Eventually you find out that coding is faster then compiling pre compiled stuff with nice bend cables.

Eventually you find out that coding is faster then compiling pre compiled stuff with nice bend cables.

That is challengeable. I actually use the node based system in GamePress, and I can see where it can be faster than text coding. I also see where text coding can be faster.

Even when discussing manageability, I see where both can be useful. They key is the integration of these two forms.

Also, node based systems are used a lot, just not as the key programming method. In Blender it is far more efficient to use nodes for rendering and post-processing. When it comes to the many "visual" elements in games, nodes make sense. Routing a scene through a Bloom node and outputting that to the render window is way faster than coding it with text.

Easier to adjust on the fly and see the results too. It can be a more parametric way of coding as well.

We had such code-generator tools in the 1980s. The COBOL code they generated was completely unreadable (uh, guys, it was COBOL). The target was the business logic used in what was then "business applications" which were things like costing and timekeeping for the most part, I think, and the audience was managers and other "non-programmers" who didn't want to pay to bring in an expert, after all it was just programming. The world was different then, it's hard to describe to kids today.

Anyway, these things turned out to be a bust because (a) they would get you 80% of the way to a working functioning application and getting the remaining 80% done required an expert to be brought in. The generated code was unmodifiable and the end product was usually costlier than writing from scratch. Also, without support for reverse-engineering and revision control, maintenance was impossible and the whole cost of development had to be swallowed again for each and every change request or bug fix.

Anyways, good luck to you. I watched a bunch of Scouts (youth aged 11-15) using the visual Arduino devkit to program robots without even blinking, so maybe this tech's time has come.

@brightening-eyes

All that has been taken care of

@jwezorek

This is to give a chance to anybody who wants to create programs, this is not only for programmers. Plus people look at things differently, a graphical interface (a graph) might be easier for some people to understand, rather than pages and pages of code.

@the incredible smoker

Not always, in this case one node will be used instead of writing bunch of lines of code.

@Bregma

At this point I could probably say the readability of the generated code is not that important, because you will be working with the graph, not the code, and if you want to modify the application, simply load the project and edit away, no need to decompile the executable.

@Stainless

I have to admit, I have changed the design several times, but the framework is pretty dynamic, so changes will not need a huge amount of work.

For the extra "crap", I gotta say that I am a bit worried about it, but I can have the compiler not to include some code if the related features are not used.

@Tutorial Doctor

Thanks for your support.

Thanks to all for your input.

By the way, I have uploaded some screenshots of the IDE, more updates will come soon.

I (like most of us I expect) wrote a system like this into the level editor of an old game of mine. It was great for connecting switches to doors, setting up scripted events to play in response to different things, synchronising various events etc etc.

I would never (ever, ever) have wanted to write the actual game like this.

I think this stuff is most useful to people like designers and artists. If you are comfortable working with code, I don't see how node based interfaces can ever come close to the flexibility and ease of use that a code-based IDE gives you.

Maybe all us haters are too old and in a few generations it will all be like this. But I've seen this trend come and go several times in my career and none of the fundamental problems have been or can be resolved.

Just to let you guys know, I have released the first early ALPHA version.