Are Flowcharts abandoned?

I found an intresting power use of the flowchart to create nice state machines and logical dialog controllers... but i feel it was abandoned, regardless of small bugfixes it has missing KEY elements and making the "feature request" is just pilling up in with tons of other requests.

Some stuff that i feel it shouldnt be even asked as a featuer because they are needed for regular use:

1. Load and save Json format: this is the MAIN reason of this post, its a keystone feature needed to be able to work in teams using flowchart, without it literally had made my work almost inconvenient compared to a basic simple json
2. Detect "dead end": currently it doesnt have any trigger to detect if it moved or not, the "enter" and exit are not working correctly because there is no "failed to exit" or "failed to enter".
3. Return UID when tag is empty:
This is a small problem but real, right now is forcing to put a tag on every node, but it should return a number to identify the node (similar to UID of a sprite for example).
4. Get child output tag/UID: similar to the previous one, for some reason we can read the parent (previous) but can't read the child (next) to be able to flow with the code.

Hope it helps to give more inspiration to make it grow, flowchart would have a lot of potential if it gets more flexible on this details.

I'm personally still waiting for the scripting API. I kind of expected that to come sooner rather than later, but it seems to be later... Save and load from JSON would also be great. Right now when I tinker with it I basically write a parser in the eventsheet that outputs the node as a JSON. :V

I don't think it's fair to call it abandoned - flowcharts were last updated just 2 weeks ago in r437.

A problem we often have with feature requests is for any one feature, you can go down a rabbit hole of endless improvements and sub-features. Take effects, instance variables, the Platform behavior, functions, the Animations Editor, 3D Shape, etc. - for any of those and pretty much any other feature you can think of, someone could ask "is this abandoned? it doesn't have XYZ which is absolutely essential!" Really the question is, with our limited time and resources, does it generally do most of what most people need from it? Every individual user has a different set of requirements, and so no specific feature will always do absolutely everything that every single person could ever possibly expect of it.

As ever it's also sometimes hard to understand what people mean, and people often request things that are already possible. The feature request guidelines are there to try to avoid these problems. For example in brief my feedback would be:

1. Load and save what? Do you mean the runtime state? Or the data of which nodes you have? Or the format it's saved to the project (which is actually already JSON)?
2. You should already be able to detect a dead end by comparing if the output count is 0
3. It's not clear to me why you'd need this or what specific problem you're trying to solve
4. Again it's not clear what problem you've had here and whether something else can solve it

Resolving these issues can end up taking a great deal of time and energy - so much so that our policy is generally not to respond to feature requests, because we get so many and it takes so long to discuss them, that we just don't actually have time to do that. So really I'd encourage you to look at the feature request guidelines and try to always follow them when talking about features. These could also all be submitted individually to the feature request tracker if they haven't been already, with full details about the request following the guidelines - that's our process for this and it means these issues can be dealt with individually more clearly than usually happens on the forum.

Load and save what?

For me I was talking about the data of the flowchart and/or individual nodes. I don't think that that the feature is abandoned but this thread was just kind of fitting to me since I recently tinkered with them a little. And I thought about submitting a feature request but I just didn't have the urge to do so yet, it's not a pressing issue for me.

Totally understand the problem with a big engine growing more and more making the need of more maintenance and at the same time more requests to fit expectations... about it i would say that you should start thinking about the possibility of open source, following the example of the other game engines.

1. Load and save what? Do you mean the runtime state? Or the data of which nodes you have? Or the format it's saved to the project (which is actually already JSON)?

Just as mentioned above, the possibility to load the entire flowchart, and to save it. So it will allow to read the flowchart as a file, like an array and json files, this helps on Dialogue oriented projects to be able to fix/translate/edit long chains of dialogues.

You should already be able to detect a dead end by comparing if the output count is 0

here is a problem with wording, currently output and value are the same thing. here is an example, this returns 3 outputs, but it only has 1 output in 3 values, also if i want to "move" on the option 3 nothing is telling the system that is not possible.

It's not clear to me why you'd need this or what specific problem you're trying to solve

Again it's not clear what problem you've had here and whether something else can solve it

both can be better understood looking at this picture, only option 2 has output, but currently Flowchart is calling output to all the lines and values, and nothing is telling the system that is not possible to go through the other options, it will just stall.

Just as mentioned above, the possibility to load the entire flowchart, and to save it. So it will allow to read the flowchart as a file, like an array and json files, this helps on Dialogue oriented projects to be able to fix/translate/edit long chains of dialogues.

I'm still not sure what you mean. At runtime there are two kinds of data for flowcharts: the model (which nodes you have and which they connect to), and the state (e.g. the current node). Do you mean one, the other, or both? Do you want some kind of tool to export a flowchart from the editor and then load that at runtime? Or do you want to load external data in to a flowchart in the editor? It's not clear what exactly you are saving and where, and how you want to load it as well.

Communication is hard and we have this problem with most feature requests. It is surprisingly hard to figure out what people actually mean when they ask for something more or less in passing. To be clear it's helpful to describe things in detail, with step-by-step workflows, screenshot mockups, etc.

ive never used flowcharts-are there for java script only or can u use it with events?

shall i start using it?

ive never used flowcharts-are there for java script only or can u use it with events?

They are currently event-only. Whether you should use them depends on what you want to do. If you do a text-adventure or something, they are great.

To answer the main question, no, the feature is not abandoned.

We are always working on something to improve Construct, and we can't work on multiple things at the same time. Usually what happens is that periodically some part of Construct will be worked on and a few things will be fixed and/or added all in one go.

Do you want some kind of tool to export a flowchart from the editor and then load that at runtime? Or do you want to load external data in to a flowchart in the editor?.

yes exactly that, the chance to export and import flowcharts entirely with connections and data.

So:

1-User exports flowchart as json

2-Other user edit the content (like for example the dialogues)

3-Import into the editor to be able to test the gameplay.

4-optionally: Probably, when in the editor, doing double click into a imported json flowchart file, will open the flowchart editor like a normal flowchart.

are there any tutorials on how to use the flowchart?

are there any tutorials on how to use the flowchart?

there are demos on the starting page of the engine, the flowchart it self doesnt have much right now, but will be very versatile if the export to json is added, because for the momment is the main backsteep since normally a text adventure will be translated to many languages and right now it doesn't allow to be edited outside construct, reconstructing one by one by hand each dialogue is tedious on big storylines.

are there any tutorials on how to use the flowchart?

I thought this video was pretty good: youtube.com/watch

normally a text adventure will be translated to many languages and right now it doesn't allow to be edited outside construct, reconstructing one by one by hand each dialogue is tedious on big storylines.

You definitely shouldn't make a flowchart per language. Just have one flowchart for all languages, and instead of putting the actual text in the flowchart, just put the key to look up in the Internationalization object.

Is that what you wanted the save/load JSON feature for? If so you shouldn't need it after all, as using one flowchart for all languages is a better solution.

oh alr thx alot Ashley shatteredmindofbob and kingpirux ill be looking at those vids and tutorials

Thanks,

Radkampfwagen