Unity Visual Scripting Variables are Easily Removed

Unity Engine
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1

Hi! Just brought Visual Scripting into our project and I’ve searched around to see if anyone has had this same issue as me, but it seems not, so…

I am creating a Scene Variable called Cutscene_Intro – Its a reference to an object in the scene that holds the cutscene in question and is fed into a function called Trigger. (Specifically its going into a subgraph that handles some other information, but that’s not my issue). (img1)

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I noticed that if Cutscene_Intro is removed, or deleted, the visual scripting graph doesnt put up any warnings or lost references. Also, it seems that GetVariable is looking up the list of things by strings, and these strings are editable by hand (img2)
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I can also delete the cutscene intro variable from the list, and the GetVariable item still says its referenced to it. (img3)

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My questions are:

  1. Is there any way to get some error feedback about missing variable references? I don’t want to be worried that things could get blown away by accident

  2. Is there any way to update the list of variables, or have them update automatically?

Any insight would be appreciated, and any information on whether or not we’re setting up these variables incorrectly would ALSO be helpful.

Thank you

2
  1. There is not beyond runtime errors when the graph calls some non-existing variable when playtesting.
  2. Not sure what the question here is but variables are weakly typed and weakly referenced so the answer is likely “no, there is not a way currently”. The best you can do is get one of the Graph Search extensions made by the community and manually search variables by name to get all the places the variable is used in and fix things manually.

They are supposed to address this in the next major iteration of visual scripting that they started working on back in 2020. At least part of the team has gone MIA in the multiple waves of layoffs in the past two years. The last update was from the previous product manager back in 2022 about how nothing new will come to Visual Scripting in 2023. We’re now in the year 2025 with no more information available, there’s a new product manager once again. Maybe something will happen in Unity 7 in a year or two.

EDIT: The new product manager just left Unity as he was the product manager for both Animation and Visual Scripting: Animation Status Update (Q1 2025)

3

I appreciate this response, and no i don’t know what my question would have been entirely on 2. This is helpful still!