Unity Visual Scripting 2017?

generating codes is exactly what visual scripting does, a program can't run without codes, memory cant be allocated without instruction, a computer doesn't understand visual things.

What i mean with main stream, is that its your prime control of your game/logic system, maybe i made it unclear. Unity only for indie developers?, not sure i agree on that. Your saying every one on this forum are indie developers? Unity is very good for making complex games..there is no limitation in the engine.

 

No, I said "will be mostly making very simple indie games". It's there.

 

Unity is not only for making simple games

 

So use coding if you need it.　Ｉｔ’ｓ　ｎｏｔ　ｇｏｉｎｇ　ａｎｙｗｈｅｒｅ．

 

That's why I said "mostly".

 

It doesn't work like that. Have you tried to make anything substantial in vs?

In code, 30-40 lines can easily fit on the screen, you don't have to scroll, you can easily take in the flow of information all at once. That's my point. In vs, you either have to scroll out to well beyond where you can identify individual nodes, way beyond the point where it literally turns into a spaghetti mess, or switch to a different layer.

In substance designer's visual editor, I've found that as soon as I have to lean in to see what's written on the nodes, it makes it very difficult to look at the graph. And this is not even a code editor, where the ability to make a mental model is pivotal to making fast progress, especially in debugging.

If you would like to, I'd like to see a graph of a fairly complex system you've developed, that we can compare with written code.

 

I think it doesn't matter anymore.

Due to the nature of arguments presented the whole thread pretty much convinced me to stay the hell away from blueprints and similar approachs.

Unity will do what unity will do, and if they decide to start adding a visual scripting system before doing something about terrain or level decals, I won't be able to change their decision.

I still would prefer if some other feature was being worked on, and I still think that trying to use visual scripts for game logic is not a good idea. After all 5.6 release still isn't out.

 

no one wanted to play my game, all i saw was theories or one that sorted a list of ints, but did not sort objects by its members or a calculation like my 1 line and very readable statement.

Code (CSharp):

1. private GameObject[] SortDistance(Vector3 point, GameObject[] gameObjects) {
2.     return gameObjects.OrderBy(x => (point - x.transform.position).sqrMagnitude).ToArray();
3. }

vs


and i had to make the comparer in a much more difficult way.


Also collaboration tools suck for BP, i could inline the code in this post, but if i use that BP pastebin, the results suck.

https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/tb-jt8q-/
https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/8hn0lp23/

Also to do this in the first place i had to grab a 3rd party library from the marketplace, and i had to hard code my point variable into the compare function. From what i can tell you cannot create a lambda or write a function in the scope of a other function in BP. This means if you wanted to use something like that sort node you have no way to define the point to compare against unless you make a new function for every point.

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/low-entry-extended-standard-library

Im not saying VS does not have its place, i rather like the AI tree editor in Unreal and use mecanim in unity, and with the tools BP does provide you can handle basic, scripted sequences stuff for levels, or make basic assets. Can also act as good glue between multiple components on 1 actor. But its no replacement or future for programming in the state it is in.

 

Well, I think you don't read my entire post, I said "I don't use VS and I will not use VS when it becomes available".
But I'm pretty sure that's not a problem for people who prefer VS, some people like books, others prefer graphic novels, others prefer movies, and so on. (is that a good analogy?)
To tell the truth, I never went to the dark side because I never liked blueprint, nor C++, I love C# and the unity way, once you learn it, it feels like nothing is impossible.

I'm with you in this one, also new input and nested prefabs, imo. Terrains suck, decals are non-existent, the input is clumsy and has lots of downfalls and nested prefabs are also non-existent.

After all these years, I noticed that we never influence their decision, this was discussed in threads before about the feedback system, like you just said, Unity will do what unity will do...

All this to sort a list... are you sure BP doesn't have anything to do this?

 

Well, I was hoping to find a non-coder who had any kind of experience in VS. Nine pages and I'm still waiting, so maybe there's no such thing?

 

Maybe there is no such thing in unity side of things yet.. just because unity doesn't have a native vs tool. All the playmaker (and alikes) users use their own forums. Try the unreal forum, I think 1/2 of the people there uses BP.

 

it has nothing to do so in a flexible way, this is sorting based on each objects distance to a point, even sorting in BP based on the value on a member of each object would be nearly this painful in bp.

