Reply To: [FEATURE REQUEST] Multiple windows for debugging graphs

NodeCanvas Forums General Discussion [FEATURE REQUEST] Multiple windows for debugging graphs Reply To: [FEATURE REQUEST] Multiple windows for debugging graphs

#16570
niram games
Participant

Hello.

I don’t think it’s necessary for the overview window to be a fully featured graph editor. The only necessary controls I can think of are zoom and pan. I’ve been thinking about this feature, and I imagined it working like this:

If you have an FSM owner with an asset FSM attached, and the FSM has sub-behaviour trees A and B, you could open one of them using breadcrumb navigation and then somehow create a new window to watch that sub-graph. Now, at runtime, that window would display the state of the nodes in that sub-graph for the currently selected graph owner, and if you change the selected graph owner, that window would display the same sub-graph, but for the new graph owner(who might have other nodes running). So you can debug any agent in the same way. Now, this raises an issue: what if you select a graph owner that doesn’t have the same FSM asset attached? Maybe display a message in the window that the currently selected graph isn’t appropriate? That seems a bit specific to that kind of workflow.

Another variant would be a window that displays the currently active sub-graph(if any) of the currently selected graph. So you could just select the FSM owner and see the BT that is currently relevant. But that is also quite specific to the workflow that the two of us are using. Also, what if multiple sub-graphs are currently active?

Let me know what you think about these ideas. How would you approach these problems?

When it comes to the GUI I would like it to look the same as in the main graph editor, for consistency’s sake and also because the graphs in the canvas window look absolutely beautiful. This is the most aesthetically pleasing tool in the Asset Store, even above Amplify shader editor. I just want to plaster my whole screen with different graphs. IMO, it looks better than a lot of the 2D and 3D assets in the store too. 🙂 I do understand your concern with performance though, and I can respect it. I would like it to present more information than the minimap(overriding the info property has been really handy for making the graphs more readable, so at least displaying that would be nice). Whatever design decision you make, I trust that it will be a good one, considering your work so far.

Also, If you don’t mind me asking a bonus question in the same thread:

Do you have any experiences in the industry that have inspired you to create such a practical and well-designed tool?