UI Timer Trouble

Author: Keon Fryson
During this week's development, I was trying to build a count-up timer in the game’s UI to track how long the player had been in the level. The logic was in place, using NativeTick() to increment time every frame ,  but it just wasn’t working. The TextBlock stayed stuck at it default. No updates, no changes, no errors. Just a static, lifeless timer. This was a big problem because we are going to use the timer for a way to score the player on how well they done.

After some frustration and debugging, I realized the issue wasn’t with the tick logic or math. It was that I forgot to call Super::NativeConstruct() inside my overridden NativeConstruct() method. In Unreal Engine, when overriding core widget lifecycle methods like NativeConstruct(), failing to call the superclass version prevents the engine from setting up important internal behavior like ticking and widget bindings.

As soon as I added that call, the widget started ticking, and the timer worked perfectly. It now counts up in real time, giving players clear, responsive feedback. This experience reminded me how critical it is to always call the base class in overridden engine methods, especially in Unreal where that call is required for key systems to work correctly.