A lot of the problem is that VS is not very expressive and is overly verbose

 

I was meaning using Visual Scripting you still code. There is all language statements represented as nodes like "IF", "While" etc ... and all 3D engine functions also as nodes instead of words. Visual Scripting is only some visual representation of coding.
And there is high level like FSM or Behaviour Trees (Playmaker, NodeCanvas, Blueprints and UE4 BT).
Unless you really use on some game VS, FSM,BT , you can't know what are the advantages and disadvantages, and why you would choose one of those instead of coding.

Make a "sorting" node, give it objects list and some parameter and there you go.
Plugins like NodeCanvas or Playmaker let you code your own nodes to re use them in a high level, like BP. It seems most people talking Visual Scripting disadvantages only never use those

 

Well playmaker is around, and has been downloaded by many customers here if you go by it's over 2,000 ratings. By all accounts, it should be in pretty widespread use. You'd expect that most of the people arguing in favor of visual scripting would have bought it and used it - I mean, if this is going to be essential to you making any game at all, $95 or whatever it is, is hardly extravagant. And there's a free one there as well.

Anyway, I have to continue to conclude that most or all of the people gunning for vs in Unity have never even bothered to try one to see if it's going to make any impact on their ability to code.

 

a lot in the thread were arguing for it as a full on replacement for code, i made that example to prove it is not ready for that use case. Yes in a sane world you use everything for its strengths and mix and match. Also i found it funny that no one who was saying you can do everything in BP, made the equivalent BP to the snippet, and i was able to when my background is mostly C#, and C++.

Also i was hoping people would play the game with me, i would love to see some side by side examples where one wins out over the others for the use case.

 

Literally two people said it was a replacement for code and one of those people registered yesterday.

 

Or they are simply ignoring this thread. Earlier I quoted a post of a Unity forum member who has yet to take part in this thread and I don't want to tag her because she's clearly ignoring it on purpose at this point.

While the other person only takes part in threads involving this nature as well as engine comparisons.

 

Not all the time, and not most of the time. One of the most pined for features is the dark skin in the free version, but unity have(imo quite rightly) not done this.

 

The question is though, are most of the people here part of a team with coders, or solo devs? I would wager the latter. Nobody is saying it's not useful as an artist-helping tool or something like that - literally the whole thread is about whether you can code in it to the same extent as written code.

That's fair enough, but although a lot of people are taking pretty firm viewpoints, we're all pretty much sticking to the topic and not getting stuck into eachother. I think it would be helpful if someone of the actual target group would arrive, it's not really possible to have a reasonable discussion when nobody here actually knows what it's like to use it from a non-coder perspective.

For example, I thought @Rodolfo-Rubens was a non-coder, and I was blown away wondering exactly how he managed to find and use a lambda function node without presumably having learned programming in a traditional way (unless there are textbooks out there which deal in VS).

 

+1 i first learned about shaders in udk with its node based material editor, and i can see great applications of using VS to allow a FX artists to tie into game variables, or game events for their fx work.

It works good on the high level, but once you get into low level stuff it shows its cracks. Also even in BP the more low level you get with it, the more terms and concepts you see leaking into it from the C++ world.

But like the sorting and filtering stuff, you can also find higher level examples it struggles with, not to mention something has to be done about its verbosity. Maybe the ability to dock nodes into each other, instead of needing a whole separate node just to read the location member from a actor per say. iirc material designer had a dock function, for cleaning up stuff like type casts and clamps that a lot of nodes require.

 

Likewise. My opinion about visual scripting is at all time low, but if someone threw an impressive examples at me I could change my mind on the subject.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/zios-editor-theme-support.411818/

 

@neginfinity

I know there have been user made solutions regarding the dark skin but in the context of what I was replying to that was not the answer.

 

It is not a competition, like I said before, some people prefer vs because of the way it looks and works, they find it easier to understand, and that's all, I also don't think vs has any technical advantages over traditional coding.

Also, no one is trying to convince anyone here to drop coding and start using vs, just trying to make you guys understand that some people prefer a visual way to create logic for their games.

 

It is not about that.

If there's a technique that is superior to what I know, then I want to know it.

However, when someone claims "it is the way of the future" (because if I recall it orrectly 4 pages of this thread were discussing this), then fail to provide the "superior" examples (see paserbycmc's one liner), this is incredibly disappointing.

 

No one said that ?

This has been said a lot, you can do high level stuff and code your own low level nodes, this has some advantages for level design gameplay.

There is demand for VS and Unity is bringing it, that's all, deal with it.
This is exactly like a creating shaders, you can do typing code or using a visual editor or a mix of both.

