, the code actually runs and an element is added.
Lastly, it might be helpful to have an Is Valid node after getting the array element to see what happens if you ignore non-valid targets.
two questions
1 what if i want a widget for a skilltree in a skilltree? Like when i get to the last icon i want to click on it and it start another widget based on this. When in the child skilltree it would add a saved variable. Basically i want a skilltree that can generate child skilltrees. i.e punch, punch 1, punch 2, punch 3, punch 4 and each skill tree calls the requirements of its parent to add to, to get to its requirements and or abilities. ya know i feel like you should be able to make a stock skilltree and have varibles called from something to fill in the data....plz halp
i guess it was just one question
Did you do the if unlocked, then you can in this vid
Yes, I did for 1 of them as an example.
Hi sir I have a problem the skill tree doesn't show up
So will having render opacity at one and making the fade animation work
i have the same kind of problem, although im not sure if i missed soemthing
I am working on a zombie Skill tree have any ideas to help me plz?
I want to make this for my homebrew Wargame/skirmish game and I have an ability witch I'm going to put high up on the skill tree
"If a survivor kills a zombie/s with a fire based weapon, the infected gasses get exulted by the clouds above coding acid rain and the dead body's in nearby graveyard's to rise from there covens" in other word when you kill a zombie with a molotov, the next zombie phase will start with a huge undead horde that will swarm over the survivors.
Having trouble making abilities... sorry a bit lazy, perhaps.
I mean that, how store the data. Like let's assume you have 100abilites... so you make 100 can true/false statements into character PB?
That would be one way to create that. Because you only check if the player acquired a power once it tries to use it, there shouldn't be a big performance impact. You could try to come up with some smarter engineering for this, but I am sure using booleans and a simple if statement can do the job just fine.
Heeey. Would I experience any problems if I start this now in ue5? Thanks
Yes
Are you gonna make more for honor tutorials ?
Yes, I'm planning to make some but recreating mechanics from there takes quite some time which I don't currently have.
@@NitrogenDev thanks for the answer.
I''m looking forward to it
I really liked this tutorial actually. Someone complained it was too fast, but to me that's a good thing. Either I have to pause and fix my blueprint, or I have to listen to the person talk for a while, and THEN pause to fix my blueprint. Same either way, really. At least this way, there is no gap between pauses.
I do have a request though. How would I make it so choosing one skill tree branch turns off another branch? For example, if I pick "double jump," I can no longer pick "high jump". But until I pick one, both are available. I'll try to figure it out myself in the meantime, but I'm not making any progress currently.
Actually figured out a solution based on something else I saw. So, I tried "set can be unlocked" to false when the prerequisite skill was clicked, but that didn't work for some reason. So eventually I found the "widget enabled" function, so I set "widget enabled to false". Now, when I click a certain skill, a different part of the skill tree gets blocked off.
BUT I'm still left with saving and retrieving the skill tree. This is much harder for me
I haven't done the save system myself, but I've been thinking about it for a while and the way I would do it is to give every ability slot an ID (int variable that you can expose so you can manually set the IDs) from 0 to n -1, where n is the number of slots, add them into an array and sort them based on the ID and then I would save this into an array of booleans where the ID corresponds do the index of the variable and its value to whether is was unlocked or not. Then, to retrieve the skilltree, I would do the same thing, array of slots sorted based on index and then based on the saved data set their locked/unlocked state. The blueprint might already have an array of slots, so you could use that but I'm not sure if sorting that one would break anything or not.
@@NitrogenDev I should have posted it, but I figured out a way to do it, though I'm sure there is a more elegant solution. What I did was: on "Acquire" in the skill tree in game, set the corresponding skill to true in the player blueprint so that I can use it. ALSO, load that true value into a separate array in the skill tree. When I CLOSE the skill tree (I close it, I don't hide it), I save the skill tree array into the Saved Game skill tree array. When I OPEN the skill tree again, I load up the saved skill tree array and ForEach, SwitchOnInt(int is array index), IF it is true, then Set as Acquired for each one (I collapsed Set as Acquired from the skill slot BP to a function so I could call it in the skill tree). So basically, when I open the skill tree, it clicks each skill one by one. Finally, when I start the game, I load that same saved skill tree into the player BP and ForEach SwitchOnInt, set each skill to its truth value one by one so I can use them. This only works if all of my skills are kept in order. If I move one for some reason, I have to move it in every instance where I call or input them so they line up. It was such a huge hassle and I know there must be a better way, but this works and I'm happy.
I have an Error "Accessed None trying to read property ParentSkillTree". (
How Would you go around making a system that will save the game and skills.
When I click the button, it does not buy or decrease. What should I do?
I imagine that you either have a bug in your code or that you haven't followed the tutorial properly. I recommend trying to spot any bugs and, unless that fixes it, go over the video again, listen to my explanations and try to find what you've done wrong.
Hey bro i you're reading this can you please tell me how to add animation in that's cool tree
Please i want to ask u about if i can use throw axe like GOD of WAR in my own games thanks
Yes, you can probably do that.
