Flowgraph Bugs and Improvement suggestions

Hello @TStabbert and the other devs!


I am in love with flow graph. I am making a cool little tutorial going quite deep into it. Before I do that, I wanted to highlight some issues or places for improvement I have found.

CTRL+D for duplicate?
Kinda simple, when I have a node, I wish I could CTRL+D to duplicate it (Same as CTRL+C & CTRL+V)

Comment should move nodes by default.
A little one, but I purly use the comment feature as a group that I intend to move. I didn't even know I could enable nodes to move with it as all of the example nodegraph missions have it set to 'without nodes' by default.


Quick connect never really offers helpful suggestions.
Not sure how I can offer a good suggestion, but it seems that I never get a useful suggestions from it. in my screenshot, this pos is right next to another POS and wont suggest it. I would honestly rather see a few options (even if there wrong) than no options at all.

I use this alot for Vehicle IDs as I normally only fetch them once. I really wish quick connect for IDs could think "where is the nearest Vehicle ID for me to offer".
just an example

I only do this once, and I have to scroll across my whole graph to connect them each time.

SubGraphs are cool but I want them to act as templates/node types.
I made a custom marker type which is called Marker that auto dismisses itself when collided (and plays a sound). I also wanted it to block flow if NOT triggered yet. So I came up with something like this;

(Both Marker and Add Time are Subgraphs)

It works great and I love the ability to set the inputs and outputs! All is good!

However... these are all treated as unique instances... If I copy and paste it, it will make a new version of it. This has a big issue, like in my shared example, I later noticed I could of used a Switch Branch instead of Flow Branch.... but.....


I already copied and pasted (and used the subgraph) all over my mission... (everytime I open Flowgraph or save all these subgraph's show on the tabbar). So I can't easily update one and have the rest update. Also I do not want to see them all open as they all do the same thing. I find myself just spam clicking the most right tab until they go away.

I would love the ability to flag a subgraph as a new custom node type. I know i can use LUA (and later I did) to make a custom nodes, but the functionality you have provided is 99% of the way there, just need it to act like a type of node and not a group of nodes.

Custom Trigger code has out of date TODO.

"Currently only works when a vehicle ID is supplied". This is wrong, it WILL work without a VehID. The code sets it to the player if no VehID is supplied.



Color TSStatic objects node?
I made this custom lua node because I use Spawn TSStatic to make markers that I want to have full control over (Race markers are forced to be facing down). I cant use vehicle color due to it not being a vehicle (even though it does have an instance color) so I made this, not sure if many people will want it.


No documentation on custom nodes LUA. Could have a small sidebar hint or something or intellisense?
As I said, I now make custom Lua nodes, but getting started was tough as I had to search in the forum (via google) to get the answer "How do I get Input/Output pin values?'. I cant find it on the docs site or anywhere on the Flowgraph ui. I would really like a small tab somewhere on the customlua properties which tells you what vars/syntax you have access too. self.pinin for example should be exposed to the user.
If it could have some code auto completion that would rock but I know that may be a little too much for a niche node.

Getting lost in the graph
I understand that this is partly my fault, but, my nodegraphs are in different areas? It's hard to tell without knowing my canvas X + Y but. If I navigate to one Graph, and then move to another and back to the original. My Graph has disappeared, its still there but it's far off in the top right of the graph (I will use CTRL+A and "Focus Selection" button to fix this).
I think it maybe resetting the canvas x and y to 0,0? and my graph is not at 0,0 due to me copy and pasting it from a larger graph.
Its quite hard to explain because it feels like going from one graph to another has no issue, but other graphs do... Later if needed I can share my flowgraph.

Explosion node ?
I know about the fire node, and I can set fire and explode a car with it, but I want to make some pyrotechnics like a cardboard box that explodes and cant. This is a want, not a need. Just the ability to make an explosion out of thin air.

Mouse out of sync when dragging a node over a distance
Sometimes I copy and paste a group of nodes, but I need them over in another part of my graph. So I just select them with left click and then use right click + drag to pan across the graph. The panning works fine but for some reason the nodes are moving but at like half the distance that my mouse travles, this causes the nodes get left behind and I have to pan back to them, click them again and drag them again.