 

I totally agree with you, i just want to clarify my statement when i said i think its the future. Visual programming will be part of the future (not replacing), just not like the current tools available ( because they are clearly limited), you pretty much nailed the point on this things.

 

This is why I oppose it. There is a significant non-zero cost associated with designing, testing, building, documenting, deploying, advocating, supporting, maintaining, and updating a completely new system that effectively just mirrors what the whole system already does.

Earlier someone wrote you "just" have to reflect the API. The .NET 3.5 framework exposes more than 40,000 publicly accessible types, and that's not including the Unity API. And yet we're pretending all these "visual" folks are going to somehow magically know what to pluck from that morass and wire up into some Amazing New Game? (Edit: Mind you, choosing the right APIs while actively avoiding learning to write code...) Uh-huh. Good luck with that.

Waste of resources. That's the only reason I argue against it. If it were free to implement and support, I wouldn't have an opinion at all.

 

Why it is a waste when it will bring lot of new users and potentially more non coders making new games ?
It's like saying a shader editor is a waste of ressource as anyone can learn and code shaders.

 

Going in to the game industry without any knowledge of coding, either you or some in your team, is just bad for game development, every one will tell you to start learning programming when your going in to the game industry, its like if your going to be a drummer you dont really need the drumstick, let the computer juxbox do it for you..

Or you don't need the education to be a pilot, you can just run the plane on autopilot.

Isn't the quality of the result that matters? or is it how easy it was to get to the end?

 

Again who talked to work for a big studio ? It's indie place first.

 

"Quantity over quality" might actually be a worse argument than blindly quoting marketing slogans.

And have you seen the code that comes out of ShaderForge? I was appalled.

 

OK I'm getting tired of this thread, but here's my point of view:

• Visual scripting will never enable someone to do what coding will do, unless that person already knows how to code - I don't really buy that the issue non-coders have is completely to do with the letters anyway;

• VS is somewhat useful as an "get the artists off my back" tool but it begs the question as to whether a properly exposed inspector could not do this well enough anyway;

• VS is a huge and costly undertaking, you're basically recreating all of C# and the API, as well as debugging tools etc in the node editor, this is not some little side project for Unity. So the issue of limited resources is a very real one.

• In fact the only real utility is that it potentially gives limited capability to those who do NOT have a programmer at all who can do coding for them, but it's an unweildy crutch at best.

Anyway, Unity will do what Unity will do, since adding it probably has huge marketing value etc.

 

Indie developers also need to know what they are doing. I seen alot of grate indie game productions.

 

Sure they will just buyout PlayMaker and add it to Unity. They're giving it away free anyway with Unity Plus.

 

There will never be any shortcuts in life.. trust me.. knowledge is the only shortcut.. this goes for programming, art, sound and business. Its getting clear to me, that this is what this thread is all about..Most of us agree how this should be and is going..

 

Visual scripting is nice. I make my own components that perform code tasks and visually connect them to units. I use Visual Studio and I script in it.

Wait, what are we talking about.

 

You've never worked with artists or designers before.

That's the only conclusion I can make from this ridiculously ignorant post.

 

Again, wasn't me, quoting me makes it looks that you are saying that I should provide the example... my opinion about that is in the same post you quoted.

So why there are tools like playmaker, BP, etc, and people use them?
There is a market there and UT want to explore, I guess.

lol, me too, I unfollowed the thread but I'm being quoted. The only way to set us free is if a mod lock the thread.

 

Mainly because BP at least is not always a scripting tool, it can be a high level game template interface. I really like this aspect but is it really any different from an inspector? Looks better though.

This is untrue, watch me...

 

I have 5 years graphic design education, 3 years programming education, also 10 years 3D experince and work.
On top of that 20 years of industry/business experience, have i worked with artist before? Yes..

 

And yet here you are saying everyone in the games industry should be able to code? Which is a ridiculously ignorant statement when people have their own crafts they need to hone and should have an entry level point (visual scripting) to better implement their ideas, which you're railing against CONSTANTLY in this thread?

Yeah, I bet.

 

Yes that is exactly what i am saying (at least one person in the team), i can promise your there is very poor business in incompetence. But your probably not on that level to even get that type of experience.

I am not railing against visual tools, then you haven't reason what i am saying at all.

