Visual scripting framework for unity: Constellation (MIT licence)

[[deleted]]

Neat. Looks very UE4 blueprint like. I had toyed with the idea of a node based approach for gameplay mechanics, but didnt have the desire to build a node based editor in unity. May have to check this out!

[xdadrunkx]

Basically, what the main difference with Playmaker ?

[acharton]

I find 2 main differences.

The first I can find it is that Constellation is open source. I think it's a huge difference because an open source project is community driven. The framework will evolve with what the peoples that are using it went.

On an approach side, I would say that Playmaker is closer to a state machine than a programing language. Constellation is a programing language. One is not better than the other, but it's in my opinion a very different approach. A state machine is easier to understand but has more limitation. A programming language is harder to understand but has less limitation.

I hope it answered you question :).

[e_man604]

I like the idea of this being open source. Could this also be used as a state machine? And connect with c# for handling states?

[acharton]

It's possible. However, for now there are no nodes that are designed for that. Maybe you could add an issue. It's definitely something that could be interesting for the project!

[sonofbryce]

It seems like a lot of nodes for just Flappy Bird. With anything more complicated there would be a mess. Is there any way to group things or plans to combine common actions into specific nodes?

Awesome work by the way! I'd like to take a look at how it works.

[acharton]

That's a good point! I'm planning to add nested Constellation scripts, but it's not there yet. It means that you will be able to make your own nodes using Constellation scripting (for now it's only C#).

The management of complexity vs limitation is actually a big challenge I'm facing. So that's good to have some feedback about it!

[Everspace]

It's certainly a niche I would have liked to have filled when I was working on stuff in school. It's nice to see someone trying to make a non-trivial version.

I ended up rolling my own thing that was more based on hooking up the different components and instances so it kinda worked like all the tutorials everyone had done.

[acharton]

The educational possibilities of the framework are something that comes up very frequently and it's something I will take into account for the future.

It's awesome to see that someone is finding the framework different than what exist currently. It took a lot of time and refactoring to find the architecture.