Welcome to Bolt 2 beta (coming soon)

@Zebbi : more details to come in the ext few weeks as we figure out the distribution details. Stay tuned!

@kbabilinski At the moment, we are focusing on ensuring continuous support for Bolt users who need visual scripting for projects not using DOTS, for the lifecycle of our current LTS versions. Moving forward we want to provide solid visual scripting workflows for both DOTS and not DOTS projects, and Bolt 2 is potentially playing an important role in achieving this goal. Thatā€™s why the development team is working on it right now and wants to finalize the development of Bolt 2. While we are doing this, we will be discussing how to get Bolt and DOTS Visual Scripting work great together, more information to be communicated on this in the future.

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Hi,

Iā€™m a solid Bolt user since itā€™s creation 4 years ago.
I made this website with bolt : http://corjn.com/
Iā€™m also currently using Bolt 1 in a production game project. (And I plan to switch to Bolt 2 on this one as soon as itā€™s production ready.)

I have another project, not yet in production, I would like to start making a prototype. So I think itā€™s a good opportunity to bĆŖta test Bolt 2 :slight_smile: That way you would have a feedback of a user making a game with design goals in mind (I think itā€™s an interesting approach for debugging, as long as itā€™s for a prototype)

Hope I can help with that, would be very happy about it :slight_smile:

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@Kingblade Very good question, our goal in the short term is to provide Bolt 2 as a verified package as soon as possible, so our focus will be on stability to provide a Preview package first, then as quickly as possible as verified package. This is important for us as a milestone so that we can then explore how to get visual scripting workflows aligned in unity moving forward.

@steve_zeng Today, we just transferred the ownership of bolt to Unity. The dev team is working at preparing our distribution of Bolt 2 beta, as soon as this is ready, we will provide more details here about how to get access to it.

Me want Bolt beta too. Two. Beta two. Bolt. Want. Thx! Congrats on the acquisition!

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This is amazing news. We were planning on using visual scripting and MARS to help us learn DOTS architecture/design so (somewhat reading between the lines) Bolt2 will be a baby step between?? Am I wrong to think visual scripting langues can be used as training wheels to learn ECS scripting?

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In the short term we do not plan to make Bolt 2 able to manage DOTS projects, but we need to figure out how all visual scripting will be working together in the future. So too early to say.

I like your thinking about using visual scripting as a learning tool for ECS!

so the first paid ā€œpackageā€?

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This is too early to say, please stay tuned for updates!

Hello, as a Bolt User, I would like to request a BETA for Bolt 2.

Also will Bolt 1 cease to exist when Bolt 2 is in preview package ? This is really important for our school to know what will be taught next year.

Thank you, and congratulations for making this smart purchase.

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Thanks @Wael_3rd . Our plan still need to be figured out in details, but it seems likely we would keep Bolt 1 as an Asset for the lifecycle of 2018 LTS and 2019 LTS, and depending on the availability of Bolt 2 we will see what makes sense for 2020 LTS.

What version of Unity will you base your teaching on? 2020 Tech Stream or 2019 LTS?

I also use Bolt in my high school classroom. It would be great to know if Bolt 2 will be stable enough to use in the fall. It will take some retooling of the course to use Bolt 2 and switching mid-year is not something Iā€™d look forward to - for many of my students the course is their first programming experience.

Generally in the fall I update the school computers to the latest stable version, so likely 2020 for next year. Students who use their own computers will likely grab the same most recent version.

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Hi @216830_Jwolf , it is too early to make plans for using Bolt 2 in production or for courses. We need first to provide a way to distribute it and collect more feedback, and there is some unknown around the stability of version 2 at scale, something we will discover when expanding the beta community. Bolt 1 is a solid and proven version that should be the reference until Bolt 2 gets ready.

This said, we would love to hear your feedback if you can try Bolt 2 when available!

Bolt 1 really isnā€™t that solid or proven, Iā€™m afraid, it still had the undo bug until a few months ago (where entire graphs would be destroyed), variable deletion isnā€™t non-destructible and graphs become unusably slow if not broken into macros (which is difficult as it isnā€™t an automatic process).

Flowcanvas is a much better and more solid alternative to Bolt 1.

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If we have to express interest for Beta here, Iā€™m doing so! Ive been using Bolt since its initial release, and have been active in the community, helping new users and bug hunting in new versions.

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Aaaand putting in my request as well. A long time user, and a tester for 1.3, 1.4, and 2, as well as an extender and maintainer of a collection of community extensions to Bolt.

:wave: to all the fellow discordites!

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Looking forward to testing out the beta if given the chance !

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Iā€™m just looking forward to a bug free release of Bolt 2. Frankly not overly enthused, but Iā€™ll wait to pass judgement until I see the roadmap.

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For existing licensed users of Bolt 1 and those who have acquired the Bolt 2 alpha through Ludiq, the source code for the asset was made available. Will the source code still be available or will it be closed off?

I found it very helpful to be able to make small changes if necessary to fix a bug, work around a Unity upgrade, or just learn from the code to create custom nodes.

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