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Quod Soler ☀️

@quodsoler.com
261 followers 40 following 408 posts

Lead Gameplay Programmer for Lords of the Fallen at Hexworks • I will teach you Unreal Engine • Gameplay Ability System expert, opinions are my own

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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 08/09/2026
I think we all can learn a lot from old games like Zelda Ocarina of Time. The way character movement colliding with objects is handled in that game is to me superior than default Unreal Engine. They use "soft" collisions for objects. The player never gets stuck when colliding.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 24/08/2026
4,002 on Twitter. 3,575 on Linkedin. 1,064 on the Newsletter. I didn't expect so many people interested in Combat Frameworks and the Gameplay Ability System. You keep showing up. I will need to keep publishing.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 08/08/2026
My favorite use: projectiles that carry their own behavior. A knockdown bolt shouldn't hardcode the reaction. And you shouldn't pre-grant GA_GetKnockedDown to every enemy in the game. Instead: on impact, the bolt injects the ability into whatever it hits.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 07/08/2026
Stop pre-granting reaction abilities "just in case". Things like Knockdowns, Trap Reactions, Execution Victims... no need to have all of those in your core ability set. You can inject them at the moment of impact with GiveAbilityAndActivateOnce. After that, they are gone.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 06/08/2026
When I work with GAS I split the tag ini files by categories. Tags for AI, for RPG, for Combat, for Items, etc. That way I avoid potential merge conflicts, or make them more easy to solve. This actually also applies to working with Gameplay Tags without GAS.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 05/08/2026
Executions in GAS have an option to capture "snapshots". What does that mean? The concept is simple in reality. If I throw a fireball at you, and the damage depends on my magic power attribute. Should the fireball damage be based on the value when I threw the fireball....
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 05/08/2026
A Magnitude Modifier Calculation in an effect is a static function. It must be pure. No events, no spawns, no state mutations. Re-evaluation is safe only when math has no side effects.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 04/08/2026
Poise, Toughness, Stagger, Super Armor, Hyper Armor, I-Frames, Hitstop, Hitstun... All these terms can be complex. But they are crucial if you are making action games. The best way to understand them is to look at the history of fighting games and how all of them evolved.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 30/07/2026
I have finally updated my profile pic after so many years. I liked that photo, but it was from more than 10 years ago. It was time for an update. ( hope you still recognize me and I don't suddenly feel like a complete stranger )
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 19/07/2026
If you are building a Souls Like Game... ... or actually a "Japanese Action Game" in general. The most important concept: Animation is Motion Data. Animation is not only how it looks, it also becomes your game behavior. That is why Frame Data and Root Motion are so important
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 15/07/2026
Use Execute cues for moments. Use Add/Remove for states. A bullet hit is a Burst cue. ( moment ) The aura of your poison debuff is a Looping cue. ( state )
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 14/07/2026
NEVER put gameplay logic in a Gameplay Cue. NEVER. Cues are cosmetic, they are optional. They may be dropped over network, suppressed, pooled or skipped on a dedicated server. If missing the cue affects the gameplay, then it should not be a cue.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 12/07/2026
Who needs heating when you can simply open Unreal and.... "Compiling Shaders..."
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 24/06/2025
Reviving by attacking is such a clever decision in Nightreign. Most design teams would discard this feature on the spot. Instead, this allows the full expression of combat to be used on the revive mechanic as well.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 30/05/2025
You are already 700 people who are learning from the Unreal Solo Game Developer newsletter! Thanks for being so awesome!
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 28/05/2025
Are you enjoying the use of programmer art on my last posts? Do you think it helps communicate things clearly? More programmer art? Less programmer art?
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 28/05/2025
Do you want to know a secret about GAS? One of its most powerful features often goes overlooked. Do you want to know what it is?
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 27/05/2025
I have found the graph that proves that using the Unreal Gameplay Ability System improves team prototyping speed by 30%. The numbers are in a graph line, so they must be true. I started using GAS so many years ago and now I can not go back.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 27/05/2025
In Unreal GAS, if you learn about Attribute Sets, Gameplay Effects and Gameplay Abilities you will have almost 80% of what you need to make all the games you want.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 26/05/2025
Unreal Blueprint really is amazing!
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 12/05/2025
This thing truly is a torture machine. It feels like trying to find a bug that somehow manages to eludes you all the time.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 14/04/2025
Unreal Garbage Collector! Can we trust it? I would say YES. But you need to be careful. Understand how UPROPERTY allows pointers to be seen by it, and understand that objects are only truly destroyed when a GC pass happens. Until then, the objects are only marked as garbage.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 19/11/2024
Seems like Unreal 5.5 brings some new Texturing Tools. I have not yet tried them, so if someone has played with them feel free to share what you found. Is it like a "Substance Designer Lite" or something completely different?
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 18/11/2024
Important GAS upgrade warning for Unreal 5.5 Seems like Epic is simplifying Gameplay Ability types by removing NonInstanced Abilities. In the past it may have been good to try to make your abilities always NonInstanced if you could, but that is no longer the case.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 17/11/2024
This has been a thing that has always bothered me. Every time I tried to open the GAS debugger the command would never auto complete. You could manually change that in the ini settings of each project, but it seems that it has finally been fixed in Unreal Engine 5.5
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 17/11/2024
When working with GAS I usually end up exposing a lot of things to BP so designers can use them. It's cool to see that little by little Epic is doing the same. In Unreal Engine 5.5 designers will now be able to check if abilities are active without the need of coders.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 16/11/2024
Effect Inhibition refers to when a Gameplay Effect is disabled due to tag conditions or other effects. Now with this new delegate in Unreal 5.5 you will be able to know when the Inhibition state of an effect changes. Specially useful to showcase that in your UI for buffs.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 16/11/2024
Warning! If you have your own Gameplay Cues in your project you may want to take a look at this before upgrading to 5.5. It's a simple rename, but make sure that your Gameplay Cues are still working properly after the upgrade.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 15/11/2024
If you are placing nav-links by hand Unreal Engine 5.5 may be here to help you. Epic has added a extensible automatic nav-link generation feature. By default you get already good results, but you may want to tweak it to fit your project needs.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 15/11/2024
I have yet to play with the new Unreal Engine Gameplay Cameras feature. If this can replace the old Camera Modifier stack system or at least make it more user friendly this is going to be a really big win.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 14/11/2024
Utility AI is amazing. Multiple times I showed that I always implement a Utility Selector in my Behavior Trees. It seems like Epic though the same for State Trees! Now we have a generic Utility Selector and a Random State Selector.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 14/11/2024
With Unreal 5.5 now it's easier to navigate AI State Trees! They now have their own outliner window. You may not need this for small trees, but if your trees get very big it might come in handy.
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Quod Soler ☀️ @quodsoler.com · 13/11/2024
The Chooser seems to finally be production ready in Unreal Engine 5.5. This will allow you to query and return assets based on conditions previously setup, useful for animation, but can be used outside of that. Like choosing a hit VFX particle based on the hit result.
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