It’s code, but without automated tests, comments, style rules, and often stored in binary files making change management a nightmare.
It’s trying to paint but you can only use your fingers and also one of the other devs ate all the red.
Sure, but for kids, or someone new to development, it also lays out things visually for them. A seasoned software engineer writes a for loop with muscle memory, but when you’re trying to learn the underlying basics of what code does, stuff like this can be super helpful. While it’s obviously not designed for professional work, it’s great to let these tools flourish, for many they can be the stepping stone into going into a career of actually writing code.
Then, as a professional, they too can lament writing tests, commenting their code, linting it properly before they merge it, dealing with actual merge conflicts, dealing with others’ bad code, dealing with their own bad code, the cycle continues
I wish I could show this comment to people who built a multi million dollar project for the government using just these kinds of tools. But maybe you can only get away with that kind of thing in government contracting work lol
The node graph (shown on the left side of the image) is like one of the cornerstones of unreal engine though isn’t it? Meant for professional work? I think it’s stupid and could never use it.
It is made for professional work, but as far as I know, it’s mostly used to allow a bridge between that artists and the programmers.
What makes it interesting is that a programmer can code some functionnality to an object in C++ and then create a subclass in a blueprint (that visual bullshit). Then, a 3D artist can plug his model and animations simply with the visual code without any knowledge about programming.
If you use that to code the functionnality, it will be messy most of the time. I was really surprised to see how big of a graph you need to manage just to do a for loop with a condition and a couple variables, just to replicate 4 small lines of code. But sometimes, all you want is to call a function from the engine and it’s actually faster to open a blueprint and call it there than to create a C++ class and recompile everything.I guess that’s cool to make it easier for the artists, but at the same time, because most artists have no idea how code convention works, you’d better be able to program a very rigid interface for the artists to use, so they can’t fuck anything up
It’s code, but without automated tests, comments, style rules
So it’s game code.
But seriously, Unreal blueprints actually support all of those.
Binary assets though… and performance… and debugging when things start to misbehave in native code called from blueprint… 😵💫
That’s what I said when I joined a place that wrote almost everything in blueprints. Somehow all the other devs didn’t think it was possible.
I made a codeless RuneScape bot 10 years ago and it looked pretty much like this picture. The main advantage ended up being that it was plug n play (so you could quickly automate something) rather than “no code”
I made a code less bot engine too. I used a modified oscillating fan motor to click my mouse to grind mining when I wasn’t home.
So you manipulated physics to turn an analog process into a digital process. I would call that extremely low-level code.
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I too made a “no code” solution that looked like this… But to play poker online.
Screen reader software to read the cards. It took months to give it all the hands and positions to play from. It looked worse than this and ran on an old PC hidden under the stairs.
It paid for uni up until the point they added table captcha. I wasn’t smart enough back then to solve that one.
I have to use no code automation tools at work sometimes (marketing). I have created automation that are too big to load and have crashed the platform and require help desk to go in and delete my automation and start from scratch, but would probably be a dozen lines of code, because it restricts how you use AND and OR.
so you can’t do
If (A OR B) AND (C OR D) THEN set E to true
you have to do
-
first check A
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A is false
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now check B
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B is false
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exit
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first check A
-
A is false
-
now check B
-
B is true
-
now check C
-
C is false
-
now check D
-
D is false
-
exit
-
first check A
-
A is false
-
now check B
-
B is true
-
now check C
-
C is false
-
now check D
-
D is true
-
Check if they have E
-
they don’t have E
-
exit
-
first check A
-
A is false
-
now check B
-
B is true
-
now check C
-
C is false
-
now check D
-
D is true
-
Check if they have E
-
they have E
-
check if E is already set to true
-
it is
-
exit
-
first check A
-
A is false
-
now check B
-
B is true
-
now check C
-
C is false
-
now check D
-
D is true
-
Check if they have E
-
they have E
-
check if E is already set to true
-
it is not
-
set E to true.
Those no code automation tools drive me nuts.
I look at them and I think “oh that’s really handy” then 2 seconds after I find out it simply doesn’t have support for what I’m trying to or it’s cumbersome as fuck.
And it’s not even like I’m trying to do anything crazy either, it’s like the second you put one finger outside their perfect little use cases it all falls apart.
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Lol this meme format has been completely replaced https://www.tumblr.com/music-sync-maniac/732094691848372224/unholy-amalgamation
You can still see the subway cup in the background 😂
I actually really enjoy using Blueprints in Unreal Engine.
It feels like working with modular synths, and can get chaotic very quickly, which is honestly a ton of fun. It also forces you to have to stay organized and comment and format your blocks of code into something readable.
No, this is Patrick
Text editor free code.
Doesn’t scratch advertise its self as a visual coding langauge and not a “code less game engine”
You’ll have to use logic gates only for that one …
