[Question/Request] Portal Device

[PoshIndie]

When adding texture to the generated terrain, the connectors tend to get tangled up (At least for me?).

I was curious if there is a device that behaves like a “Portal” (Literally takes the “In” parameters on the in portal device, and relays them to the “Out” parameters of the out portal device, with no connector between them (Utilizing a portal name or id to connect the in and out portals together).

Basically a connectorless method to relay to another section so there are not connectors driving your organization or interfering with everything else.

If not, I would like to propose it for consideration!

[Delta_Research]

This would definitely be helpful, maybe the portals could have multiple ports and could be controllable, similar to checkpoints.

[HYLK]

A good way to get some “sense” in your routing is by using route points. You can create a route point by left mouse clicking anywhere on the wire and drag the wire.

An example of using route points:

[PoshIndie]

I have used that some, but sometimes you still reach a point where you are overlapping in awkward locations. It solves many cases, but I think portals would completely solve it.

[HYLK]

An important feature for the portal device would be the option to jump the view from IN to OUT, preferably with a hotkey and without the need of opening the device.

[PoshIndie]

I’m honestly even okay with it leading to somewhere else on the same “Sheet”. It doesn’t have to go into it’s own world (Though I wouldn’t be against that, either!) Both ways have their advantages.

Same “Sheet” would still let you get an overall picture while allowing you to make “Group islands” of separated portions of the graphs, although the sheet itself could still get large. The bonus here is that “Return Flights” would not need to be handled, and ending paths just “out portal” on the same sheet into the output.

Own World would keep everything super clean looking, although at the risk of having wonky jumps and strange tracing if you nest portals. It would also have to handle “Return flight” properly, while allowing an end to occur within it (Output Device, for instance).

[Stephen]

Interesting idea! I like it, but it also overlaps with some other similar ideas I’ve been tossing around that maybe would be good to discuss in public a bit.

One idea I have been tossing around for a while is to make groups combine their group-to-group wiring into a “cable” or “fat wire”. So all outputs from one group to another are bound together into a fat wire that splits open at the destination. This fat wire could be routed like normal, etc. It would dramatically clean up a lot of networks automatically.

It would also of course be quite possible to simply make cables be invisible in the device view until selected.

If there was a standalone device that bundled and unbundled into a cable, but cables were by default hidden in the graph view, that would be effectively the same as the portal device, and is probably how it would work internally in any case – so it’s just a matter of if you show the connection or not in the UI.

The remaining virtue of a portal that I can see is that it lets you “package” sets of wires together. So I could broadcast a set of connections as “masking”, and then drop a portal and set its input ID to “masking” and get all of those wires pop up right where I am. That does seem powerful.

[HYLK]

The last idea is really powerful indeed! No longer having to wire a selection/mask from the beginning of your world to the other side of the world would be so nice. One major issue I see with this, is the potential cluttering and losing track of your routing/wiring and is especially cumbersome when sharing your worlds and may be confusing for newcomers. That said, this would be an insanely powerful tool as it tidies up your device overview tremendously.

[PoshIndie]

@Stephen
Grouping wires between groups would be better, but still has the chance of overlapping unless the wire groups dictate your group placement to some degree (Portals would alleviate that).

Portals themselves would be slightly different to just hidden wires in that they physically represent the “beginning” and the “end” of the lines with respective devices (With identifying names/id’s attached or any other method of showing where the beginning ends and the ending begins (highlighting, icons, etc.)), where hidden wires could technically begin/end anywhere at first glance (That would make looking at the big picture to decide where you go next pretty difficult).

I did not even think of the last point previously, but that does sound pretty awesome!

@HYLK
If there was a visual cue as to where each end is (regardless of which is selected) it could alleviate that by giving immediate attention to source or destination. As long as we stay on the same “Sheet” this would be feasible (Own World would make it hard because you could only possibly see one at a time without some intricate solution).

Great discussion going on, and great input from all.

[HYLK]

Agree that it shouldn’t be on its own sheet like the macro world, that would give room for some very nasty cluttering, and that’s the one thing we’re trying to prevent!