@@NitrogenDev thank u
Should use data table and structs with parent -> child logic instead of hardcoding everything, so you can build any skill tree very easily.
@30:00 no need for this. Simply use widget animation (use one parent wrapper that will be animated and it will include all child elements in widget). This just waste resources.
Also, refresh parameter/argument with right click -> refresh when you change or add parameters in the event (no need to delete/call/create event again).
Anyway, this video could help users who just started with UE4 and does not have too much knowledge in coding (and BP).
the name and description arent displaying on mouseover, not sure why
Have you set the 2 string variables on hover and on unhover? If that's the case, make sure you've also created the bind for the text.
I love your ui tutorial a good idea for the next video an attachment system
PS. After 4 hour of an indian tutorial your voice is so pleasing.
Haha, thanks a lot man!
please come back
How do we make this persistent across levels?
You might want to create a saving system for that and save the whole skill tree once you exit a level.
The thumbnail is misleading. It's sad, because the tutorial is good. But it's good with the tech tree that you develop until the end of the video. You should have shown yours in miniature. Not that we absolutely want to reproduce the one displayed in thumbnail, but the one in thumbnail requires knowledge supposedly present in the associated tutorial. I'm talking about the branches (links) between the elements of the tree, for example.
Hi, i just implemented this system in my menu and it work perfectly but there's 1 problem, when i close the menu the aquired skill and unlockable skill reset to they default value how can i solve this ?
That is strange. Are you perhaps deleting and recreating the widget every time you open the menu?
@@NitrogenDev yes that is what i'm doing and i need it to work like this, should i store the variables in an actor and to every skill assing an actor ?
what would you do to solve the problem ?
@@anisb.8459 well, firstly I wouldn't delete and create the widget every time, because, if I recall correctly, widgets aren't actually deleted but just not displayed anymore to the player, so memory is still going to be used.
But if you need to do that, you should create a struct that will hold all the needed information from a skill, then in the character create an array of these structs and every time ,before you close the skill tree, update this array and every time you open the skill tree set the information according to this array.
This doesn't sound easy and is not easy, because there's a lot of data to store and keep count of, so I highly recommend finding a way to get around deleting and recreating the widget and instead hiding and re-showing it to the player.
@@NitrogenDev thank you so much for the help, i will try to see if hiding and re-showing create some problem to my menu or not and if it is i will try with the structures.
@@NitrogenDev I'm facing a similar situation, the skill menu is inside the player menu and every time I exit the player menu the skills in the skill menu reset to the beginning. However, I can still do the high jump and I can keep on buying the skills with the leftover skill points, even with negative value skill points. Can you do a video to address this issue, kind of like a part 2 to this one?
I wanna do this with GAS
my menu doesn't close and I can't figure out why
did you do set input mode UI only or did you do set input mode UI and game? if you turned off your game controls than you can't press the button to close your inventory. start by troubleshooting individual things by using a print string after each node individually
Tine o tot asa
Mersi! :D
Do you know some good ui tutorial on udemy.
No, sorry.
Wheres the skill tree from the preview... lol
A got a rather harsh critique on this tutorial. While 34 minutes isn't much It's taking me a lot longer just to follow the open and close widget instructions because the instructions are too crammed into a whole segment of the video so it feels like you're going too fast. I think it'd be much easier to split the tutorial into parts; each one focused on one particular area of the subject. It'd also make the tutorials easier to follow because if I make a mistake all I have to do is go to that video. Otherwise I'd have to go all the way back to the time in a 50 minute video and try to pick back up from where I left off. Not to discourage you, the end result is perfect, just feedback. Keep up the good work.
Also @15:00 you say you don't have yo set it up manually. The thing is if I make another slot, nothing is gonna happen. No information is just gonna magically appear in tje name desc and skillpoints boxes. That means that YOU DO have to set up each individual skill manually. There is another way to make multiple data for those variables which while you set it up manually you'd only have to do it once rather than everytime you wanna add a new skill.
tenth minute of the video, I still haven't seen how to write the logic of the skill tree...
i would give a flight ablity
23:31
Aw man. It all worked up until the part where you can aquire skills. That part didn't work.
Edit: I fixed it and the issue was on me. I messed up because I didn't name my variable what he named his and I got all confused. Just a lesson of advice to you all to follow these kinds of tutorials to a T.
Now I know how to level-up my wallet!
If only it was that easy...
stopped at 15:41 brb
followed this in ue5 and it's not working =/ gonna start over in UE4
Unless they changed the way blueprints behave, it should also work in UE5. Make sure you did everything right, and try debugging your code!
@@NitrogenDev
I started over in ue4 and got it to work but I didn't get to the end where you actual add the double jump to character and stuff. I may have just done something wrong in the hierarchy of the skill slot.
Looks NOTHING like the thumbnail.
That is called a click bait, welcome to the internet.
Thats cuz you have to make it look like thumb nail he made the functionality you make how it looks
You know what’s really annoying?
When the thumbnail has nothing to do with the tutorial and I sit here for 20 minutes before realizing I wasted my time.
I mean yea, it’s a good tutorial. But it’s not what you advertised in the picture.
Misleading image.
Talk slow