Unreal Engine Health Pickup: Build a Respawning Heal Pickup With AI

A health pickup in Unreal Engine is three small ideas: a touch that checks the player, a heal that never goes past the maximum, and a respawn that brings the pickup back after a wait. The easiest way to build one is to ask an AI for the whole pickup in a single request, with its heal, cap and respawn.

In this walkthrough, Ultimate Engine CoPilot builds three green health pickups that heal 30 points, burst into a ring and grow back after 10 seconds. You get the exact prompt, a test that was not valid at first and how the AI fixed it, and a plain explanation of how a health pickup works.

What the finished pickup does

Three green crosses float above the snow, spinning and bobbing, each with a soft green glow. When you are hurt, you touch one and you heal 30 points. The cross bursts into a green ring and disappears. Ten seconds later, it grows back. And when your health is already full, you can walk right through, and it stays, waiting for you.

A green cross pickup floats on the snow to the right of the player.

The prompt

Copy this, change the heal amount or the respawn time, and see what the AI builds:

Make a respawning health pickup. The player's Vitality is the CurrentHealth and MaxHealth of the existing WBP_HUD in /Game/Frostfang/UI, so change the CurrentHealth there and do not add any new variables to the player. Create BP_HealthPickup in /Game/Series/EP30_HealthPickup, a green glowing cross made from two flat cubes that spins and bobs. When the player touches it, Vitality goes up by 30, never past the maximum, the pickup disappears, a short green pulse ring expands and fades from where it was, and after 10 seconds the pickup reappears with a quick scale-in. If the player is already at full Vitality, the pickup does nothing and stays. Keep the heal amount and the respawn time as variables. Place 3 pickups on the snow in a triangle with sides of about 700 units, centred 900 units from the player start. Then play test it: set Vitality to 40, touch a pickup and check Vitality is 70 and the pickup is gone, check it is back after 10 seconds, set Vitality to 100 and check touching a pickup changes nothing, and fix anything that does not work.

Notice the sentence about full health: “If the player is already at full Vitality, the pickup does nothing and stays.” Without it, a player at full health would waste the pickup. A good pickup has a rule for the case that nobody thinks about, and the AI only builds the rules you say.

The prompt also names where the health lives: the CurrentHealth of the existing HUD, so the AI does not add new variables to the player.

How the AI builds it

The AI reads the project and finds the HUD, the health values and the game mode. Then the assets appear: a green glow material for the cross, a ring material for the pulse and the pickup Blueprint. The Blueprint is a cross, a light, a trigger and a lot of small settings.

One timeline did not get created on the first try, the one for the scale-in. The AI saw that, rebuilt that part and cleaned up the leftover nodes.

The pickup graph: the touch check, the heal with a clamp and the respawn timer.

The first run was not a valid test

The AI could not set the health to 40 from the console, so it stayed at 100, and a heal test at full health proves nothing. So the AI said so, and it added a temporary test hook to the pickup to set the health during play. It restarted the test, and later removed the hook. The Blueprint compiles clean without it.

Then the real test:

• Health is set to 40. The player touches the first pickup and the health reads 70. The pickup is gone, both the cross and the light.
• A pulse ring is seen halfway through its growth, and then hidden.
• Eight seconds later it is still gone. At ten seconds it is back, visible, with the scale-in ending at 1.
• Health is set to 100. The player touches the second pickup and nothing changes: health stays at 100 and the pickup stays.
• An extra check the AI added by itself: health at 90, touch the third pickup, and the health is capped at 100.

The report

All checks pass, with the one fix and the test method explained.

The report has a table of checks, all passing, and the one fix. It lists every variable on the pickup: the heal amount, the respawn time, the spin speed, the bob height, the bob speed and the hover height. It is honest about what it did not check: it took no screenshot, so how the glow and ring look is not confirmed, and the player was teleported into the pickups instead of walking. That is why the video also shows a real run.

How a health pickup works, in plain words

When the player touches the pickup, it asks one question: is the health below the maximum? If not, stop. If yes, it adds the heal amount and clamps the result to the maximum. Then it hides the cross and the light and plays the green ring. A timer waits for the respawn time, and then it shows the cross again with a short scale-in.

Because the heal amount and the respawn time are variables, you can make a small snack or a big potion, and a quick or a slow respawn, with two numbers.

Ideas to extend it

• Different sizes: a small pickup that heals 10 and a big one that heals 50.
• A sound and a floating “+30” number.
• A pickup that is easier to see in the dark, with a brighter glow.

Copy the prompt, change the heal amount to 50 or the respawn to 30 seconds, and see what the AI builds.

Four tips for pickup prompts

1. Say where the health lives.
2. Say what happens at full health.
3. Give the heal amount and the respawn time as numbers.
4. Ask the AI to test the cap at the maximum.

Frequently asked questions

How do I make a health pickup in Unreal Engine 5?

On overlap, check that health is below the maximum, add the heal amount clamped to the maximum, hide the pickup and start a respawn timer. Show it again when the timer ends.

What should a pickup do at full health?

That is a design choice, so say it in the request. Here the pickup does nothing and stays, so it is not wasted.

Why did the AI add a temporary test hook?

It could not set the health from outside the game, and a heal test at full health proves nothing. It added a hook to set the health during play, then removed it afterward.

Try it in your project

See what Ultimate Engine CoPilot can build on the product page, or get it on Fab.

More builds from this series: the Unreal Engine campfire, the Unreal Engine fall damage and the Unreal Engine coin collection.