Other What Visual Scripting Guide would you like to see the most?

Want to use Visual Scripting but don't know how to use it?
Lookin' for tutorials but can only find super old stuff from Bolt?
Yeah, I had that problem too.

What kinds of help do you guys think you need the most? Let me know down below and I'll see what I can do about it.

 

Because I am a programmer and like to use Visual Scripting for creating tools for our designers I would like to see more information on how to customize and best practices on how (and which) base classes to use.

 

Could you elaborate on this?
Do you mean Subgraphs or custom classes?

 

I'd be interested in that too.

 

The tool was never designed for that. Current UVS is a Bolt 1 reskin from the asset store. It was made for Unity newbies who don't code. And UVS is practically identical to Bolt 1 from 2018. Custom node API wasn't even documented before Unity acquired the tool and shipped it with the engine. As far as best practices go, custom node creation is documented in the official manual. Anything more than that is likely out of scope unless you're up for modifying source which is available.

They're working on a new major version of UVS that'll have a completely new runtime with a new custom node API and also new editor UI API since they're migrating the tool from current IMGUI solution to UI Toolkit based Graph Tools Foundation framework.

Current 1.7x version hasn't seen an update in 7 months, version 1.8 was cancelled so I can only assume it's in maintenance mode if you even can call it that until UVS 2.whatever drops

 

This is who i'm aiming at for this.

I would assume a pro could use it

 

I think it's great as a tool for flexible editing, or even as an editor tool. You want to mix performant code with it, otherwise it's pointless. Would be useful with say, some slider nodes. I was working on a bit of that - in a way, using it as a flexible inspector. Was going to use it for designing inspectors or modding code. It doesn't have much in the way of graphical nodes which would make it especially useful, like being able to view a sprite being used. CodeGraph alongside ShaderGraph would be nice. Maybe DOTSGraph is the next thing.

 

The StateMachines are very well designed (apart from connections, could be a little more flexible)

 

Actually I would like to see both
For custom classes I would like to see more information / examples for overriding the different base classes and which base class to choose for which purpose.

About subgraphs it would be nice to have best practices. For example what the best approach is for dealing with lots of graphs, best ways to keep everything organized and how to get the most performant setup in different scenarios.

 

So maybe it is better to look at the GraphView API: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Experimental.GraphView.GraphView.html and make custom tools for our designers based on this...

 

If it does what you need it to do then it's an option. Unity developers who are working on GraphTools Foundation - the GraphView API successor recommend using GraphView while GTF is in the oven.

The problem with GraphView is that it was designed for a very narrow use case of ShaderGraph so if you want to do more than that, you might end up running across hard blockers because a lot of the API is internal only. The license for GraphView is also weird - reference only. But I don't have a lot of experience with it. Since the announcement of GTF two years ago I thought we'd already have it, but it looks like it'll be 2-4 if not more years until GTF becomes available and public API is not their priority either.

 

Heads up, Tutorial #1 incoming. (overview) Will create a new thread to post made tutorials on to keep it organized but will still reference this thread for input. and thanks guys for letting me know.

input appreciated