Live data from Hacker News

Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

godotengine.org

31–40 of 113 posts

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#31
The sort of graph based editing they used sucks for coding anything beyond a pile of data transformations (which is why it works well in Enso or for Blender pipelines).

If they want visual editing they should look into old Game Maker or Construct 3 for how to do newbie friendly visual scripting.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#33
post #19
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers wants C++, scripters and artists wants Visual Scripting. Seems like an obvious choice to make everyone happy instead of trying to find a middle ground where nobody is?

The error is believing engineers can't draw and artists can't code. Skill is not a zero sum game.

I'm working with media artists and the very best way to make them flee is to tell them that they have to use the keyboard. Yes, there's the occasional geek but the overwhelming majority really doesn't like it - I'm not even talking about coding (I saw people get up and leave when showing code stuff in art contexts), just for instance having to use some keyboard shortcuts to do something is already too much in many cases, things have to be doable through mouse interaction exclusively.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#34
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers wants C++, scripters and artists wants Visual Scripting. Seems like an obvious choice to make everyone happy instead of trying to find a middle ground where nobody is?

I think Godot shows there's a clear subset of people (generally indie developers) who are fine with the middle ground of a proper scripting language instead of either extreme. It's why languages like Lua are still fairly popular when the option to use it exists.

This is it for me. GDscript allows for quick prototyping and structural changes without fuss. If I really need it I could outsource some GDExtension (formerly GDNative) development.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#35

The sort of graph based editing they used sucks for coding anything beyond a pile of data transformations (which is why it works well in Enso or for Blender pipelines). If they want visual editing they should look into old Game Maker or Construct 3 for how to do newbie friendly visual scripting.

That’s why it wise to put it into a GDExtension, maybe one day we will see some experiments with some drag and drop functionality. Although for me the scenetree is already visual enough.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#36
post #4

Does this mean they are also removing the VisualShader as well? Or purely the scripting part?

It seems likely that enough people use VisualShader to justify its existance. It is also common to define shaders visually, for instance in Blender.

Shaders are also far more I/O dependent, with direct feedback visually of the result, there is little abstraction like in programming where the visual feedback isn’t (always) direct.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#37
post #35

The sort of graph based editing they used sucks for coding anything beyond a pile of data transformations (which is why it works well in Enso or for Blender pipelines). If they want visual editing they should look into old Game Maker or Construct 3 for how to do newbie friendly visual scripting.

That’s why it wise to put it into a GDExtension, maybe one day we will see some experiments with some drag and drop functionality. Although for me the scenetree is already visual enough.

I agree, GDScript is pretty darn good, all the visual editing facilities (besides the scripting) are great, so the loss of visual scripting is not a major one. Let us see what the community comes up with!

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#38
A little off topic, and I know it'll never happen (though it is a common, if very minor, issue people have with Godot), but in that header image it looks like they accidentally found a better logo for Godot. It's still got the classic shape, and the centre circle looks less like the centre of a cog and more like an eye, but its also a lot cleaner than we've currently got.

Anyway, back on topic, yeh I think this is for the best. I never really saw it used, and the few times I tried myself it seemed less intuative than just programming. Also much harder to express in documentation. Also for beginners, its not a great lesson to learn, visual scripting is uncommon in the wider industry outside of game dev, and where it does exist is very specific to its own software

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#39
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The error is believing engineers can't draw and artists can't code. Skill is not a zero sum game.

I'm working with media artists and the very best way to make them flee is to tell them that they have to use the keyboard. Yes, there's the occasional geek but the overwhelming majority really doesn't like it - I'm not even talking about coding (I saw people get up and leave when showing code stuff in art contexts), just for instance having to use some keyboard shortcuts to do something is already too much in many ca…

every AAA game artist I've ever worked with uses extensive keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop, Maya, 3DSMax, Blender, Zbrush, etc... Tons.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#40
There are lots of initiatives for "no code", Microsoft's power suite, Alteryx, Office's power pivot, etc. I love the idea that non technical users could do more and create active programs.

But my experience is that the population who will not learn code (and I am not talking about learning c++, more like SQL and python/VBA) is also the population who will not want to learn a complex software with its internal logic and create complex workflows.

Whereas the population who would be happy to do so, is also the population who would pick up a scripting language easily.

So in the end the user base for those tools is pretty narrow.

Post reply on HN