Shuvro Sarker expressed interest in taking on nodification of the logic system as a Google Summer of Code project. Clarification was requested on the scope of the project and the steps needed to implement nodal logic.
Roger Wickes expressed excitement that the project was receiving attention.
Campbell Barton mentioned that nodal logic is a very ambitious project for anyone unfamiliar with the BGE source code to take on. In a separate thread dealing with GSoC ideas in general, Tom Musgrove expressed that “…nodifying the logic tools as a whole… has a broad enough scope to be outside of feasibility [for GSoC].” Campbell suggested other ideas which may be better for a GSoC project:
Dalai Felinto later added two more possible GSoC ideas:
And Benoit Bolsee had several more suggestions:
Erwin Coumans mentioned that the nodal logic system should be designed with more than just the BGE in mind and that it should attempt to address the needs of other game engines which utilize Blender. Campbell reminded Erwin that licensing of the node system would be up to the code author(s) ultimately, and as such it might not fall under the liberal BSD/zlib licenses which some external game engines (such as GameKit) would require. Campbell expressed that the first priority of the project should be to design a solid node system for Blender, and that other language bindings and game engines would be extras. Erwin expressed his disagreement with a BGE only focus, favoring a broader, more general system. Shaul Kedem agreed with Erwin’s perspective and suggested a lightweight BSD-licensed external module, but Charles Wardlaw saw such a module as being outside of the scope of a GSoC project and overly ambitious.
Charles did see other uses for the node system and wondered if it could be made generic enough to be used in creating particle systems and rigging nodes. Erwin replied that Benoit had indicated that the node system he had envisioned would be general enough to use for more than just the game engine.
Finally, Benoit Bolsee replied with the current state of the nodal logic system:
I like the whole nodal logic stuff, but all of those suggestions would be great to have!
What are the advantages of having nodal logic? The few that I can think of dont justify the amount of time that will have to be put into it. I know that we might be able to make new nodes using python, its easier to see and understand, grouping. But thats about it.
Either way, exiting stuff might be on its way to the BGE! … Its past due :yes:
Ex.
Nodal logic would allow for much more complex logic work than the current logic brick setup. Any data could be passed between nodes, (objects, strings, numbers, python objects, lists, dictionaries, custom data types, anything!), and much more complex work could be done with a single node.
My hope would be that logic bricks are removed as a medium between python and the c wrappers, and we could code directly in python. Then nodal logic would be used as a visual editor for pre-made python functions or side by side with python. Coders should not be limited by the logic editing tools of blender. Sadly it doesn’t sound like it will work this way.
No matter how they go about it, nodal logic will be a huge improvement over the current logic brick system. I hope this project gets picked up.
This seems to be very interesting. I hate when I have to use some logic brick when doing some stuff with python same as I hated when I had to write python script becouse the Logic brick were not sufficient. Also the situation that I think social called spaghetti hell would be solved with logic nodes. I hope that with nodal logic and new BGE api I will be avaiable to eliminate 95% of logic bricks/nodes in my game
One Czech programmer known as PPK(I think) has made his own particle(sort of) system and It looked quite good. Maybe someone could port it to 2.5/2.6 later
