Welcome to Bolt 2 beta (coming soon)

Hi everyone,

My name is Laurent Gibert, Product Manager at Unity, responsible for Bolt. I am delighted to welcome you in this space where you will be able to connect with the dev team working on Bolt 2, so that we can collaborate in making sure Bolt 2 delivers the value all users expect.

Please watch this thread as we will post updates here when Bolt 2 becomes available to test, and introduce some of our developers to you all.

We expect to start the beta for Bolt 2 in a couple of weeks from now.

Laurent

 

Hallo @LaurentGibert
just to know: Bolt / Bolt 2 will never be published as packages / opensource / free, right?
since we have many opensources and educational projects, and waiting for a native visual flowChart plugin to be used in all our projects (currently using xNode).. i read that Bolt will continue to be a commercial product.

do you confirm?

thank you

 

Hi @StefanoCecere, we are picking up Bolt in the state it is, currently focusing on the knowledge transfer from Ludiq to provide continuous support for users. In the meantime we're having a lot of conversations about the road ahead regarding Bolt 2 and DOTS visual scripting, but we're not ready to announce any plan yet.

 

Hi Laurent. I’m a registered owner of Bolt 1. Do I need to do anything to gain access to Bolt beta versions for testong?

 

Hi @LaurentGibert,

Is there a subscription list for getting access to the Beta when available?
Those of us coming from Bolt's Discord 'world' and used with easy access to the early dev. releases (Alpha/Beta), have a slight concern about the ease of accessing these builds during this transition period.

Thanks

 

It has been mentioned if you'd like to get into the beta to express your interest here.
So, I'm expressing my interest here, as an owner of Bolt that has been waiting for a stage of Bolt 2 to jump into.

Alpha had a few rough hurdles still but it has been awhile since the last update now, even if the current state isn't production ready will it be stable enough feature/pipeline wise to start properly experimenting with it and learning the new workflows?

Will any of the thoroughly written/detailed with images progress reports be merged/organized to help keep that initial knowledge available when jumping into learning it pre-official documentation of sorts?

 

Yes, me too.
I use bolt2 alpha a lot.
I also express my interest to be part of the Beta

 

Jumping on the wagon here and wanting to get on that sweet-sweet beta of Bolt 2

 

I'd like to join the beta testing phase. I've been a prolific Bolt 1 user for the past two years and an avid tester of Bolt 2 alpha versions and I know my way around the asset very well.

 

Hi @dmenefee, we will be communicating as an answer of this thread the instructions to be part of the beta. Stay tuned!

 

I own and currently use Bolt 2 Alpha. Was waiting for the next alpha update. Will I get the Beta release of Bolt instead or will I have to apply for it separately?

 

I'd like access to the beta, do we just ask for a key here?

 

Will do! Thanks!

 

Will Blot and visual scripting for DOTS be integrated together or will the remain separate tools?

 

More than access to the beta, I'd love to know what the roadmap for a stable bolt2 release is.
I've been waiting for it for a very long time, and it seemed like it was right around the corner with it entering beta and all, but with the transition and how packages are often marked as preview for a very long time, I'd just love to know what is going to happen.

Not dates by the way (which would be nice) but the process.

 

I'm also interested in the Bolt 2 beta. Long time user of multiple Visual Scripting tools for Unity3D. (Antares Vizio, Bolt 1, Bolt 2 Alpha, etc)

 

I'm an indie game developer and I bought BOLT

How do I get this latest BETA?

When will it be released?And the exact time?May 11th?

 

Hey @OLGV, we plan to manage this as we manage Preview packages. So this should be relatively easy. Some instructions would be provided in the next few weeks to tell you how to get to continue accessing alpha versions.

 

@SwiftIllusion most of the work in the short term is about stabilization and productization as a package. As we post new updates for Bolt 2, this should come together closer to a final product iteration by iteration. Stay tuned!

 

@Mrlconic it is always a blurry line regarding if something is alpha or beta. We are calling it beta as we are focusing on landing the first productized version of Bolt 2 with Unity. But the very first updates won't be very different than the latest alpha you got from Ludiq. Nothing to do yet, we will provide instructions to be onboarded soon.

 

@Zebbi: more details to come in the ext few weeks as we figure out the distribution details. Stay tuned!

 

@kbabilinski At the moment, we are focusing on ensuring continuous support for Bolt users who need visual scripting for projects not using DOTS, for the lifecycle of our current LTS versions. Moving forward we want to provide solid visual scripting workflows for both DOTS and not DOTS projects, and Bolt 2 is potentially playing an important role in achieving this goal. That's why the development team is working on it right now and wants to finalize the development of Bolt 2. While we are doing this, we will be discussing how to get Bolt and DOTS Visual Scripting work great together, more information to be communicated on this in the future.

 

Hi,

I'm a solid Bolt user since it's creation 4 years ago.
I made this website with bolt : http://corjn.com/
I'm also currently using Bolt 1 in a production game project. (And I plan to switch to Bolt 2 on this one as soon as it's production ready.)