If you didnt know, you should start reading some game developer guides, every one will tell you that you should learn
programming.. Its not like we can all skip pilot education just because the planes now days comes with autopilot.
You need to learn the concept and syntax and datatypes to use visual scripting, how else can you know the difference from float and int ? The visual tool is an extension from the programing world, not a replacement, you just need to deal with that. I wish you good luck on your learning.

 

To be honest I consider ability to write a script an equivalent to being literate, if you're planning to work in the industry. (Making your own game is the same as "working in the industry")

Someone who wants to be close to game logic and wants to be able to modify game logic must absolutely be able to script at a beginner level.

Otherwise, there are non-coding positions available. Writers, concept artists, 3d modelers, sound editors, business stuff, voice actors, lawyers, and then job like the one guy who's responsible for office maintenance. Those do not require coding.

Current frameworks available on the market already take away 90% of the dfficult stuff. The requirements is to be able to script and not program, because scripting is much, much easier.

So, yes, everybody who is planning to ever touch game logic must know how to script, with no exceptions.

 

I was quoting this

Lot of indies doesn't care first for a game studio, perhaps later or make one.
Anyway don't be afraid, if you look at UE4 users indie know what they rae doing using BP.

This prooves nothing about you to handle coming changes or new technologies like Visual Scripting, specially when you say VS is not good.

Keep on track, the thread is not about if you can work for a studio

 

I feel this thread is going on a infinite loop where reason have been given by many posters, yet the defenders defend everything, even when nobody is attacking there toy..its like some one stole some kids banana..

Lets keep the talk on Unity, i am sure the UE4 forum is better suited if your going to discuss BP. But it's great that indie develops mange to make something out with only visual scripting, that means they grasp allot of things from the
programing world.

I am not saying its not good, i am just saying its just not good enough to replace 17 years of scripting framework. I said many times that it has its practical applications.

This will be my last post here, since i feel i am repeating my self and yet the reason doesn't sink in.

 

When did i talk BP ?
I am talking VS in general and experiences with Playmaker and NodeCanvas,or BP usage that is exacly what peolpe are doing with FlowCanvas and NodeCanvas or Nottorus plugins for example.

I am not defending anything , i'm only poiting shting out of context and people talking about something they never used in a game project.

 

For now traditional coding is as close as we're going to get and in the hands of an expert is way faster and cleaner.
However vs is a way for new game designers to enter the fields and start making games quickly.

Time will tell if Unity can produce a worthy vs like Nottorus, but with quicker short cuts while maintaining a high and low level coding. With all the great vs examples the asset store has, l'm sure if Unity puts in the effort it would be something magical.
I see vs as a technological work in progress and their's no doubt Epic and now Unity will push this tech to the fullest.
I honesty think that the true power comes in combining both methods and use them for their strength.
UE4 bp is very integrated through out the engine. From particles, animation, materials, scripting and c++ class exposure to bp which is disabled by default.
I would love Unity to take this approach and combine or unify all major parts of the engine. The asset store been great for filling that gap, but its time to put those toys aside and elevate to new highs.

P.s
For those here with an open mind I recommend to learn both game engines. It's not impossible and will make you more marketable. Having extra knowledge can't hurt.

 

I think all the smart and creative folks who have experience with VS have better things to do then engage in this nonsense. This thread is filled with an incredible amount of ignorance and arrogance.

And I don't use VS except for behavior designer which is fabulous for behavior trees. But I love the idea of VS and I'm all for its growth and development so that artists can create some gameplay on their own without having to occupy their minds with all the syntactical crap that coders get off on.

 

Visual scripting isn't intended to replace the aspects that a normal coder would handle. It's mostly intended for insignificant tasks that would otherwise waste the time of the programmer to write and modify for each intended situation.

It's more than simply the letters though. At least for Unreal 4 where you don't have to deal with the intricacies of C++'s syntax and grammar. It may be an entirely different situation for Unity since C# is much easier but we'll see what Unity creates.

It'll just take them a very long time. I doubt they're investing much of any existing resources into it.

Ironic coming from someone who has never written more than a toy game.

 

You're right I never personally created any games. I'm too busy just doing tutorials from Udemy, Gnomon, Digitaltutors to name a few. I'm having too mush fun playing with technology and just collecting knowledge. I'm currently working on a horror game with UE4 and has taking me a little over a year to put this project together. I don't like to brag, but I don't really do this for the money. Is just a fun thing I do all day everyday for the past three years now. I'm addicted to learning all things game design.

I'll publish one day and maybe I'll send you a little teaser.