A million dollar question for the mad scientists

Verse
#1

Hey guys,

I’ve been using SK for a while and I really cannot thank you enough.
It’s a really powerful tool and probably the most underappreciated in the Unreal community.
Even though there is some quirkiness, I can manage to get around it.
It usually means that I have to move the code to BP and SK wraps around it.

After doing that for some time, I have codes spread around C++, BP, and SK.
Remembering where they are have become a more difficult task and I end up wasting time searching for them. It compounds the problem because BP is not really searchable.
This makes the productivity plummet which goes against using the scripting language in the first place.

So the million-dollar question is, will the new scripting language can do without BP?
Or must we still work with BP? Is this one of the design goals?

This is not a specific question about the language itself but the general tooling.
This has to be my #1 wishlist for the new language.

Yeah, I’m a text guy and it makes my life miserable pushing and pulling BP spaghettis and doing it over and over again whenever a new node squeeze in. It’s such a waste of life. I love spaghetti but not that spaghetti.

Thanks guys!

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#2

I am going to go ahead and assume that verse will be more deeply integrated into unreal. I highly doubt you will need bp anymore at all, it will merely be an option for those that are not willing/desiring to use verse. I highly doubt that epic would pour resources into verse for it to work like sk currently does. Agog did not have the sheer manpower to work on sk as epic does on verse, expect verse to work very well.

#3

Yeah, I really hope so. If C# can do it (examples below), why can’t the custom language? But I’m still restless until I hear from the scientists

  1. History but worth noting.
    https://mono-ue.github.io/
  2. On-going efforts that make me exciting whilst.
    Code Orchestra — Crush Depth Studios

I’ve been yearning for something other than C++ and BP.
In retrospect, I can’t understand why UE removed the scripting language (UE3 UnrealScript anyone??) and left us with the abusive BP. I think it is a big mistake.

The good thing is that non-coder can make something in UE easily but the bad thing is that it made coders’ life harder, if not miserable.

The proof? Look at the UE Marketplace. It’s littered with BP garbages and many are proudly advertising, “We are 100% BP”. Yikes! Unity also has many garbages but there are tons of good assets. It’s not hard to figure out why.

Cheers!

#4

Orchestra looks cool from a tech perspective but why oh why do people continue to work so hard at integrating languages that are… inflexible, noninteractive, abysmally reflective, and perform poorly. Not all of those descriptions match every language that they are trying to integrate, but at least one of those descriptions matches a language they are trying to bolt on to unreal.

BP is not a mistake from a marketing perspective, but I agree with you that it is an inferior solution to an actual language.

#5

In my opinion, C# will have its place if you want to use millions of C# libraries out there, regardless.

And I not saying BP itself is a mistake but giving us BP only is the mistake. (Yeah, some are saying, there is C++ but I bet these people never used any scripting languages. My first scripting experiences come from Lisp back in the 80s’ and there is nothing that comes close to Lisp even in these modern days)

Basically, BP is good for doing simple procedural stuff but not for logic programming.
You can make simple things easily but anything beyond that, it’s such a chore.

Having said that, I really cannot wait any longer. ~3yrs silence is long enough, don’t you think? I love SK guys, but at the same time, it goes the other way, kinda like family members, you know what I mean?

Cheers!

1 Like
#6

Lisp is my day job, I love the language but there are some Smalltalk dialects that compete with it as far as interactivity goes: https://gtoolkit.com/, https://pharo.org/

That is the nature of the NDA, it sucks but what can they do about it?

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#7

Yeah, I consider Smalltalk and Lisp the same family. ^^
I wish I can use them professionally once again.

I understand about NDA. It will be strictly prohibited if they are a 3rd party.
But now they are the Epic and it’s been long enough. I want to believe they can pull some strings without hurting anyone, no?

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#8

I wonder what that means to us.
Pure functional is cool but for games?? Basically, everything we see on screen is by side-effects.
I have more worries now and it probably explains that long silence; redoing everything all over again.

