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Ask HN: Why is visual programming so popular for game programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is visual programming so popular for game programming?

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And is kind of what they’re doing now with their Verse language.

Yep, I'm looking forward to it. Have they publicly talked more about it since 2020? update: just watched Tim Tillosons twitch stream about it. I had not seen that before.

There is confirmation its coming this year(2022). They previously stated they wanted to release beta late 2021 but got delayed.

I think it'll be a massive game changer for unreal and am super excited for it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is visual programming so popular for game programming?

#152
I've used a lot of Playmaker with Unity3D. I'm a programmer who works in NUI and I make visual art with Unity and blender but my day job is mostly python and go. I've taught 3D artists and people who were not programmers to use Playmaker to get things made in Unity and they take to it quick.

I try to avoid "writing code" when I'm making 3D things in unity until I absolutely have to. I like to work in a flow state and the context switching is murder on that. Then when I've blocked everything out and I know all the variables if needed I sit down and write specific modules if it's needed for performance or something was more difficult in a visual style. That is becoming increasingly rare though.

Re: Ask HN: Why is visual programming so popular for game programming?

#153
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this answer. . . There is really something to be said about context. Thank you for your this!!

That answer would make only make sense if you did the programming in the 3d scene. Game Design is not visual at all, it's pure logic. "when I pull the trigger, find the thing I am pointing at, if it has armor, reduces its health by 10, otherwise reduce its health by 20" Game Art is all visual. Red is scary, green is good, sort of. They are completely separate paradigms.

Uhh…this comes from an insanely programmer-biased perspective.

I imagine you’ve probably been a software dev for a long time - and come from a history of game dev?

(Ha - yeah - you did. I looked you up, you worked on ‘Bioshock’? It is to my credit that I could figure that out before I looked it up, though.)

You see - unlike the ‘00’s - Unity, and even recent UDK updates, etc - have created a fairy “plug and play” sense of game development that was a fever dream in the ‘90’s, and even most of the ‘00’s.

The tech has changed - the approach has changed, massively.

I mean - hell - even 10 years ago cross-platform shit was a nightmare compared to today. It’s because a lot of that underlying code has been taken care of for 90% of average developers. Only AAA developers need worry about low-level shit.

We are very much living in a design-first era. Which is - frankly - awesome. But it’s so easy to forget that or not see that as primarily a developer.

Re: Ask HN: Why is visual programming so popular for game programming?

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me add one more big thing: With Blueprint, the engine team can check-in binaries into Perforce and the rest of the team can use those custom binaries and their custom APIs in Blueprint without ever having to touch a compiler. Also: Blueprints reload instantly and are easy to debug.

Can you diff them?

Yes. Sorta. Unreal has a blueprint diffing tool to compare against different commits.

Its a frequently overlooked feature. Itd be great to have more accessible outside the editor.

Re: Ask HN: Why is visual programming so popular for game programming?

#155
Visual programming have the advantage to be more approachable to non-programmers. In the gaming industry, you need a tone of small event reactions and logics to make great game. If you push all of those needs to a separate programmer team, you add complexity to your production and lower your agility. Given live editing supported, code will always be more efficient for programmers but getting all the talents (design, level design…) that are also fluent programmers may be unrealistic at scale.
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