Add or change a player upgrade¶

An upgrade is a permanent bonus the player buys with supplements, on the Skills page of the backpack. Seven of them ship. Adding one, changing what a level costs, or changing what it does is a Data Asset job plus one small Blueprint.

Three folders hold everything:

The upgrades: Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/DataAssets/Skills/Childs/
The effects they run: Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/Skills/Childs/
Who owns them: Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/ActorComponents/BP_PlayerSkillManager, a component on BP_PlayerCharacter

The three parts of an upgrade¶

The Data Asset is the upgrade itself, a child of BP_SkillDataAsset. It carries the name, the icon and the list of levels.

The levels are rows inside it. Each row is an S_SkillLevel: what it costs, what it says, and one number the effect reads.

The effect class is a child of BP_SkillEffectBase. It is the only Blueprint in the chain, and it does one thing: take the number from the level and write it somewhere on the player.

Effect Classes is an array, so one upgrade can drive several effects at once. All seven shipped upgrades use exactly one.

The seven that ship¶

Data Asset	What it changes	Levels, as `Cost` for `Value`
`DA_Skill_CraftingSpeed`	`Craft Speed Multiplier` on the inventory manager	30 for 1.25, 60 for 1.5, 90 for 2
`DA_Skill_HealingPower`	how much a health kit restores	30 for 1.25, 60 for 1.5, 90 for 2
`DA_Skill_StaminaRecovery`	how fast stamina comes back	30 for 1.25, 60 for 1.5, 90 for 2
`DA_Skill_SprintEndurance`	how fast stamina drains	35 for 0.85, 70 for 0.7, 105 for 0.55
`DA_Skill_DamageResistance`	incoming health damage	40 for 0.9, 80 for 0.8, 120 for 0.7
`DA_Skill_RecoilControl`	weapon recoil	40 for 0.8, 80 for 0.6, 120 for 0.4
`DA_Skill_CarryCapacity`	`Carry Bonus` on the inventory manager	40 for 2, 80 for 4

Each one shows its Display Name on the page, in the same order: Crafting Speed, Healing Efficiency, Stamina Recovery, Sprint Endurance, Damage Resistance, Recoil Control, Carry Capacity.

Value is always a raw number the effect uses directly. Above 1 it multiplies up, below 1 it multiplies down, and Carry Capacity is the exception that adds a flat count instead. Nothing converts a percentage for you, so the level whose Description reads Reduces weapon recoil by 60%. holds 0.4.

Carry Capacity is the only upgrade with two levels instead of three. Nothing forces three.

Five upgrades have their own icon in Content/TheLastTemplate/Textures/Widgets/Icons/, named T_Skill_*. DA_Skill_CarryCapacity and DA_Skill_CraftingSpeed reuse two icons drawn for other screens, T_Parts and T_Crafting. If you want them to match the others, draw two more.

Change a level¶

Open the upgrade, for example DA_Skill_RecoilControl.
Open Levels and pick the row you want.
Edit the fields below.
Save.

Field	What it does
`Title`	Level name. Empty on all seven shipped upgrades.
`Description`	The line the player reads on the row. Write the real effect here.
`Icon`	Per level icon. Unset on all seven shipped upgrades, which fall back to the upgrade's own `Icon`.
`Cost`	Supplements spent to buy this level.
`Craft Duration`	How long the player holds the button to learn it, in seconds. Shipped levels ramp 3, 3.5, then 4.
`Value`	The number handed to the effect class.

Costs are absolute, not a price on top of the previous level. Level three of Recoil Control costs 120 supplements, not 120 more.

To add a level, add a row to Levels and fill the same six fields. To cut an upgrade down, delete rows. The page reads the array length, so a one level upgrade draws one pip and a five level upgrade draws five.

Write a new effect¶

In Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/Skills/Childs/, right click BP_SkillEffectBase and choose Create Child Blueprint Class. Name it BP_SkillEffect_QuietSteps.
Open it and override ApplySkillEffect.
The function hands you Player Character, Level and Value, and expects Success back.
Get the component you want from Player Character, write Value into it, then set Success to true.
Set Success to false if you could not apply it. The manager treats that as a failure.

Level is there for the rare effect that needs to branch instead of scale. Most of the shipped ones ignore it and use Value alone.