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1457079573674446861

#9

Hey the Mad Scientist, please say one thing.
“The new scripting language is independent of BP! It can work with it but it can totally be independent!”
Yes? or No?

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#10

They have said elsewhere that they are all under NDA or whatever and won’t be able to share or say anything until Epic does some more formal release/announcement. They shouldn’t risk their job or getting in trouble. I am sure they really want to share and talk about their work and I am sure they will once its more in the open.

Regardless of who they hire, or even anything old that was hinted at, doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything. A ton could have changed or perhaps little has. Only thing I hope/assume is they are just trying to really make sure Verse is a first class citizen and tool and it’s being thought out and designed for a long and bright future.

Only thing we can do is hope that that date is sometime in not too distant future. :smiley:

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#11

Just because a long time Haskeller is joining the team does not mean verse will be a pure, referentially transparent, side-effect free language. I have seen other language purists join teams where the language was influenced by their view but was not completely absorbed by it(dart and Gilad Bracha for example). Personally, I think it is great that they are diversifying the team with people of various language influences/infatuations, it should result in an interesting language.

2 Likes
#12

From a trusted source, I heard that the Verse project lead has changed. I hope it does not mean something bad has happened. It’s not good news for sure to have a lead change this late. And now Simon onboard. Any small news worries me.

Remember we all cheered when Epic bought SK 3 years ago? And that’s the end of it. What a shame.

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#13

That could be bad news or it could be life. Maybe the project lead had something occur in their life that changed their priorities?

#14

While it could definitely mean something more. I wouldn’t worry about it.

It could also be a good sign. I wouldn’t necessarily immediately take it as a bad sign. Perhaps the previous lead was managing let’s say 10 people. But now there is 30+ people on the team and that previous lead is simply better suited in a different role.

Projects often need different things from their leaders in different stages of a project’s lifetime. My day job’s project, that I’ve been on has grown from 20 people to 150+ people over last 3 years. A ton has changed including various leaders(moving up, down, or sideways), and more often than not it was beneficial for most everyone.

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#15

https://skookum.chat/t/unreal-verse-coming-2022/2099/3

#16

Yeah, we all know it’s coming, but we don’t know when and what form it will come in. Furthermore, we have no idea if it will be part of UE5 initial launch.
So much hype for nothing for 3 years.

#17

I’d argue that there has been very little hype. If more had been said publicly it would be easier for us to discuss. :grin:

That being said, Verse is a huge project with a large team and we are trying to make something work for metaverse-based projects (take that as you will - however corny it may sound given recent events) which has many challenges not yet really solved by computer science theory. I’ll go so far as to say that Verse is being used internally and as Tim said - it is expected the public will see Verse later this year. We’re working on it…

2 Likes
#18

The more I use UE the more I hate BP. It’s simply a disaster to leave us to script in BP only. It’s such a mess dealing with the spaghettis and it is so easy to get broken when used with C++.

Tim originally said he removed UnrealScript because it requires high maintenance (from Epic’s side). He is so wrong. BP probably requires 10 times more maintenance to make it useful and it’s still quite not there.
He finally realized he needs a scripting language for his own purpose and it’s ~10 years too late to admit and still counting. If it weren’t for Fortnite Mod, we won’t be getting it. lol.

Anyway, it goes back to my original question. Can Verse live without BP? For example, when we create a Verse class, this class will automatically appear from the Editor without having to inherit BP class from it. From the Editor, users can instance the Verse class and the user will only be able to change default parameters for the Verse class. No visual scripting is allowed for the Verse class. UE3 used to call this Archetype and we will use Verse as Archetypes from the Editor. So it’s perfectly a sound concept.

Yeah, sure, users can inherit BP from the Verse class to be able to do whatever he wants but I never want to create BP classes from it. (this is a safety mechanism that I(and our programmers) don’t accidentally put some visual code in Verse class.
I’ll use BP only for procedural stuff where visual nodes better represent the flow such as animation.

If the answer is Nay, please do something before it becomes final.

Thanks.

1 Like
#19

I hate BP as well, I do not see how anyone finds it to be a tolerable way to communicate with a computer.

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