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AppGameKit Studio Chat / [Request] Visual Scripting Editor Like Blueprints

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QDeveloper
4
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Joined: 4th May 2019
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Posted: 4th May 2019 12:10
Dear AppGameKit Studio Team,

Congratulations on making AppGameKit Studio! The Scene, editor and Project files system, is the right direction for this fantastic framework.

However, I would like to see AppGameKit studio to be accessible to more indie game developers and young entrepreneurs. Like adding a Visual Scripting system in addition to the code editor, Especially for making basic games and apps stuff, And it would be super cool
to have the option to convert the results into codes, Which will also be a great learning resource for all AppGameKit users.

Thank you.

Dark_ITheI _Angel
21
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Joined: 3rd Sep 2002
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Posted: 5th May 2019 09:23
The most you find as of right now on this forums, are coders! . I dont think this should be a priority when thinking they are just starting to take a product serious. Maybe some users can make an add-on . I would much rather see a 3d level editor even if just a basic one for the time.
Animals
Zigi
14
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Joined: 5th Jul 2009
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Posted: 5th May 2019 10:14 Edited at: 5th May 2019 10:16
Visual scripting on it own not necessarily make it easier for beginners and young people. In many cases it does require the same amount of effort to learn and understand especially those node based systems that Unreal, Unity and Godot uses.
I can see node based systems to be helpful to help with visualization complex systems when you are testing the limits of your brain to remember how everything in your game is connected but I don't personally consider them easier to use in-fact they do require almost the same amount of effort to learn and use like any programming language but definitely helps with seeing to whole picture of complex systems.

The only, visual scripting methods that I do personally find really easy to pickup and I could recommend even to kids and complete beginners with no coding required is an event system similar to Construct, GDevelop and CFusion has or visual programming similar Scratch has but maybe with more event like blocks Construct and GDevelop has with complete conditions and actions to do, so you don't need to micro manage the code with operators and nested if statements..etc.
In fact, Blockly that Scratch is using completely free and open-source and very flexible:
https://developers.google.com/blockly/
You can create any kind of blocks you want, so basically nothing stop you from using it to create something like Construct and GDevelop has where you only drag and drop conditions and actions with custom parameters.

Actually GDevelop also completely free and open-source under MIT, if TGC up for the challenge could also extract the event system and use it or just study and make something similar:
https://github.com/4ian/GDevelop/tree/master/newIDE
Personally, I do consider GDevelop the best solution for kids and complete beginners because it is allow you to not worry about any syntax and code but focus only on the building blocks of a game like sprites, animations, sounds, text, collision mask and very straight forward to use. I would recommend for TGC to look in to this if ever consider to implement a no coding solution in to Studio or Blockly if going for a more visual scripting solution.

I do support the idea to eventually have something like this in Studio that kids and no coders can use, however if I need to choose I would prefer to see 2D lights, pathfinding, parenting, a visual shader editor, OOP, C# support, 3D editor, target all platforms Classic did including HTML5 with the ability to read and write web storage and AR and VR using the new Vulkan renderer first, but I would be not against something like this after we have all that implemented. 100% support the idea.
RobbSnow
8
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Joined: 14th Oct 2015
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Posted: 8th May 2019 18:18
Yeah, at this time I cannot see Visual Scripting being worthwhile. It would require a ton of work to add a feature that their current customers wouldn't be the target audience of. Because that doesn't exist now, virtually every customer is writing code. I am not sure how you could even use the current product without writing code.

Maybe after Studio is much more mature then I would think you could do things to widen your audience to people that want to create games but not write code. Like @Zigi mentioned, there are a ton of things that would be a better use of their time than blueprints. I would like to include a Linux client to his list. Look at how long the major engines like Unreal and Unity existed without them.