Playsound choose audio file picker forces you to select a .JSON file
Quite simple when you try to select the file from the file pick up on the play audio note for some reason it forces you to only have prefabs.json and not .mp3, .wav etc... I think this is just an oversight because I am not exactly sure how you would use a prefab in the play sound node.

Ability to teleport camera to 3DTransform
After a while my mission gets quite spread out, also depending on where I put my original car before opening the world editor in maybe far away from my 3-D Transforms. I'd like ability as we have in the world editor to be able to double-click on a 3-D transform and teleport to it, or perhaps "move camera to position" option next to the other "Poition to camera" options.



Thanks for all your work. The info on Flowgraph is really lackluster and I hope to share some of the things I learned and will share a cool StuntMan mission I made with it later.

 

Wow, I don't know how I missed this thread! I fully agree Flowgraph is BeamNG's best-kept secret, and could use some further support and documentation. That said, quick connect is actually a bit more useful than it lets on, you just have to provide a unique name to your input/output(s) in order to use it.

Let's say that you have a large number of nodes that need to be reset every time the graph enters a state. You could manually plug the enterState flow point to each and every one of those nodes, or you could give the enterState pin a name, e.g. <onStateStart>, and after that, your output will appear under that name in the quick connect drop down menu. In fact, in your screenshot, the game is even trying to suggest a name for your output pin, <pos>. If you were to click that small check mark to the right of the text field, the pin will be given the name <pos>, and it would appear in the quick connect drop-down.

 

Some two other issues I have found.


Bug: Weird race condition when using Countdown Node and multiple states/Losing input focus on entering simultaneous game states.
I had an issue that when my countdown was finished, I would get a second of power then the car would Idle. I thought it was stalling but some debugging I noticed my input was essentially reset. I tried to get around this a few diff ways and ended up learning that if your countdown is finished and you entered more than one state you will lose input focus. I am assuming when you enter a state the input bus has to quickly reset and if you have more than one state.
I bypassed this issue by making a sacrificial state that does NOTHING but causes my Timerstate to run a split second later and I dont lose focus and my playerVeh wont stall/lose input.
Nothing state in the pic below, without it, countdown will finish and if the transition is more than 1 state it will lose input. Countdown used to be in GameplayLoop but made it its own state when debugging, doesn't change the outcome if its inside of timer or gameplay.



QOL request: a way to flag nodes to "Automatically reset when entered state".
I use a lot of custom raceMarkers and when I enter the state I need to reset them all. This has caused my graph to look messy due to how many reset lines I draw (I know I can hide them). I think it would be nice that reset pins come with a toggle for "reset on state enter" or something.


I would really like any devs input on these, I don't wana be annoying by pining random devs.

 

Bug: Play Sound has no ID or way to pause/stop sound after its started
Bug: play sound has a flow in pin but should be an impulse in pin due to the fact that if you just connect a flow you will get spammed with that sound and no way to terminate it.

Bug: Channel input on sound node doesn't seem to work.

Suggestion: Audio doesn't have a "finished playing" output pin.

 

BUG:

Align for coupling will auto connect a truck and trailer when the car is being spawned in BUT if you use the node for existing vehicles they will not connect.

 

Bug:

I have no idea how to replicate this, but I have noticed sometimes that all of my states get duplicated, but are left parentless. So we’re normally have “Main State > Setup Scene” I still have that, but then I have another state that is just “Setup Scene”. It’s exactly the same as the one inside of main state and has all the nodes and links as normal, but it does absolutely nothing and there’s no way to remove it without going into the json file and removing it by hand. If I find a way to duplicate this I’ll let you know.

 

BUG:
Extreme low FPS when Flowgraph editor is open.

 

THIS...so much. I'm trying to work on a flowgraph mission (partially thanks to your own great YT tutorial videos) and whenever I move the flowgraph window around to one of the "snapping boxes" for lack of a better term, the entire world editor window and flowgraph editor windows go black and I'm popped out to my desktop. I can mouse over after a minute and everything loads back in but this makes editing for flowgraph really slow and really tedious.

 

Someone had a fix for it here, but last I tested it, it didn't work.

https://www.beamng.com/threads/flowgraph-optimized-draw-mode.95543/