Ask HN: Why is visual programming so popular for game programming? • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by jayd16 » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:36 AM UTC

drakonka wrote: post #7

On the larger game teams I've worked on, most people using blueprints and schematics aren't the programmers but the content creators. The programmers are providing said blueprint elements/building blocks as well as extending (or modifying) the engine with other logic that content creators don't need access to via their visual tools. For example: a level designer might want a specific type of entity in their level (le…

This explains why there's a simplified scripting layer but not why it's a graph based programming language. Unity has an example of configurable game objects without graphs but still the momentum is towards graph based systems in many places.

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

#82

Post by Jagerbizzle » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:45 AM UTC

xsmasher wrote: post #20

Beacuse you can expose functionality to non-programmers and let them go HAM with the components you have created. I'm constantly amazed at what artists and animators and producers can do themselves if given half the chance. Plenty of people have the "engineering Tao" but not the training for traditional programming. Removing the engineer from the content loops lets a lot of work happen really quickly.

What type of games are we talking about here though? Removing the engineers from the loop potentially allows for a lot of rapid prototyping, but probably not a lot of shipping at perf on cross-gen console and PC architecture.

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

#83

Post by vvanders » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:06 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #73

vvanders wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but as far as scripting languages go it was enough to get the job done at the time. I don't think swapping to Lua would fundamentally change that. I say that as someone who's worked on both sides and shipped production Lua, Unreal script and C++ during that era. Visual scripting/programming tools are for your designers/artists/animators or as glue code between content that is under high iteration cycles. You can…

I'm also in the industry as an artist, level designer and gameplay programmer and have shipped games in Unreal 2, 3 and 4 and Unity, and you'll never convince me that creating boxes and wiring them up will ever be as good as text at expressing game logic and game rules. I can understand why you might want to use it for shaders. (but not really) And when it comes to placing volumes and marking up the scene I'll absolu…

> ... and you'll never convince me that creating boxes and wiring them up will ever be as good as text at expressing game logic and game rules.

Sure, that's pretty clear :). If you want to re-read my post above I wasn't saying that would be as good at game rules and there's a very real limitation as soon as you get away from scripted encounters and into anything more complex.

At the same time consider there may be people, teams and designers who it does work for. Very few things are in absolute and there are places where I've seen tools like this used effectively.

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

#84

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

Jagerbizzle wrote: post #82

xsmasher wrote: post #20

Beacuse you can expose functionality to non-programmers and let them go HAM with the components you have created. I'm constantly amazed at what artists and animators and producers can do themselves if given half the chance. Plenty of people have the "engineering Tao" but not the training for traditional programming. Removing the engineer from the content loops lets a lot of work happen really quickly.

What type of games are we talking about here though? Removing the engineers from the loop potentially allows for a lot of rapid prototyping, but probably not a lot of shipping at perf on cross-gen console and PC architecture.

A proven by Minecraft, Angry Birds among others, you don't need a last gen perf game to pay the bills and get comfortable.

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

#85

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #45

I think its only because Unreal has one, and everybody wants to be like Unreal. I think Lua in Roblox, or the Godot's python like language, or Unity's C# is strictly better in every way. Visual Programming languages don't prevent "non programmers" from writing really weird code that makes no sense. You will find many first time programmers that like visaul programming because they created something cool in Unreal. I…

I rather have people giving me their architecture documents in UML than incomprehensible prose.

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

#86

Post by jay_kyburz » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:33 AM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #80

jay_kyburz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also in the industry as an artist, level designer and gameplay programmer and have shipped games in Unreal 2, 3 and 4 and Unity, and you'll never convince me that creating boxes and wiring them up will ever be as good as text at expressing game logic and game rules. I can understand why you might want to use it for shaders. (but not really) And when it comes to placing volumes and marking up the scene I'll absolu…

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.

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

#87

Post by throwuxiytayq » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:35 AM UTC

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #74

huffer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> there is no excuse for such errors You do realize that common mental conditions like ADHD cause people to commit these "syntax errors" in language all the time, right? What an ignorant, ableist, and frankly pathetic take this is.

I know people with debilitating ADHD who nonetheless manage to communicate more clearly and correctly than their peers.

Since you're throwing accusations at random people online, are you sure you aren't dyslexic or lazy?

By the way, spell checkers are a thing these days. Seriously, check it out. People you write to might appreciate the absolutely microscopic amount of effort it takes to check what you're typing.

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

#88

Post by hyperpallium2 » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:42 AM UTC

  Why isn't visual programning more popular?

If a picture tells a thousand words, and diagrams and figures are so helpful, why hasn't visual programming taken over?

The problem is the complexity of overlaid graphs. Text, through references, handles this well and planar layouts do not.

Consider also the density of information; an example is a (visual) AST of an arithmetic expreasion, versus the conventional symbolic representation. You could make a visual tool to build arithmetic trees. It's a very clear repreaentation, easy to follow and would be fun to use. But... real fast... it becomes unweildy.

So, visual programming is great for simple problems, by non-programmers. As other commenters have said, there are a lot of non-programmers in game development - I think most of it is non-programming these days.

Another category is new users. People play games, and then want to make games. Visual programming is more like a game than text programming is. Some of these people really are just "playing" at making games (nothing wrong with that!) But some of them are earnestly making a game - and the fewer obstacles in their way (like learning how to program), the better. Get them onboard, get them started - better for them, better for Epic, and better for the world to get the games they've come up with.

Finally, because of text superiority, programming infrastructure (e.g. git) is also text-based.

BTW spreadsheets are kinda visual, and very popular. "Visual Basic" has some visual programming elements, for GUIs. There's some business tools, like XML mappers, that are visual.

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

#89

Post by rl3 » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:45 AM UTC

huffer wrote: post #67

picture wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super pedantic and unimportant nitpick: I think you mean to use "lets" instead of "let's", which is a contraction of "let us"

Quoted post unavailable.

>Don't apply tolerance in defense of mediocrity.

Despite being a grammar perfectionist myself, I know several people who don't even bother with simple apostrophes. Yet, these same people run congitive circles around me in many areas.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge. Tolerance is a good thing. The underlying content is ultimately what matters, especially on an international public forum like HN where you typically don't even know who you're talking to or what their context is.

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

#90

Post by bitwize » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:46 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #51

bitwize wrote: post #23

It helps people who don't identify as programmers/developers program without thinking they're programming.

Whether you identify as a programmer or not should not prevent you from having a good tool for the work. Even the very polished Blueprints in Unreal are not as good as a text based programming.

I agree with you. But the "content creators" who are responsible for most of modern game development will flee in horror from anything that looks too much like programming. If you want to market a game engine with customizable behavior (i.e., it's programmable) to large AAA game dev teams where programmers are only a small subset of the whole team, you have to provide a way to allow people to program the engine without believing they are programming it.

This is the value prop -- and the problem -- with "no-code" tools in general. If your visual representation expresses behaviors in a way that is specific enough to be interpretable by a computer, then the constructs in your visual representation are isomorphic to constructs in some textual programming language -- with significant drawbacks compared to a textual programming language. But this zombie keeps getting resurrected because programming is seen as technical scutwork to be undertaken by highly intelligent yet socially inept lizard people -- not the truly important people, the business, marketing, and creative types who make all the key decisions. So if you want to get them to express what they want the computer to do, you will have to provide a means for them to do so that does not resemble using a text editor to write code in some programming language.

It's a bit like the modern version of the problem PC manufacturers had marketing to executives, despite the obvious advantages PCs would provide to them: PCs required typing, and executives considered to be secretarial or clerical work and therefore beneath them.