BLOBNOD'Z and MOVEPAD

[indianalf]

( working title )

let s start with a small introduction , i m a french VideoGame dev Veteran … 20 years + in this industry, from last floppy discs to the latest free2play …
some titles as tool dev game artist, lead tool dev and technical director : Spliter Cell ( 2 to 4 ) endwar assassins creed 2 , and recently Borderlands online … in france and china …

I met unity few years ago , published a small game proto ( stargol on google play but totally outdated right now ) was fun , but i m more a TOOL GUY , that s my job and I m actually working on a side project to try and experiment things i never had time to push in real prod case

things started 2 years ago , i was VideoGame teacher in India and i started to develop a game production framework for 3d platform game … and try to teach my student what is Data Driven Workflow …
the name of this framework was blockbuster and still in dev right now, with 2 of the Framework feature quite advanced …

MOVEPAD And BLOBNOD’Z

the first one is a dynamic interactive generated texture that take just 2 bitmap ( normal and active state ) and create User interfaces for both editor an ingame use

Movepad

the second one Blobnodz is a Node based Editor to fuel a gameobject or the Movepad buttons with schematic composition of your own functions

BlobNod'z

so it s not an official announcement, there s still a lot of work , debug , and some crazy ideas to implement before pushing this on asset store , the video are terrible ( living in china internet is a big problem over here and posting a good quality video could take forever )

but that’s enough for now , and please if you have any question , feedback on this ( mean look and feel since there s not much description about the tools themselves … )

many thanks

[theANMATOR2b]

Info on how these could be implemented in a game development workflow and the benefits of using them would be helpful.
Also explaining how these could specifically benefit a indie team or one man band would be nice.
It’s kind of interesting - I think

[indianalf]

right now it s just a node editor that help to visualize your code as node get easily all your functions
in a dropdown list to reuse them along game , assign to a button that can be used in editor or in game …
or to a game object to make it move for instance …

right now it will not help anyone cause it s a WIP i hope to get a closed beta version around november
( for selected panel of volunteer users ) , so i just start to talk about to ramp up next steps

also the big feature is actually under design it s juicy but too early to talk about now …

+++++

i m not huge fan of visual scripting … i mean in the way it s usually implemented :
this one is slightly different , it s not meant to replace good old fashioned code lines … :
and turn a random person to an accomplished game developer it s more kinda a code helper … (now)

let s break it down a little

everything start with this line at the begining of any monobehaviour or editor script source :

/// ENUM NAME Classname

for instance a new monobehavour FallingPlatform

/// FALLING_PLATFORM FallingPlatform

the class is class is instantly exposed for the nodegraph
and will show up in blockbuster in my case or any other custom editor

then any function in your code starting with a cutomatribute BBCtrlVisible is imediately visible
by the node editor

[BBCtrlVisible("return actor component of the selected gameobject ")] // define a function visible for BBControl
public Actor GetActor()
{
return this;
}

once those 2 small steps are done a node have 2 dropdown list :
1 list of the visible class
2 list of visible functions

in this case the top of the list are the selected game object behaviors
( movepad bloc assign an interactive material on the object same as first video )
(fallingplatform is the sample case )
(and actor is the mother class of all my behaviors to share functions along my gameobjects )
this part of the list is depending on the selection

the rest of the list starting with BB are more static action for editor , generic maths or manipulating
novepad functions … but final user can define anything else for any other purpose

if your function require parameters the node create the required slots , clic a slot bring up another node
and the list show up only compatibles exposed functions …

one specific class implement EDITORGUI controls
popuplist , curves , vector etc…

with a specific attribute to tell that the value comes from inside and not from a slot

[BBCtrlProp]
[BBCtrlVisible(“a gui slider”)]
public float floatSliderNode(float F)
{
F = EditorGUILayout.Slider(F, 0, 10.0f);
return F;
}

when your logic is done in the editor the generated gaph could be executed through the
BBCtrl ( a simple object that make the link graph >> button >> action )

so returning to my falling plattform i made this logic quickly by piking upclasses functions and generic
it basically move the game object in all direction changing scale and object mesh based on curve input
( random )

and just have to call the Do function on the BBctrl object ( that link all things together )

public override void Update()
{
BBC.DO(this.gameObject);
}

when used with Movepad it even more simple : just clic drag a buton and make a graph
out of predefined or custom functions

---

i actually have 2 options …

keep working this out … and push the Secret ingredient that will definitely push this thing out of the
Visual Scripting tools

or

give up and push the full stuff on assetstore

[indianalf]

i forgot :

my job is to provide huge team all levels all nationality with prod tools easy to use and understand
i m also a game developer and this project is also to test new ideas …

usually you start with a complex interface to select your component then create a node another and link them

mine automatically make the setup
link is done also automatically and the node poping up at the other side just expose compatibles node
that make the validity of the graph is almost always right no matter what you clic ( valid , not mean make something interesting )

the big dif is that i ll not provide huge and multipurpose component lib
but let the user create his own basics modules

on top of it … some fun factor like elastic links gesture popup effect ( i spent some time on angry node mode to destroy a useless node in a funny way ) i ll definitely add more of them ( as soon as the serious part is secures )

[theANMATOR2b]

Thanks for the detailed explanation @indianalf
I can definitely see how this could be helpful.
Unfortunately Im a non-coding animator/polygon monkey so anything less than a complete visual scripting tool similar to PlayMaker is totally useless to me. Thats why I own it.
Its always nice to see node based workflows though. It makes the learning gap between non-coder art vet and full up programmer genius easier to bridge.