New Flowcharts feature in r370

Here's another example.

Say I have a character called Anne, and I want to display her image during a dialogue, so I add an 'output' (for whatever reason) called Image, and call it Anne.

Months later into development, with hundreds of lines of dialogue added, I decided I don't want to call her Anne anymore, but instead, John. How do I quickly change the flowchart to make that change?

If it were a variable, I could just change the value to the new name. Here, however, I feel I'd have 2 choices. Go through each and every one of those hundreds of nodes I'd created, replacing every Anne with John, or suck it up and keep the code referencing John as Anne.

Again, in the program I referenced, you'd just need to change a variable and the referenced image, and you're done in seconds.

One of the feedbacks that I've seen pop up constantly is that "Scirra needs to release new features as early as possible so users can give feedback before everything is set in stone". So releasing early you cannot expect the feature to be fleshed out and perfect after a few weeks. I just think the flowcharts need more time to cook, and I hope they will indeed be cooking. Arcweave seems to have been around since 2018, and it's a dedicated tool for just this task, so I'm not surprised that it's much more fleshed out at this point.

These examples are really good btw., very simple yet obvious use cases that should work.

I asked several questions and offered some requests a month ago and didn't hear back.

As I mentioned then, I paused work on a project because I was specifically working on a visual novel and had figured out a way to allow Construct 3 to understand Arcweaver, but it wasn't without it's issues.

If you find my previous posts unconstructive, I'm not sure what I can do about that, I'm afraid. As I said, I tried to help out a month ago, but I guess that was too late.

When I first read the email saying we were getting flowcharts, I was excited as I saw it as a potential method of enhancing or even replacing the editor.

I then realised that it was only being used as a method of data storage, like an array, and was disappointed, but still hopeful I could use it for dialogue.

I guess I can, but in a convoluted way based on the examples in my previous posts.

In another game I made, I created branching dialogues using arrays. It had over 100 story events and paths. It still used less than half of the events that the short flowchart example uses.

Even that was too many for me, which is why I built the bridge between Construct and Arcweaver for my next project.

One of the feedbacks that I've seen pop up constantly is that "Scirra needs to release new features as early as possible so users can give feedback before everything is set in stone". So releasing early you cannot expect the feature to be fleshed out and perfect after a few weeks. I just think the flowcharts need more time to cook, and I hope they will indeed be cooking. Arcweave seems to have been around since 2018, and it's a dedicated tool for just this task, so I'm not surprised that it's much more fleshed out at this point.

These examples are really good btw., very simple yet obvious use cases that should work.

I understand, but my point was that I don't think Construct's flowcharts had any intention of being remotely similar to Arcweave.

I don't think it's a case of it not being fleshed out yet. I think it's a different skeleton entirely.

I've tried multiple flowchart editors, and recommended the developers look into the best I had found.

When I first heard flow charts, I got excited. I think they have a lot of potential, but in their current form they don't do anything for me that I can't more easily achieve using other methods.

After working with them, in their current state, they don't make data easier to work with, instead, they pollute your project with a billion string tokens to keep track. There isn't any reason the user should be doing this. Construct imo, already has a huge issue with not being able to define scope for anything, and this just heaps even more things for the user to have to organize and track.

1. If flowcharts are being intended for to be used as a solution to dialogue branches and not much else, I think they are okay, but the tedium of hooking them up and the amount of "boilerplate" ACES required to use seems odd.

2. I agree with much of what Overboy has said. Being able to use them to set up state machines or behavior trees would be ideal. Creating a seamless way for a flowchart to hook into logic, without having to jump around in a project is a must, though. The current method of connecting logic to the flowchart involves alot of repetitive work, and is error prone. Having a data only flowchart doesn't make sense, given the expectation that flowcharts have ALWAYS had logic boxes.

creating the logic IN the flowchart isn't nec needed though, but having a drop down list of available hooks that have been defined in the eventsheet would be nice. Anything to facilitate connecting the two.

But honestly... I would have WAY more use out of behavior trees and state machines. And flowcharts in construct make it harder to produce those logic structures than defining them in other ways.

Also... naming them flowcharts is wrong. Every flowchart ever does have have embedded logic. I can see why, from a marketing standpoint, so many people have been disappointed. They were expecting aflowchart, not a data tree. I heard flowchart and was like, OBOY, only to find out they are gui for limited json file creation.

> Just had a look at the new flow chart, and without meaning to sound offensive, I'm honestly massively disappointed. You can't even create loops back to an earlier piece of dialogue without having to create a link and some events that control this. Which means for every future project, you need to jump through the same hoops just to achieve this result.

