It's been a minute...

One of the lessons I have learned in my years of programming is that if you get stuck on a coding error, it's likely because of one of two things: a really dumb syntax issue; or you are not following better/best practice, i.e. square peg, round hole.

When you google and don't find clues to the solution, it's not that no one ever had the issue - because 999/1000 someone already has - it's because you're doing something wrong.

I had one of those argh moments over the weekend in the Unreal Engine. I was trying to spawn enemies into the level and just could not get it working. This issue consumed the entire day looking at past courses, tutorial after tutorial, and Unreal Engine's site documentation. At 2am, I decided to call it day and try again in the morning.

The next day, I continued searching, added debug prints into the blueprints and finally got down to where the error was occurring. And then it happened: I did a search on something like "AIMoveTo not working" and found the solution in an Unreal Engine forum post. I was missing a component in the enemy object that allowed it to communicate with the AI movement functionality. Once I added the component - even with no configuration - enemies spawned in as coded.

I don't know how many tutorials I watched or posts I read. But a solution was found. And that's the thing about programming: Unless you are doing something cutting edge (or square peg round hole), someone else has already experienced your issue.

Persistence pays off. Errors pay off. Failing is one of the best ways to learn. I learned so much more about Unreal Engine and blueprints because of this single issue. It forced me to think in detail what I wanted to do, and what I was telling the system to do.

In the end, this single issue is going to save a ton of time on development in Project8088 and future projects.

Don't get discouraged by being unable to solve a problem. Someone else already had that experience and it's likely someone else helped that person - just like that forum post helped me. Coding is one of those rare industries that moves forward based on the willingness to share experience - take advantage and contribute.