Reply To: FlowCanvas & NodeCanvas while in Editor Mode?

[Gavalakis]

Hello and thank you for your positive feedback! Much appreciated 🙂

It used to be possible a long time ago with some (hack) changes, but it is no longer and currently not possible to execute flowscripts in edit-mode. Because FlowCanvas (and NodeCanvas) is essentially built as a runtime visual scripting tool, initialization of the graph (binding ports, instantiating macros, assigning certain references etc) is taking place in runtime only. Some things are taking place in “awake”, while others as soon as the graph is “started”. Furthermore, some nodes (event nodes more specifically) rely on the OnGraphStarted “callback” so that they subscribe to certain game events (and OnGraphStopped for unsubscribe). On the other hand of course, an editor only houdini-like tool for procedural creations does not really need event nodes for example (or most of the things like reflection that are taking place in a flowscript).

Thus, for such a tool, I think that a brand new type of graph based on the core framework would be a better fit. For this to be possible though, I would need to decouple a few things first so that a completely new type of graph can be created by deriving from FlowGraph. Currently the FlowGraph class implements a few things that FlowScript class is inheriting and using. Those things will need to be moved into FlowScript itself where they belong better, thus leaving only framework related functionality to the FlowGraph class.

This change is something I do plan to make and when that is done, I think that creating a completely new flowgraph type (even editor-time flowgraph ala houdini) will become far easier, but it remains to be seen of course 🙂

If you want to elaborate on anything, please let me know.
Thank you!

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