Lyra

Only available for Unreal Engine: 5.0+

This integration guide will show you how to integrate Lyra with TwistedBytes Interaction System, so that you can use both in combination in your own projects.

We would like to highlight the aim of this integration guide is make the TwistedBytes Interaction plugin become part of the Lyra project and not the other way around.

Requirements

• Unreal Engine 5.0 or higher
• Lyra Starter Game project or your own project based on it
• An IDE (e.g. Visual Studio or Rider)

Project preparation

note

In this guide, we are going to use Unreal Engine 5.1.

Please adjust mentioned paths accordingly if your project is using a different engine version.

First, copy the installed TwistedBytes Interaction plugin from Unreal Engine (e.g. C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.1\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\TBInteractionSystem\) ...

... to your project's Plugins directory.

Next, go to the root directory of your project.

Right-click on the file LyraStarterGame.uproject and select Generate Visual Studio project files.

This will generate all necessary files for you to be able to open and compile the project successfully.

Now, open the generated solution file called LyraStarterGame.sln in your IDE of choice.

Modifying the TBIA plugin

You will need to modify a few files of the TwistedBytes Interaction plugin.

Step 1: TBIA_Runtime.Build.cs

In order to successfully integrate TBIA with Lyra we will need to set up a new dependency in the TBIA plugin.

Open the file Plugins/TBInteractionSystem/Source/TBIA_Runtime/TBIA_Runtime.Build.cs and add LyraGame to the PublicDependencyModuleNames 1 like this:

After this change, you will need to re-generate files again like before:

Step 2: TBIA_GASEngineSubsystem.cpp

TBIA manages the initialization of the Gameplay Ability System for you in the background. However, Lyra does this already, so we want to disable it in the TBIA plugin.

• Open the file Plugins/TBInteractionSystem/Source/TBIA_Runtime/Private/GAS/TBIA_GASEngineSubsystem.cpp.
• Comment out the lines where we include AbilitySystemGlobals.h 1 and where we call the InitGlobalData() function 2.
• After the change your source code should look similar to this:

Step 3: TBIA_AbilitySystemComponent.h

TBIA sub-classes the Gameplay Ability System's ASC (Ability System Component). Since Lyra has its own sub-classesd ASC we need to reparent TBIA's ASC to integrate it correctly into all systems.

• Open the file Plugins/TBInteractionSystem/Source/TBIA_Runtime/Public/GAS/Component/TBIA_AbilitySystemComponent.h.
• Find the declaration of the UTBIA_AbilitySystemComponent class and change its base class of from UAbilitySystemComponent to ULyraAbilitySystemComponent 1.
• Also include the corresponding header AbilitySystem/LyraAbilitySystemComponent.h 2.
• Lastly, let's comment out the inclusion of the AbilitySystemComponent.h header file 3.

Step 4: TBIA_GameplayAbility.h

Similar to step 3, we need to take care of the same sub-classing situation for the Gameplay Ability base class.

• Open the file Plugins/TBInteractionSystem/Source/TBIA_Runtime/Public/GAS/GameplayAbility/TBIA_GameplayAbility.h.
• Find the declaration of the UTBIA_GameplayAbility class and change its base class of from UGameplayAbility to ULyraGameplayAbility 1.
• Also include the corresponding header AbilitySystem/Abilities/LyraGameplayAbility.h 2.
• Lastly, let's comment out the inclusion of the Abilities/GameplayAbility.h header file 3.

Preparing Lyra's Hero Blueprint for usage with TBIA

Now that we have integrated both source codes of TBIA plugin and Lyra's, we can continue and prepare Lyra's Hero Blueprint which represents our player character in Lyra-based projects.

• Open the project in the Unreal Engine editor.
• In the Content Browser panel, go to Content/Characters/Heroes 1 and open the asset B_Hero_Default 2.

• Click Add 1 to add new component TBIA Interaction 2.

• In the Components panel, select the TBIA_Interaction 1 component.
• In the Details panel, navigate to Twisted Bytes | Interaction and set Initialize ASC 2 to false.

• Go to the Class Settings.
• In the Details panel, navigate to Interfaces | Implemented Interfaces.
• Click the Add button 1 and add the TBIA Interactable 2 interface.

• In the My Blueprint panel, navigate to Interfaces | Twisted Bytes and double-click on Get Character Context 1 to implement this interface function.
• Create a Make TBIA_CharacterContext 2 node and connect the output pin to the Return Value 3 of the Return Node.
• Drag the Mesh 4 component from the Components panel onto the Primary Mesh 5 input pin of the Make TBIA_CharacterContext node.

Congratulations! You just completed the integration of TBIA into your Lyra-based project.

Showcase: Lyra ShooterCore Experience

This section is meant to showcase on how you would now use TBIA in any "experience" like Lyra's ShooterCore.

• In the Content Browser panel, go to Plugins/Shooter Core Content and create a new folder TwistedBytesInteraction.
• Inside that new folder, create a new Interact Passive 1 Gameplay Ability for use in the ShooterCore experience and name it GAInteractPassive.

Now, for demonstration purposes, we would like to enable the debug visualization and also change the maximum trace length for this ability to make it easier for us to verify that everything works fine.

• Open the newly created GAInteractPassive Gameplay Ability.
• In the Details panel, navigate to Twisted Bytes | Interaction and set Max Range 1 to 600.
• In the Details panel, navigate to Twisted Bytes | Interaction | Debug and set Show Debug 2 to true.

Finally, we need to tell Lyra about our new Gameplay Ability, so it will be granted to our player character.

• In the Content Browser panel, go to Plugins/Shooter Core Content/Game and open the asset AbilitySet_ShooterHero 1.

• In the Details panel, navigate to Granted Gameplay Abilities and click on the + 1 button.
• For the new element at the end of the list, set Ability 2 to our GAInteractivePassive Gameplay Ability.

All done! Press Play in the editor and test it out.

Video Tutorial

We also provide a video tutorial to guide you through the integration process.