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> code due to being unmaintainable, undebuggable or unoptimizable. I would argue that the shader editor in UE3 had none of these properties. It showed you cycl

> code due to being unmaintainable, undebuggable or unoptimizable. I would argue that the shader editor in UE3 had none of these properties. It showed you cycle count and each step of the graph visually for debugging. Also, I don't mean to be blunt but you aren't the target for those tools. Where they shine is when you have a level artist that needs to make a small tweak to how a shader looks. With those systems you don't have to loop in a dev to make it happen. You still need a solid tech artist to make sure things don't get out of hand and they're not a tool for every problem but in the domains where it aligns you see 10x gains on a regular basis.

nineteen999 8y ago
I think rather than the shader editor (which uses a similar-but-different node based interface) they are referring to the Blueprint programming system in UE4 which effectively wraps C++. It's extremely powerful, but it comes at a cost because it's nigh impossible to create diffs between different versions of Blueprints AFAIK. I did see this (https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-tools-and-tutorials/1573386-mgc-magic-nodes https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-...) the other day which looks pretty cool, essentially being able to embed some C++ at the Blueprint level, but I don't think that will necessarily solve the problem.
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  >> It's extremely powerful, but it comes at a cost because it's nigh impossible to create diffs between different versions of Blueprints AFAIK. Why not? What makes their representation undiffable?
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    I could be wrong but I believe the Blueprint assets are stored in a binary representation. So that rules out vanilla tools like patch/diff for the most part. See the sibling poster, they did actually add a visual diff/merge tool in a much earlier version and I missed that.
    - infinite8s 8y ago
      Ascii is a binary representation. It's just that we've built up a lot of tooling around being to visualize/manipulate that representation. There's no reason that similar tooling couldn't arise for other binary representations
      - nineteen999 8y ago
        I'm not really sure what your point is. The point is ASCII/UTF-8 are a binary representation that is easily parsed by humans, which is why we use it for writing code. Sure, if you want, dump both files with xxd and do a diff on that instead. There's been ways to diff binary files forever. Doesn't mean it is a great idea to store source code in that manner though. With UE4 you're not really supposed to be able to edit the Blueprint "code" outside the UE4 Editor.
- zsmizzle 8y ago
  They added a visual diff/merge tool for Blueprints in Engine version 4.7 (See "Blueprint Merge Tool" here: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Support/Builds/ReleaseNotes/2015/4_7 https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Support/Builds/ReleaseNo...)
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    That is neat, I'd never noticed that. Although in the context i've heard it discussed, it was more in the vein of "can't generate textual diffs/patch with them, as you can with C++".

nineteen999 8y ago

I think rather than the shader editor (which uses a similar-but-different node based interface) they are referring to the Blueprint programming system in UE4 which effectively wraps C++. It's extremely powerful, but it comes at a cost because it's nigh impossible to create diffs between different versions of Blueprints AFAIK. I did see this (https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-tools-and-tutorials/1573386-mgc-magic-nodes https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-...) the other day which looks pretty cool, essentially being able to embed some C++ at the Blueprint level, but I don't think that will necessarily solve the problem.

heavenlyblue 8y ago
>> It's extremely powerful, but it comes at a cost because it's nigh impossible to create diffs between different versions of Blueprints AFAIK. Why not? What makes their representation undiffable?
- nineteen999 8y ago
  I could be wrong but I believe the Blueprint assets are stored in a binary representation. So that rules out vanilla tools like patch/diff for the most part. See the sibling poster, they did actually add a visual diff/merge tool in a much earlier version and I missed that.
  - infinite8s 8y ago
    Ascii is a binary representation. It's just that we've built up a lot of tooling around being to visualize/manipulate that representation. There's no reason that similar tooling couldn't arise for other binary representations
    - nineteen999 8y ago
      I'm not really sure what your point is. The point is ASCII/UTF-8 are a binary representation that is easily parsed by humans, which is why we use it for writing code. Sure, if you want, dump both files with xxd and do a diff on that instead. There's been ways to diff binary files forever. Doesn't mean it is a great idea to store source code in that manner though. With UE4 you're not really supposed to be able to edit the Blueprint "code" outside the UE4 Editor.
zsmizzle 8y ago
They added a visual diff/merge tool for Blueprints in Engine version 4.7 (See "Blueprint Merge Tool" here: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Support/Builds/ReleaseNotes/2015/4_7 https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Support/Builds/ReleaseNo...)
- nineteen999 8y ago
  That is neat, I'd never noticed that. Although in the context i've heard it discussed, it was more in the vein of "can't generate textual diffs/patch with them, as you can with C++".