I would compare gas to a board game that has many many pieces and rules and takes you 3 hours to read through the rulebook and once you're done reading the rule book you realize that the game was incredibly easy and takes 15 minutes per playthrough. It looks incredibly overwhelming because there's a lot of moving parts, but if you can get through the initial Hill of learning you will eventually get to a point where you can't see yourself not using it... Including in single player games because that's how incredibly powerful the system is. To quote the talker "you teach a person gas and you'll get a lifetime of abilities"... This is absolutely true, I stumbled through my first three or four abilities when I was trying to learn the system. Now it takes me longer to come up with some game mechanic for my ability then it actually does to implement it using gas. I can conceptualize an ability with a mechanic and have it completely usable and in a game in less than 10 minutes. It takes me longer to choose the right animations and to juice them up with visual effects then the coding part of it.
I agree using a system for Gameplay abilities makes a lot of sense and custom rolling your own for each game does not. However, I feel like the Able Ability system on the marketplace is at least as good as this ability system and provides a *much* nicer editor for abilities. I really think Epic should either hire the person that made the system or acquire it and make it a real thing. It's odd to hear 'a lot' of people are using GAS, yet people still settle for a sub-par editing interface. I believe more people would adopt it if it was easier to understand and use.
For those who haven't seen it, someone from another studio also just gave a talk about how they integrate the GAS with AI. Lots of good info and they have a Github repo with some sample code: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1Dm1G6fUuFs.html
Same man after trying to code a custom movement system and failing miserably I figure I give this system a try! Hopefully more information on the systems functionality gets put out
This was very persuasive. Once I grokked what the prediction keys were about and how they let you rollback predictions for rejected actions I was convinced that it's worth the effort of adapting to a new way of doing things. Thank you!
That was a really great overview. Although this doesn't really tell implementation of GAS, it provides you with everything you need to wrap your head around the concept and the Gameplay Ability System. Thanks for the great session.
9:30 I was under the impression that you needed to call CommitAbility if you use Event ActivateAbility. Anyone know the reason it isn't used in this example?
