now, this may seem like I'm just fussing around on trivial details, but i assure you this is all going according to plan

Test grid background and placeholder tiles. I wasn't quite aiming for windows 9x buttons but it sorta veered that way. dunno if I'll keep them

you ever think about how "europe" basically jsut means "good rope"

I'm amazed I've managed to play Blue Prince for a few weeks now before getting the song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" by europe pop one hit wonder "Eiffel 65" stuck in my head, but I've got the song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" by europe pop one hit wonder "Eiffel 65" stuck in my head now.

@cwebber @spritely @dthompson @juliana omg you did it you made libre graal

@cwebber In the spirit of your call for joke explanations, I'd like to elaborate on my contribution above. I don't really know what the deal is with mastodon Notes, but I saw a remark that reminded me of a little known interview with my friend Game Developer David Lynch where he explains how fill rate works, so I was riffing on that. #explainexplainap

@cwebber you see, activity pub is a duck, and all those little notes are crackers. it can't get enough of those things!

I want this to be real so bad XD

I put it to the test by translating my test patch from my python fronted to a hypothetical equivalent node based representation without regard for wire placement and then stepped through my wire placement rules by hand. I'm very pleased with the results, it's a lot clearer to me what it does than the python version is at a glance.

also I am delighted that people keep thinking of examples of games instead of other visual programming languages in response to this thread. it's one of the ways I know I'm on the golden path.

I figure the eagle eye view of a patch can be a little obtuse if I have reasonable tools for examining, navigating, and organizing what I have.

another thing I want is a mode for isolating parts of the patch. stuff like selecting a node and having it highlight it's connections is common place, but I'd also like to have a mode for isolating the entire expression tree that roots on that node. dunno if anything does that.

ideally things will be color coded by destination and wires will have different colors and textures to make it easier to tell them apart, as well as UV animation. Also highlighting / isolating connections when you select things.

my current wire placement rule set is this:

1. groups of wires that all connect to the same parameter on one node are evaluated to see if a wire wrap path makes sense. if so, these are placed first, and the cost of the path is raised arbitrarily high for other wires.

2. wires that travel the farthest go second and search for the shortest path with the fewest bends

3. wires that have the shortest path go last, avoid parallel runs, but favor perpendicular crossings

playing around with the rules for automatic wire placement tonight and i got a marvelous idea. normally i'd want to avoid parallel runs of wires when it improves readability to do so, but the exception to this rule is if the destination is the same then its better to consolidate. here's a mock up

i have no share holders! no KPIs! no customers! the ux only has to be awesome for meeeee! bweeehehehe!

also graph travel mode. zoom in on one thing and just see what's connected to it and travel to neighbors

One of the fun things about designing a visual programming language is "how can I put less work making this" and "what if it wasn't super annoying" can coincide on the same solutions! Like what if instead of trying to drag and drop a noodle between two nodes on opposite sides of the world, what if you just select both and enter noodle mode that temporarily puts them side by side so you can draw the connections you want.

I'm really tempted to just not have division or subtraction, and provide rcp and sign flip as instructions instead. Likewise who needs clamp when you've got min(max(v, low_bound), high_bound), right? I think I'd want lerp and some other functions that don't really fit this syntax well though so idk I'll have to think about that.

Commutative instructions get to be variadic. I'm not sure what to do about non-commutative instructions syntaxwise. I'll probably have it make you select which parameter your connecting when you draw a connection, and then display information about the connection when you touch wires, and draw the name along the wire where possible. Color coding and ordering where the inputs connect also would make sense to supplement that.