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Some Ideas that I have after using bolt for a while.

Discussion in 'Visual Scripting' started by White-studio, Nov 11, 2020.

  1. White-studio

    White-studio

    Joined:
    May 1, 2013
    Posts:
    7
    Hi my name is Craig,
    I have been using bolt for some time and in that time I have come up with some feature requests for the feature but don't know where the correct place is that I should post such a thing so I am posting it here, if it is in the wrong place feel free to delete it.

    Some Background Info
    I cant programme at all using c-sharp, in fact the only programming language I know a little of is html and that is only the basic layout html, not intermediate or advanced coding knowledge, so when it comes to programming in the unity game engine, it has always been a pipe dream for me not an observable reality of which I could call reachable, but with bolt, after only a few videos I have already programmed the basics of a calendar system which keeps track of time, you can tell it how long each minute and hour is in seconds relative to the real-world, you then tell it how long one day is, then you tell it how many months there are in a year in your game, and how many days there are in each month and it automatically works out how long the month timer is in seconds for that particular month having say 31 days, it also keeps trach of how much time has elapsed since the game has started, and cycles through the months and years moving forwards, meaning it is completely automatic after you populate the initial lists with some information about the game, the calendar system automatically runs logging its current time in a variable from which you can run trigger events like change colour temperature of the shaders on the trees and grass in the scene when the season turns to winter, favouring a colder temperature, things like that, however the system isn't finished yet and the next features I am programming are the week system which is going to automatically calculate how many weeks there are in the year based on how many months there are, and how many days there are in each month and how many days there are in each week and the day system which is going to output what day it is like 1st 2nd 3rd and so on, it is amazing because prior to visual scripting, this for me was impossible, I couldn't even write a variable, and know I am quite a way through my calendar system, and once the calendar system is finished, next is my custom automatic day and night system.

    my feature requests
    but from using bolt for the first time, i have noticed that when trying to design something more complicated, I need a way to write comments in order like you can in code, but there are currently no features like that at the moment, there are the Control and leftclick boxes you can create, of which you can create and drag around and give a title, but using them for comments is a pain in the arse especially when I use them for organisation and the titles to give the section an address so I know where I am relative other sections so that I can navigate really huge node clusters.
    i would like a dedicated comment feature that can work along side these boxes so that for a section i can design the flow of information quite easily and organise it before actually programming it however at the moment i have to just jump into programming it because there are no comment features at all.

    feature request 2
    even when I zoom all of the way out I still can only see one section of my node graph, I know that I should be using smaller modularised node graphs but at the moment I am still learning how to write with bolt so eventually when I am more proficient at writing with bolt I will learn how to pass variable information between bolt graphs but at the moment i just want to make sure the logic is working, but there is not simplified view that would allow you to zoom out further, like for instance when you zoom out further and further the nodes get smaller and smaller until they are no longer legible, so what you do is create a simplified view when zoomed all the way out just shows the bounding box with the title for that section and no nodes at all depending on how large the node graph is, because fully zoomed out i cant even fit one of the node graphs in the view port let alone the entire node graph, and this is a basic node graph, a professional using this creating much larger graphs and more complicated graphs is going to struggle using this with the limited zoom problem.

    thank you

    Craig Richardson

    also once I have finished most of the features in my node graph I will be sharing everything on the unity asset store for free, if anyone is interested.
     
  2. sinjinn

    sinjinn

    Joined:
    Mar 31, 2019
    Posts:
    149
    I think they are working on integrating all thier graph tools. If you look at shader Graph there is a notes thing. I've considered using it for mind mapping. But yeah, it's a great idea that they already have in thier native tools, so I hope it comes over.

    I think the graph should be vertical like VFX graph. It is code, it should read like code so we can move back and forth between them. I say that as someone who's C# is currently quite weak and I want to learn C# throughh Bolt.

    using super Units is probably smarter, but I agree with you. When learning this stuff it's good to see everything in one screen. Obviously I don't know hard that is to implement, or what constraints they have.
     
    White-studio likes this.