Status of Prefab Variants and Blackboards

[sinzer0Participant]

Hello It’s been awhile since I reported that blackboards don’t work at all with prefab variants in that the variants don’t detect changes to the blackboard.

I was wondering what the status of that is with node and flow canvas?  Is it something that is ever going to be fixed or just the way it’s going to be?

[GavalakisKeymaster]

Hello,

Do you mean the issue where for example changing the name of a variable does not mark the prefab dirty and saved (in both normal prefab and prefab variant the same)? If yes, that is fixed for the next version.

Thank you.

[sinzer0Participant]

I mean the issue where each variable is not treated as it’s own and instead any change to the blackboard marks the entire blackboard as changed and not the individual variable.  Ideally it would be nice if blackboard variables worked how variables work on a normal c# component.

For example if the blackboard has a Health variable I want to be able to change the Health value in variants and have those values detected as overrides.  And of course adding and removing variables should work like normal c# components current work.

[GavalakisKeymaster]

Hello again,

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for clarifying. I understand what you mean. The problem is that blackboard variables are currently serialized altogether with the blackboard (as a BlackboardSource type object which contains a dictionary of the variables). For what you require, the serialization of the variables will need to be changed so that each variable is serialized independently, in a list of strings (since variables would still need to be serialized in json), serialized natively by Unity in the Blackboard object itself. While this is not difficult at all to achieve, the problem is mostly backwards compatibility. For that, I will need to take a look at how to properly update previous serialization into that new required one for your suggestion and if everything works as expected, I will make the change. (I think it’s a good one).

 

Thank you!

[sinzer0Participant]

[quote quote=14308]Hello again, Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for clarifying. I understand what you mean. The problem is that blackboard variables are currently serialized altogether with the blackboard (as a BlackboardSource type object which contains a dictionary of the variables). For what you require, the serialization of the variables will need to be changed so that each variable is serialized independently, in a list of strings (since variables would still need to be serialized in json), serialized natively by Unity in the Blackboard object itself. While this is not difficult at all to achieve, the problem is mostly backwards compatibility. For that, I will need to take a look at how to properly update previous serialization into that new required one for your suggestion and if everything works as expected, I will make the change. (I think it’s a good one). Thank you! [/quote]

Hey Gavalakis, wanted to check in and see if you have looked at this anymore?  It’s the my one thing that I think would make nodecanvas + unity perfect if the blackboard variables could be overridden etc on prefab variants

[GavalakisKeymaster]

Hello again,

Unfortunately I haven’t looked at this yet. It is however in the roadmap (high priority) for the things I will start working on by the end of August. If there are not backwards compatibility issues, then hopefully this improvement will make it 🙂

Thank you and have a great summer time!

[Author]

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