Hey guys, I was reluctant in posting a thread like this, but I think that the more people demanding this from Unity, the more they can consider it. I am a designer, and as such, I’d really rather implement and prototype things using a Visual Scripting Tool. I like programming as well, but VS just makes things that much easier from a designing perspective. For that matter, I use Playmaker, and it is awesome. Very powerful tool. But there are clear disadvantages not being a native tool, like Blueprints in Unreal. The support is naturally much smaller. I mean, community is great, forums are helpful, but still, for me at least, not enough.
Truth is Unity is made for programmers. To me as a designer, there’s not a single way for me to implement stuff without coding or paying for a plugin. I believe this is detrimental because you stablish no clear communication between designers and programmers in the engine itself.
Some of you may think “Go learn C#!” and I have nothing against it, truly. But these are different fields of study. You don’t tell a programmer “Go learn game design!” or “Go learn 3D modeling!” because these require an entirely different study, and in gaming production I really think we have to work on our strenghts - and of course, have a somewhat good notion of other fields at least.
Well, I’m strongly considering switching to UE4, specially because of the designer-programmer better communication through Visual Scripting and other tools as well. The workflow is simply different.
Please let me know what you think and what are your experiences in that matter!
Sure, but one of the main goals of Blueprint is to allow your non-programmer team members to assemble very simple functionality without constantly badgering the “real” programmers who would be working on far more complex topics.
Yeah, well… good to know but… It’s a very loooong list. I hope they give it some attention but I don’t hope to see it anytime soon. And though many people think this is not an urgent matter and I understand that, I think the people who says that are almost all programmers. In other engines like UE4, you have a very good solution for both designers and programmers, whereas in Unity you simply restrict designers, make them pay for plugins and do not give native support.
I understand, they have a lot to do in the engine. But… for me that’s a big thing.
Exaclty. This for me is a correct workflow. Designers should be designing. Level design, combat design, quest design, prototyping… all of this. What happens is that coders are designing and designers have to code.
And considering there are already a lot of available solutions, Unity should simply integrate one of these, make it native and improve on it.
I still think that blueprint system is one of the worst features of unreal engine.
They got rid of scripting language and then… created another scripting language with clunkier interface. Because reasons. Not to mention massive negative impact on documentation quality…
Well, hard to argue with that because it’s just opinion. For me Blueprints is great, and if you research small and big projects use it, because Unreal is meant to work with both BP and C++ combined, not isolated. And what exactly is bad about the documentation?
Unfortunately that’s just not Unity’s approach to bringing new features. They may temporarily bring someone in who has past experience developing that feature but they won’t necessarily stick with the path they implement. I do believe when they finally bring us a visual scripting language it’ll be fantastic but like Unity’s UI it’ll be a long time.
Until it’s made you’re just going to have to live with the options available on the Asset Store or pick an alternative engine.
For programmer working with blueprints feels like, I don’t know… trying to play violin using only your left foot. Sure, you can get hang of it with some practice, but it’ll always feel awkward, especially if you have all your limbs intact. Because of Epic’s obsession with blueprints, quality of C++ documentation is abysmal (almost all tutorials are written by one guy from community), meaning in their quest to make the engine more accessible the made it harder to use for people that want full language power. Which is, in my opinion, quite bad. As they say “GUI makes simple things simpler while making complex things impossible”. So I’d prefer if unity didn’t follow epic’s way here.
It’s certainly coming- State Machine Behaviors are a good step- when a programmer lays the groundwork first, it’s a great way for non-programmers to get things up and running and tweakable quickly. But it’s not ready from the get-go. The standard utilities are a neat accessibility addition as well, but there’s a lack of support there, as most tutorials available don’t use either- most of the time tutorials are aimed at adding permanent functionality through scripting, rather than temporary functionality for rapid prototyping.
Unity should pick a winner in the visual scripting, buy the full rights to that asset, rename it Unity Visual Scripting, and then include that as the standard visual scripting solution for Unity. They should have done that same approach with the UI, but obviously did not.
Mass Effect was made in Unreal with both C++ and BP, Batman Arkham series, Hellblade, the new Devil May Cry, Street Fighter V, Bloodstained (the successor or Castlevania), Mighty N.9… I don’t think all these companies share this opinion about BP and C++ being a bad combination. As a preference, I understand: programmers spend years and years coding, so they prefer code, it’s natural. We designers don’t, usually. The best case is when you have good integrated options for both. For me, everybody wins. And I think the programmers who work with Unreal and C++ might have a different opinion as well.
And one thing about VS and prototyping: with playmaker and other unity 3rd party VS, all I hear is PROTOTYPING. Like these tools are not able for full production. I cannot assure that and I’ve heard of people who use Playmaker in production, but Blueprints for example are used aaaaall over, in small and big projects. And they work just fine.
Sorry, but while the other titles may have used it, Mass Effect was not developed in with it. They used Unreal 3 to develop their later games and Blueprint didn’t appear till Unreal 4.
Oh, my bad, was not UE4, but at the time it was Kismet and UScript if I’m not mistaken, and it’s kinda the same interaction. Blueprints is just the evolution of Kismet. But we could probably say that about ME Andromeda. But I’m not 100% sure they use UE4.
I heard that it suffers from certain problems that make it inferior to code. Then again, using another “visual programming” system may result in similar or even identical problems.