Combat

The combat system gives actors health, lets them take damage and die, and reports what happened to every machine. It is built on the Gameplay Ability System (GAS): health is an attribute set, damage is a gameplay effect, and later attacks are gameplay abilities. It does not decide a combat style: blocking, dodging, stamina and critical hits are optional building blocks, so the same base works for an action game, a souls-like or a shooter.

Module	Content
PulseAttributes	Health, shield and stamina sets, regeneration, attribute view models (Attributes); needed by all combat modules, usable alone
PulseCombat	Attribute sets, damage pipeline with modifiers, combat component (life, death, teams), hit reactions, targeting with lock-on, hit effects and filters, view models, messages, cheats
PulseCombatMelee	Melee combos with hit shapes or weapon sockets, timed or animation driven (Melee)
PulseCombatRanged	Projectiles, hitscan, spread, charging, area damage (Ranged)
PulseCombatHUD	Damage numbers, health bars, boss bars, hit feedback (Combat HUD)
PulseCombatInventory	Weapons, armor, ammunition, durability, loot on death (Combat and inventory)

Enable only what the game needs: a shooter can leave out PulseCombatMelee, a brawler PulseCombatRanged.

At a glance

1. Ability system with health. Give the actor an UAbilitySystemComponent (on the pawn or on the player state). The combat component adds UPulseHealthAttributeSet on the authority (Default Attribute Sets); a set the game gives itself (a default subobject of the owner, AddAttributeSetSubobject, a PulseSkill grant) is used instead.
2. Combat component. Add Pulse Combat (UPulseCombatComponent) to the pawn. It finds the ability system by itself, also when it is created later. Give enemies a Pulse Team component (Pulse Foundation) with Pulse.Team.Enemy; players get Pulse.Team.Player from the automatic team component of Pulse Foundation.
3. Maximum health. Set Max Health (authority) or an own gameplay effect on MaxHealth.
4. Deal damage. Apply Damage / Apply Simple Damage on the authority, for example from a trap, a weapon or a projectile.
5. React. Bind On Damaged, On Death and On Revived of the combat component, or use the view model UMVVMPulseCombatant for health bars. Respawning is up to the game; Revive brings a combatant back.

cpp title="A trap that burns everything that touches it" void ATrap::OnOverlap(AActor* Other) { FPulseDamageSpec damage; damage.Amount = 15.f; damage.DamageType = Pulse::Combat::Tags::DamageType_Fire; damage.Causer = this; Pulse::Combat::ApplyDamage(Other, damage); }

Multiplayer

• Damage, healing, death and revive run on the authority only (the functions do nothing on clients).
• Attributes replicate with the attribute set; the life state of the combat component replicates as one value (push model) with the killer ids, so clients know who killed a combatant also when the killer is not relevant to them.
• On Damaged and On Healed reach every machine through an unreliable multicast (turn off with bReplicateDamageEvents), so damage numbers and hit reactions work on all clients.
• Messages (Pulse.Message.Combat.*) are sent wherever the events fire.

Attacks and AI

Attacks are abilities that take their target from the activation event data first, then from lock-on and the soft target of UPulseTargetingComponent, then from the camera. So the same ability serves players and AI: an AI (or a script) activates it on the server with Pulse::Combat::PressAbilityInput (Blueprint Press Attack) and the target in the event data.

See Damage and life, Melee, Ranged, Combat HUD and Combat and inventory for the details.

---

Table of contents

• Damage and life
• Melee
• Ranged
• Combat HUD
• Combat and inventory