>

> Did anyone look into the software I recommended? I understand being able to combine the flow chart with the event sheet, but NEEDING to connect it to the event sheet is another thing entirely.

At risk of souring the tone of the forums, this feels unbelievably entitled. When it was in beta, a lot of people had a lot of opinions about what the Flowchart feature should be and it was pretty clear that it just wasn't feasible to address everyone's input straight out the door.

I also feel that the Flowchart feature is missing some fundamental features - in fact, like you, I also halted production on a game that was pretty dependant on a few of them - but I'm also aware that it's in its infancy. This is literally the first stable release. Did you expect the C3 team to fully implement a system as complex and feature rich as Arcweaver overnight? These things take time and iteration and this kind of response just seems so blindly-obviously not the way to get what you want.

Expressing my disappointment, then giving examples as to why is entitled? Geez, people are so thin skinned these days. I repeated that I'm not meaning to be offensive, but that's clearly not enough. Would it have been easier for you if I put lots of sad or embarrassed faces in my text so you knew how I felt?

If we're only allowed to express our disappointment when a feature is in beta, then I won't ever be able to contribute. I've been 'burned' by a beta build way too many times to risk using it again, and I don't have the time to jump on and test a lot of the features these days. The requests people were making were great, and I threw my hat into the mix, offering additional requests and suggestions. But sadly, I don't see a single one of these requests added to the new feature.

Did I expect the C3 team to fully implement a system as complex and feature rich as Arcweaver overnight? No. When did I suggest that? What a strange thing to say. However, after 2 months, I found myself disappointed to see the flowchart system heading in a direction that had me concerned, and simply expressed that.

I've been using Construct since 2011, back when Construct 2 was still in beta. For a team of, what, 5 people, they've done amazing work, and I'm proud to have supported Scirra as long as I have. In these 13 years, I've expressed my disappointment twice. My words were blunt and honest, yes, but I backed them up with examples and reasoning. They're adults and can understand that. Your addition to this thread made no contribution beyond trying to white knight your way into putting me in my place. Don't go labelling me entitled.

Rather than saying "the Flowchart feature is missing some fundamental features" where's your useful feedback?

AnD4D

There is nothing entitled about what you said. Being disappointed that a new feature doesn't fundamentally address what you hoped it would is not entitlement. Its a useful opinion

What I hope to see from Flowcharts, is wayy more simplified event sheet stuff, and more "do most of the work in the flowchart view".

Events could be mostly "on node changed" etc., not as much tokenising and such. How? I don't know, just wishful thinking but wanted to share.

I'd absolutely love to see a function dropdown list in flowcharts, which I know others have mentioned and may not be on the cards.

The reason a function list would be amazing, is, in flowcharts current form (respectfully, it's early days), it is a feature that you could think "well, I could just make this kind of system with event sheets already".

Things like hierarchies, 3D, custom actions, they all have either saved time, gained us performance, or unlocked something we could never do before.

Flowcharts feels like a "you could use this, or could do it manually" type of situation, there'd be not much saved time (because of all the events and tokenising, which you'd be doing if you made your own flowchart system via events and JSON - although one time save would be not making some UI to link stuff together), no performance difference AFAIK if you use flowcharts or did it by hand, and it is indeed something we can do ourselves via events.

This is why I feel a function list or something, would be incredible to see - it suddenly opens a brand new way of designing logic, could even adapt flowcharts beyond dialogue systems and more for AI, kinda like Sims had with it's developer software Edith for designing Sims AI logic. I mean, you could do AI, with current flowcharts or a manually created flowchart system in events, but just feels like it adds that extra flair that Construct is known for, visual rapid development, what you see is what you get.

But, I get this may not be the intended vision and just needlessly complex. Worth sharing feedback even if it's echoing previous comments, I suppose if a lot of people say something, then that means something.

I think a lot of users probably don't ever check the beta releases - it feels risky to do so when working through a large project, so it's understandable that the vast majority of users will be exposed to a new feature for the first time on it's official release when there is a prompt to update. I actually do really appreciate the ability to download the betas though (and did in this particular case for the first time). Just chiming in too, I think this is good start and can appreciate that there are probably a lot of behind the scenes complexities in getting this to work really solidly. I haven't found a use for flowcharts yet, but if we could build state machines with them then they would become extremely useful. I look forward to seeing how the tool evolves.

I haven't found a use for flowcharts yet, but if we could build state machines with them then they would become extremely useful. I look forward to seeing how the tool evolves.

I also haven't found a use for it yet, and would be curious if there's anyone who has.

Also, I agree with an earlier comment that this feature should be labelled (WIP) or something. People who don't get betas or emails about the features, or don't read through these things may not understand that the feature is still in development.