Then make the upgrade: right click in Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/DataAssets/Skills/Childs/, then Miscellaneous, then Data Asset, pick BP_SkillDataAsset and name it DA_Skill_QuietSteps. Fill Display Name, Icon, add your levels, and put your new class in Effect Classes.

Note

The class name does not have to match the Data Asset name. DA_Skill_CraftingSpeed points at BP_SkillEffect_CraftSpeed, and that is fine.

Make it show up¶

A new upgrade does not appear on the Skills page on its own. The player has to know it. There are two ways.

From the start. Open BP_PlayerCharacter, select the BP_PlayerSkillManager component and add a row to Known Skills. Each row is an S_SkillProgress:

Field	What it does
`Skill`	The upgrade Data Asset.
`Unlocked Levels`	How many levels the player is allowed to buy.
`Current Level`	How many are already bought. Leave at 0 for a fresh start.

Four upgrades ship in that list: Crafting Speed, Damage Resistance and Sprint Endurance with Unlocked Levels at 99, and Carry Capacity at 1. Ninety nine simply means more levels than the upgrade has, so the whole line is open. Carry Capacity opens with one of its two levels and the second stays out of reach until something unlocks it.

Found in the world. Three upgrades are not in Known Skills: Healing Efficiency, Recoil Control and Stamina Recovery. The player learns them from a book they inspect. See Choose what the two inspect buttons do for how an inspect action is attached to an object.

The action class for it is BP_InspectAction_UnlockSkill. Make a child of it, set the two fields below, and point a book at that child:

Field	What it does
`Skill to Unlock`	The upgrade Data Asset this book teaches.
`Unlocked Levels`	How many of its levels the book opens.

The three shipped children sit in Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/Inspect/Actions/Childs/UnlockSkill/Childs/. BP_InspectAction_UnlockSkill_HealingPower opens 3 levels at once. BP_InspectAction_UnlockSkill_RecoilControl and BP_InspectAction_UnlockSkill_StaminaRecovery open 1 each, so levels two and three of those two upgrades stay locked until something else opens them.

Unlocked is not bought¶

Three numbers describe one upgrade for one player, and they are easy to confuse.

Levels on the Data Asset is how many levels exist at all.
Unlocked Levels is how far up the line the player is allowed to go.
Current Level is how many are paid for.

An upgrade with Unlocked Levels at 0 is known but frozen. An upgrade absent from the list entirely is not on the page at all. That is the difference between an upgrade the player can see but not reach, and one they do not know exists.

The currency¶

Supplements are an ordinary inventory item, not a separate score. The Supplement Item field on BP_PlayerSkillManager points at DA_Item_Supplement, whose Category is Supplement and whose Max Carry is 9999. The counter in the Skills page header just reads how many of that item are in the backpack.

To pay with something else, point Supplement Item at another item Data Asset. Any child of BP_ItemDataAsset works, including DA_Item_Parts. See Add an item to make your own.

Warning

Changing Supplement Item does not change what the pickups in your level hand out. Repoint them too, or the counter sits at zero forever and every level refuses to be bought with no message about why.

While you are placing supplements: BP_Interactable_Pickup_Item_Supplement ships with SM_Explosive as its mesh, the same one the explosive pickup uses. Give it your own mesh, as covered in Place the other pickups.

The Skills page¶

The page is BP_InventorySkillsPageWidget, driven by DA_Page_Skills like every other backpack page. One row per known upgrade, BP_SkillRowWidget, and one pip per level, BP_SkillPipWidget. The header holds the supplement icon and count.

You do not need to touch any of it to add an upgrade. Add the Data Asset, put it in Known Skills or behind a book, and the row draws itself. If you want to change the page order or its icon, that is Add an inventory page.

Refuse a purchase with your own rule¶

The manager already blocks a purchase when the player is short on supplements or is at the top of the line. To add a rule of your own, open BP_PlayerSkillManager and fill in GetExtraLearnBlockReason. GetLearnBlockReason calls it and passes its Reason straight through, so you never touch the built in checks or the widget.

That is where a rule like "only at a workbench" or "not while wounded" belongs.

What gets saved¶

SG_TLTGameSave stores the whole Skill Progress array, so both Unlocked Levels and Current Level survive a reload for every upgrade the player knows. Nothing else about upgrades is saved, because nothing else changes at runtime. On load, the manager reapplies every bought level to the player. See [Saving a run](..

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