Item Box Mayhem - GK - Aug. 14th 2025

Hello, my name is Garrett. I am part of the Syntax Error Studios team, working to bring you Hypertrack.

This is my first devlog! Wo-hoo!

Getting into the nitty-gritty of the first milestone: v0.0.1. There's no way to put it lightly; it was rough. Despite it being difficult, I managed to get my main "pet feature" almost past the prototype phase this early on. The main problem was, where do I begin?

I knew from the start I wanted to emulate the boxes from Mario Kart, those moving, bobbing, question mark blocks that give you items when driven over. I naively thought it would be easy, but I was very wrong. Between Data Assets, Actors, and an Inventory Component, it finally started taking shape. Then disaster struck: How can I add the "usability" aspect of the items?

Spinning Item Box Prototype

Problem: How can items be used?

Having usable items seems simple, until you see how everything links together. You can't use a data asset because they hold data, not functionality. You can't have just a blueprint; how would anything know what to call? You could have a C++ class for each item, but that gets tedious to code every time you need a new item. 

The Solution: Base classed blueprints!

It finally dawned on me after about an hour! I can use a basic base-classed blueprint, and implement all of the functionality in a single function call! The base-class approach is what I wound up going with due to its ability for quick iteration, and it's simple to link to an item through a Subclass property. Unfortunately, one downside is that many world-related functions are entirely excluded from appearing in UObject-based blueprints, so I had to get creative and make my own! I provide the pawn object pointer and the used item's data asset, and together they can spawn actors, play sounds, and are primed and ready to be expanded even further! Having easy creation of items means more & better items for updates to come!

(Attached is the Base Class and Blueprint Implementation)