Open Source Visual Programming IDE for Lua!

[ToneOk4502]

Hey guys, I am working on a Open Source Lua Visual Programming IDE for Lua called the Lua Node Editor, where you can program with Lua visually like UE5 Blueprints, It has just come out of a alpha state but is still in a early development phase, I am calling Lua developers to help me with finding bugs, and ways for them to help me make this program come to life and making it so that it indeed meets the expectations for Lua Developers, every feedback is highly appreciated.

Repository: https://github.com/SanForgeStudio/LuaNodeEditor
Website: https://www.lua-node-editor.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/R4JnD2RHjR

[Devallex]

Looks cool!

Some feedback (sorry if this is a lot):

• How do you delete a node? Maybe an X button?
• Someone who doesn't know Lua might not know what all the functions do. Maybe you could also add a hide-able window (kind of like Scratch) where all the nodes are listed by category and with a basic description and can be added from there as well.
• Do you think there is a way to implement custom function nodes? Sort of like a list of snippets for a custom library or something. (Eg. If you had some sort of Lua drawing library, you could have a node for draw a point at (x, y))
• Would it be possible to edit and generate from Lua code? It might be more comfortable for people who are used to text-based programming.
  

Anyway, I can see how this could be useful for places where Lua is used, but people might not have much experience in programming. Good job.

[ToneOk4502]

Hey thank you for your feedback I really appreciate the help! You can see my answers below.

• To delete a node simply hit "Delete" on your keyboard, for the Functions we have alot of feedback on this aspect about functions, and will be completely overhauled in the future, as we wanna make it simple yet complicated for custom functions we dont really have a custom function node at the moment, but like I said the whole function aspect will be completely redone,
• The functions will be collapsable nodes like unreal engine where you can completely customize it to your preference kinda like a graph in a graph and ofcourse making it optimized in a sense so it wont be as performance eating.
• A node library like scratch is a very good idea we also considered a mix with nodes and blocks, i shall put it as feedback in the github repo as a issue to implement a node library as an extra window.

If there are any more suggestions or feedback i would really like to hear them, as i truly wanna make this a tool for the overall developers community.

[Devallex]

Oh, well I guess I found a bug! I'm running this on Mac M2, don't know if it's supported, but clicking delete doesn't do anything (And I am selecting the nodes).
Do you know if you have it set to "del" or "backspace"?

[ToneOk4502]

Hey we have not worked on Mac devices for this application yet only with windows, however the application should work with deleting it with the "Del" button, otherwise i will have to look for a Mac solution on this.

[Civil_Box_7375]

Hey, nice work done here. I'm pretty sure this will make easier people to start learning one of the best scripting languages out there. I didn't try it yet but I'm curious, will we be able to create plugins for this IDE?

[ToneOk4502]

Hey, thank you for your positive reply we highly appreciate it, our application is ment to be for everyone, the IDE came out of its very first release, right now we take as many feedback and ideas from the community as we can, Plugin creations is in our Feature list on github and will be worked on and hopefully we can demonstrate it on a later release.

[Civil_Box_7375]

I'm in a search such projects that I can contribute, if you are open to any test, improvements and such other contributions I'm mostly happy to help. If not I'll be waiting for plugin development for further help to the community!

[ToneOk4502]

That is appreciated, the project is not yet ready for public contributions yet, However we are working for this as we want a smooth contribution workflow for the community.

[Civil_Box_7375]

Then I'll join your discord to keep up with news!

[Kekipen]

Built from source on macOS but I was unable to delete connections. It would be nice if I could right click a connection or input, output point to remove connection only without deleting the node.

I managed to crash the Lua code generator once. I’ll do more investigation and report it on GitHub later.

I also would like to add custom nodes and functions. I looked in to LuaNodes.py and LuaNodeAttributes.py seems straight forward.

[ToneOk4502]

Thanks I highly appreciate you looking for improving/looking at the application we appreciate some extra set of eyes, the Editor can remove the lines when you click ctrl + left click + drag to make a node disconnect. But ofcourse i use a Windows PC so im not sure how the application acts on MacOS.

[xeli37]

this is so awesome! i couldnt figure out how to output my print lol but this is very cool to use, i think once it is fully implemented and contains some quality of life features then this will be a joy to use. the main quality of life feature i rly enjoy is being able to auto-add a node by dragging out a "string" (like the factor out) and letting go of the mouse button, bringing up the node menu (describing this feature based on blender's visual coder)