Question Can subgraphs in a flow be hotswapped to another 'generic' subgraph?

I have a graph with a flow. A subgraph is connected as part of the flow. Is it possible to dynamically swap (hotswap) out that subgraph to a different subgraph asset or that another object holds, without me needing to know the subgraph target ahead of time?

I'm new to Visual Scripting, and I'm not yet familiar with the nodes and workflow (I never used Bolt). Most videos seem to cover either the basics or other random conversions from normal scripts.

 

Lookin for this node?

you would need to know them ahead of time.. but not sure what you mean

 

I don't think this is possible. Technically custom events can pass around any object but there are no equivalent of a delegate in visual scripting. What you see in the graph, is what you get, it's all pretty static.

 

This is most unfortunate, because if it were possible, VS would be an amazing solution for quite a few problems.

I have a scenario where I would like to, for the ease of coding workflow, loop through logic normally, but when I encounter a specific scenario, I can hit a button and hotswap the subgraph from one that 'does nothing' (is a simple passthrough from Input to Output node) to one based on whatever I am targeting.

I'm currently using an asynchronous loop to drive some logic, and being able to hotswap to another routine without stopping the loop would have been a really elegant solution with a graph hotswap.

I can do this with another solution, like xNode, because I can extend from the graph with an interface that has an awaitable function and then provide the async prefix in the derived definition.

Thank you guys, I think I will use a simpler solution to my problem... it is just unfortunate that I'll have to wait until VS is a bit more feature-rich and considers supporting such a feature in the future!

 

Perhaps a custom node can be written that takes in an abstract class as an input, the node then simply executes the abstract class' implementation. Regular Inspector supports abstract classes via [SerializeReference] for different configurations accessible to a designer, but it's unlikely to be supported in graphs directly.

 

I had considered doing this, but I don't know how to call the ports of a graph within a script?

I think that is where I was looking to see if it were possible and delved a little into the baseclasses 'Graph' and 'FlowGraph' but was not sure if I was looking for the wrong thing, or if I need to look for a 'Flow' component, or something.

Or, is it possible for me to define functions for that abstract class within a graph?

If either of those are possible, then it might still be doable... or maybe there is another way...

Sorry, just trying to catch up with your line of thinking! Because I would very-much like to try out UVS :3

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Edit: Basically, I was hoping to use UVS to design the logic for certain things and then reuse the graph assets if I want to do similar actions.

If I'm defining the logic in the abstract class, it kinda defeats the goal I want to achieve with utilizing UVS for the logic design

 

Yea, data workflows like that are not really feasible right now. They're working on that however. In a couple of years they'll have a new runtime with a new API, and they'll swap current IMGUI UI implementation to UI Toolkit based Graph Tools Foundation framework so API on extending the node functionality on editor level will also change. They're also working on many other fundamental changes. It'll take a few years by the looks of it though. Can't really tell, there's no ETA given which implies it's at least two years away by my guess. Amongst the many improvements constructing graphs purely in code has also been mentioned.