CPU, Blueprints & Ticks

6.1Tick Discipline

Every ticking actor and component pays overhead every frame before its logic even runs. A thousand idly-ticking props is a tax on every frame of the game. The rules: Start with Tick Enabled = false as the default stance; drive logic from events, timers, and delegates; when ticking is genuinely needed, set a Tick Interval (0.1s is 6x cheaper than every frame at 60fps); and tick only while relevant (visible, nearby, active).

Find offenders with stat game, Unreal Insights, or simply: dumpticks in the console lists every ticking object. The count is usually a surprise.

6.2What Blueprints Actually Cost

BP execution has per-node overhead - trivial for event-driven logic, painful in per-frame loops over hundreds of items. The classic offenders: Get All Actors of Class in Tick (cache at BeginPlay instead), heavy math in loops (move to a C++ or math-expression node), and cast chains creating hard reference webs - casting to a heavy class pulls it and everything it references into memory at load. Prefer interfaces and component lookups. For hot paths, the honest answer is nativization by hand: ask an engineer for a C++ base class.

6.3Garbage Collection Hitches

UE's garbage collector periodically scans object references, and big scans cause frame hitches. TAs' contribution: spawn less (see pooling), avoid creating/destroying objects in gameplay loops, and keep reference webs small so scans stay cheap. If players report a rhythmic stutter, suspect GC and confirm in Insights.

6.4Pooling And Significance

Object pooling: spawning and destroying is expensive; for anything spawned repeatedly (projectiles, impact VFX, pickups), pre-spawn a pool, deactivate and recycle. Significance: not everything deserves full simulation - distant or off-screen characters can tick less, animate at lower rates (Update Rate Optimization, Animation Budget Allocator), and skip cosmetic work. The Significance Manager formalizes exactly this pattern.