Unity and visual scripting.

Hello. I know you guys are hardcore coders here, not sure where else to post about this. Basically.

I'm a wimp, I've tried c# many times, but give up very fast. I'm much better with visual representations of things... With unity's own Visual Scripting language, that auto writes to c#, how do you think it will compare with UE4's blueprints, and the asset stores "bolt, flowcanvas/nodecnvas" which if I understand are the best visual scripting out right now.

I read many people saying "UE4's blueprints are a joke, you cant build full games out of them, it gets so messy"

Will unity fix this situation with their visual scripting language?

Does anybody know how UE4's blueprints stack up against the current asset stores offerings? What do you think of visual scripting at this moment? I heard many coders fall in love with playmaker, but its very limited, is full visual scripting conveniently actually possible?

 

This isn't really going to answer your question directly, but at some point you're going to have to write some code. When it comes time to do that, you'll prefer C# over C++. In that sense, Unreal's blueprints can't really compare to Unity's visual scripting solutions- even if blueprints were themselves 10x superior to Playmaker (and it doesn't seem to be from what I've heard, despite Playmaker's limitations), the lack of all of that extra plumbing needed for writing real code in C# easily outweighs that advantage IMO.

YMMV, obviously, but someone who's really not wanting to do hardcore coding should really prefer managed languages and .NET. It doesn't get much more "hardcore" than C++.

But as to whether you can do an entire game in Unity doing nothing but visual scripting- I doubt it. But I really doubt you could make a non-trivial game using nothing but blueprints in Unreal either. That said, it's really not my area, so others will probably have better insights into that.

 

You gotta realize that visual scripting is coding. Its just at a higher level using chunks of code. In both scenarios you must understand all of it. I will recommend Udemy - https://www.udemy.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-game-development-with-unity/


Thats one of the shorter courses on there. Its for complete beginners in c#. Try it if you want. An hour a day and you will be done with that course in under a month. You will look back and understand more. Thats the process. Something I learned after awhile is there is no magical moment where you just sit down and code everything from memory or imagination. Theres just too much stuff. You will be looking at the unity API. Read the api vs watching videos. Dissect things. You will learn alot more than copy and pasting. If the instructor does something, pause the video, make your own unique tweak.

Good luck - Programming is intimidating but there is a moment where you pass a certain threshold once you get most of the Logic behind things. Really take your time learning the basics. Its like what you stand on in the future, and you want that to be really solid.

If statements
for loops
variables
scriptcommunication

Imo those 4 things will take you super far if you get them down pat logic wise.

 

Just a point on courses from Udemy, you should never pay more than around 10 dollars for a course on their website. They are all on sale at around $10 every day or if you search for coupons you always find them.

The ‘actual prices’ are more for marketing than anything else

 

No, but that's because it's not an actual problem. For the most part the people who make these statements are people that have never taken the time to make anything with them and they will often use examples that are very clearly poorly made to back up themselves up when they know that it's a poor example.

You can create elegantly flowing blueprints just like you can write elegantly flowing C#, but it takes effort to do so and if you don't want to put forth the effort you can very easily end up with a mess for both visual and non-visual languages.

UE4's Blueprints are one of the more advanced visual scripting systems out there for their style. Bolt 2, which is currently in an alpha state, is the closest equivalent. Playmaker is not an actual scripting system in the traditional sense. It's just a visual finite state machine. For some tasks this is great, but not every task can be easily solved with it.

https://ludiq.io/blog/bolt-2

Unity's visual scripting language will be interesting because it's being designed around the Entity Component System (ECS) which has a different way to approach writing scripts. I wouldn't necessarily assume that it will be as easy as the current visual scripting tools.

Okay, now that we've discussed the information you need to know about Unity's VS and UE4's Blueprints, I have to ask if you've already tried any visual scripting systems. Because to be blunt about it the actual language is almost never the hard part of coding.

What's hardest about programming is problem solving and having to find bugs in your scripts once you've written or drawn them. Choosing a visual scripting language instead of a text-based language won't magically make any of this easier as little to none of the actual challenging parts change in a meaningful way.

Basically, unless you've already tried it and you know it'll work for you, if you're giving up with a language that is one of the easier ones to learn be prepared for the possibilty that you will just give up for a visual scripting language too.

Just throwing this out there in case you've been told it will be easier. It most likely won't be. Game development is hard.