Creating this artifact was somewhat frustrating, mostly due to documentation for doing things with C++ in UE4 either being sparse or out dated. I did find that using C++ for programming to be a bit more stable and definitely more optimized. C++ also allowed me to do things like loops which are technically doable in Blue Prints but tends to make the game run inefficiently. I would say the biggest challenge I had when creating this artifact was the game mode. I could not figure out how to do get actor counts in the game by C++ code and I couldn’t get the game state to switch properly. Both problems had to be solved with Blueprints, the object count was just done in Blue Prints and casted to game mode. The game state issue was fixed by simply by creating a BP Game Mode Class from the C++ Game Mode Class and setting the BP version to as the default game mode. Overall, I’d say I learned that C++ is best for more logic-based actions and complex mechanics while Blue Prints are best for less intensive actions and prototyping. Personally, I find that a hybrid approach is probably the best when making games.
I was actually fairly satisfied with where this project was when I finished it. So to polish it more I decide to add a timer to add urgency to the player and rebalance some things like the fire rate of the “water cannon” and how many hits fire actor takes to be put out. I also ran into an issue with the HUD disappearing updating incorrectly on the gameplay level despite not altering its code. This was simply fixed with a cast to viewport on the level blueprint.