I have another project, not yet in production, I would like to start making a prototype. So I think it's a good opportunity to bêta test Bolt 2 That way you would have a feedback of a user making a game with design goals in mind (I think it's an interesting approach for debugging, as long as it's for a prototype)

Hope I can help with that, would be very happy about it

 

@Kingblade Very good question, our goal in the short term is to provide Bolt 2 as a verified package as soon as possible, so our focus will be on stability to provide a Preview package first, then as quickly as possible as verified package. This is important for us as a milestone so that we can then explore how to get visual scripting workflows aligned in unity moving forward.

 

@steve_zeng Today, we just transferred the ownership of bolt to Unity. The dev team is working at preparing our distribution of Bolt 2 beta, as soon as this is ready, we will provide more details here about how to get access to it.

 

Me want Bolt beta too. Two. Beta two. Bolt. Want. Thx! Congrats on the acquisition!

 

This is amazing news. We were planning on using visual scripting and MARS to help us learn DOTS architecture/design so (somewhat reading between the lines) Bolt2 will be a baby step between?? Am I wrong to think visual scripting langues can be used as training wheels to learn ECS scripting?

 

In the short term we do not plan to make Bolt 2 able to manage DOTS projects, but we need to figure out how all visual scripting will be working together in the future. So too early to say.

I like your thinking about using visual scripting as a learning tool for ECS!

 

so the first paid "package"?

 

This is too early to say, please stay tuned for updates!

 

Hello, as a Bolt User, I would like to request a BETA for Bolt 2.

Also will Bolt 1 cease to exist when Bolt 2 is in preview package ? This is really important for our school to know what will be taught next year.

Thank you, and congratulations for making this smart purchase.

 

Thanks @Wael_3rd. Our plan still need to be figured out in details, but it seems likely we would keep Bolt 1 as an Asset for the lifecycle of 2018 LTS and 2019 LTS, and depending on the availability of Bolt 2 we will see what makes sense for 2020 LTS.

What version of Unity will you base your teaching on? 2020 Tech Stream or 2019 LTS?

 

I also use Bolt in my high school classroom. It would be great to know if Bolt 2 will be stable enough to use in the fall. It will take some retooling of the course to use Bolt 2 and switching mid-year is not something I'd look forward to - for many of my students the course is their first programming experience.

Generally in the fall I update the school computers to the latest stable version, so likely 2020 for next year. Students who use their own computers will likely grab the same most recent version.

 

Hi @Jwolf, it is too early to make plans for using Bolt 2 in production or for courses. We need first to provide a way to distribute it and collect more feedback, and there is some unknown around the stability of version 2 at scale, something we will discover when expanding the beta community. Bolt 1 is a solid and proven version that should be the reference until Bolt 2 gets ready.

This said, we would love to hear your feedback if you can try Bolt 2 when available!

 

Bolt 1 really isn't that solid or proven, I'm afraid, it still had the undo bug until a few months ago (where entire graphs would be destroyed), variable deletion isn't non-destructible and graphs become unusably slow if not broken into macros (which is difficult as it isn't an automatic process).

Flowcanvas is a much better and more solid alternative to Bolt 1.

 

If we have to express interest for Beta here, I'm doing so! Ive been using Bolt since its initial release, and have been active in the community, helping new users and bug hunting in new versions.

 

Aaaand putting in my request as well. A long time user, and a tester for 1.3, 1.4, and 2, as well as an extender and maintainer of a collection of community extensions to Bolt.

:wave: to all the fellow discordites!

 

Looking forward to testing out the beta if given the chance !

 

I'm just looking forward to a bug free release of Bolt 2. Frankly not overly enthused, but I'll wait to pass judgement until I see the roadmap.

 

For existing licensed users of Bolt 1 and those who have acquired the Bolt 2 alpha through Ludiq, the source code for the asset was made available. Will the source code still be available or will it be closed off?

I found it very helpful to be able to make small changes if necessary to fix a bug, work around a Unity upgrade, or just learn from the code to create custom nodes.

 

How on earth is this possible when it’s been in alpha for 1.5 years?

 

Clearly they've been going through serious business decisions

 

Hi, long time Unity3d and visual scripting user. I am interested in getting into the beta when available for testing and getting to know the new tools.

 

I'm also interested in the Bolt 2 beta

 

Are bold 1 scripts able to open in bolt 2?

 

They open but they only work in live mode, need remaking for compiling (which I think is like a lot of things currently in bolt, broken).

 

Hi Laurent and Unity team,

I am using Bolt 2 alpha for prototyping a lot, I love it, and of course reported quite a few bugs. I can't wait to to see some improvements, and keep helping to iron issues out. Count me in for the Beta volonteer program

cheers

Romain

 

Thanks for the feedback, we'll look into those issues.

 

Good question. We'll need to discuss this more on our side to understand what are the new constraints if any.

 

This is incredible, I would like to participate in the beta tests of Bolt 2, and help in whatever way I can, just like I do with Dots VS.