Troubleshooting

Beacons do nothing

Beacons rely on Niagara / Niagara Fluids. Enable it in Edit -> Plugins and restart the editor. Then confirm the beacon is actually linked: Assign Beacon must be called on the player’s tracker (on the server), passing the beacon’s owning actor.

Vision occluders cast no shadow

Two usual causes:

1. Custom Depth-Stencil Pass is off. Enable it in Project Settings -> Rendering -> Postprocessing -> Custom Depth-Stencil Pass (set to Enabled with Stencil).
2. The occluder mesh has no collision. The shadow is built from blocking geometry, so the mesh needs collision enabled. Also make sure the occluder sits flat on the ground; a floating mesh leaks light underneath.

Shadow edges look jagged

The shadows are softened by a Kawase blur pass. Sharpen or smooth them by:

• Raising the Input Resolution and Kawase Steps on the VaKawaseBlurComponent, and / or
• Increasing the resolution of the RT_Shadows render target.

Higher values cost more, so tune to taste.

An enemy is never revealed when I walk up to it

The Tracker finds enemies by overlap, so the enemy needs a collision component that can overlap the tracker’s sphere. Check that:

• The enemy actor has collision and generates overlap events.
• Assign Enemy was called for that actor, on the server.

An enemy flickers or hides while an ally still sees it

Visibility is reference-counted across all sources (the player plus beacons), so this should not happen in normal use. If it does, it usually means a source is decrementing the count it never incremented, for example a beacon that was linked or unlinked at an odd time. Re-check your Assign Beacon / unlink flow so each source contributes exactly once.

Lit circles don’t line up with the floor (light leaks off the map)

Map Size and Is Map Centered exist on both the Map Baker and the Fog Manager. They must match. If they drift apart, the fog’s map space and the baked floor disagree and lit areas slide out of place. Set them to the same values and re-bake if needed.

Multiplayer testing is wrong: one player drives both players’ shadows

Local shadows use a render target that is shared between PIE clients in one process. Open Play -> Advanced Settings and uncheck “Run Under One Process” so each client gets its own shadow target. See Multiplayer & Networking.

There’s no fog at all

• Make sure a BP_FogManager is in the level (one per level) and its Fog Material is set (the default M_Main_Fog_Volume is fine).
• Confirm the FogOfWar plugin is enabled and the editor was restarted after enabling it.
• Check that the player character carries a BP_Tracker; the manager reads the local player’s position from it to drive the fog.