Hopefully there may come a solution from the community to address people with that need.
Vectrex71CH
User Banned
Posted: 10th May 2019 14:32 Edited at: 10th May 2019 14:33
VIsual Scripting does not mean, that creating something would be easyier. Take a look at GODOT GAME ENGINE.... There you have also Visual Scripting and GDScript (language) . With GDScript you have 3 lines of code to do something and with VisualScripting you have just a chaos on screen to do the same !
baxslash
Valued Member
Bronze Codemaster
17
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Joined: 26th Dec 2006
Location: Duffield
Posted: 14th May 2019 08:59
I agree that Visual Scripting can get pretty complicated to look at on screen but my own feeling is that for some people (visual learners) it is easier. I have used a few VS tools and we have recently added one to our CAD software which is looking pretty useful actually.
I would say that done well this could be a really handy method of adding scripts into AGK. I could see it working well for AI or animation for example. Maybe for building and testing randomly generated worlds too.
How it would work alongside AppGameKit would not be too complex if used like this. I can imagine being able to test edits to a visual script at runtime being really handy but not sure how it would need to be implemented.
As others have said, this would be a low priority but not without merit.
Using AppGameKit V2 Tier 1
Jeku
Moderator
20
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Joined: 4th Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 14th May 2019 15:06
I think this is a great example of something someone in the community can make for AGK. They could probably sell it for a bit of money too Making a separate tool that spits out AppGameKit code could be quite useful for many.
Qube_
9
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Joined: 21st Oct 2014
Location: Omnipresent
Posted: 15th May 2019 02:48
Visual scripting is only good to allow people like artists and none coders to accomplish basic tasks. Visual scripting for a coder is a nightmare and takes way too much time to do even simple tasks.

For example writing out something like "For a = 0 To 359 : SetSpritePosition( dotImage, 100 + Cos( a ) * 100, 100 + Sin( a ) * 100 ) : DrawSprite ( dotImage ) : Next" - Seconds to do in code but minutes to do visually.

Overall visual scripting is nothing more than a sales gimmick that has no real purpose in a language like AGK. I can't think of a single benefit for it to be added. I'd much rather TGC spend their time on language stability, bug fixes, feature completion and new helpful commands than creating a visual system that just slows down actually coding.
Zigi
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Posted: 15th May 2019 20:29 Edited at: 15th May 2019 20:39
Quote: "Visual scripting is only good to allow people like artists and none coders to accomplish basic tasks....For example writing out something like "For a = 0 To 359 : SetSpritePosition( dotImage, 100 + Cos( a ) * 100, 100 + Sin( a ) * 100 ) : DrawSprite ( dotImage ) : Next" - Seconds to do in code but minutes to do visually."

Depends, using the event system in GDevelop took me 3 seconds to come up with this:


And it is actually working.
Quote: "Overall visual scripting is nothing more than a sales gimmick that has no real purpose"

It is currently a huge business to target people who doesn't code, but only very few tools do it right. GDevelop with the above event system is one of the best in my opinion.
If TGC would ever consider visual scripting to target no coders, I think worth to look in to something similar.
Vectrex71CH
User Banned
Posted: 18th May 2019 15:32
To be honest. I used also "Stencyl", GDevelop and Construct 3 and I have to say, those kind of visual scriptings are really great and easy to use. But visual scripting like Godot, Unreal or Leadwork Engine are just slow and unhandy to use.
pamercomov
FPSC Reloaded TGC Backer
9
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Joined: 2nd Jan 2015
Location: palma de mallorca
Posted: 18th May 2019 17:58
Visual scrpting is unreal and unity with addons.
Construc1 2 ir 3, stencyl , gdevelop ect is event script.

Is diferent
using AppGameKit V2 tier 1
baxslash
Valued Member
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17
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Joined: 26th Dec 2006
Location: Duffield
Posted: 20th May 2019 16:32
I could be quite interested in coming up with a prototype for this. I have a little time for a side project and this would be quite interesting to work on.
I like the idea of having event driven scripts, I think that could work well.
I may have to have a play and see what I can come up with...
Using AppGameKit V2 Tier 1
T4r4ntul4
14
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Joined: 1st Jan 2010
Location: close to my pc
Posted: 27th May 2019 13:15
AGK classic and studio are for coders anyway. I dont think they need some visual scripting, thats more like for GameGuru or whatever visual non-coder package.

If theres coming a Visual Scripting Editor, why not use that for the shaders? Shaders are hard enough already, make it like Blender does, and shader making will become more easily for everyone.
Rick Nasher
6
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Joined: 25th Jul 2017
Location: Amsterdam
Posted: 23rd Jun 2019 19:59
They can always use the GameGuru stuff, mod it for multiplatform and sell it as an add-on for AppGameKit Studio.
I think a 3d placement editor would be great to have, but I'm with Qube on this: language deserves priority first.

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