As announced in https://godotengine.org/article/godot-4-will-discontinue-visual-scripting,
Godot maintainers have agreed to discontinue the current implementation of
our VisualScript language.
The way it had been designed was not user-friendly enough and we did not
succeed in improving its usability to actually make it a good low-code
solution for users who need one.
So we prefer to remove it for Godot 4.0 and leave the door open for new,
innovative ideas around visual scripting, to be developed as plugins or
extensions now that Godot provides sufficient functionality for this
(notably via GDExtension and the godot-cpp C++ bindings).
The current module has been moved to a dedicated repository (with full Git
history extracted with `git filter-branch`):
https://github.com/godotengine/godot-visual-script
It can still be compiled as a C++ module (for now, but will likely require
work to be kept in sync with the engine repository), but our hope is that
contributors will port it to GDExtension (which is quite compatibile with
the existing C++ module code when using the godot-cpp C++ bindings).
- In cases where both `Xform`/`XformInv` and the `*` operator were
implemented the `Xform`/`XformInv` methods were removed in favor of the
`*` operator.
- In cases where the `Xform`/`XformInv` existed but not the `*` operator,
the `Xform`/`XformInv` methods were replaced with the `*` operator.
- In cases where no method existed, a new `*` operator has been
implemented to support the same operations that are supported in GDScript.
- Fixes the `Transform.Xform` and `Transform.XformInv` with `Rect2`
implementation to use a zero `Rect2` size to start expanding from
(which is how it's implemented in C++).
If the project assembly does not exist, return `false` directly instead
of trying to load it.
This prevents the `System.InvalidOperationException` thrown for failing
to locate managed application.
- Moves interop functions to UnmanagedCallbacks struct that
contains the function pointers and is passed to C#.
- Implements UnmanagedCallbacksGenerator, a C# source generator that
generates the UnmanagedCallbacks struct in C# and the body for the
NativeFuncs methods (their implementation just calls the function
pointer in the UnmanagedCallbacks). The generated methods are needed
because .NET pins byref parameters of native calls, even if they are
'ref struct's, which don't need pinning. The generated methods use
`Unsafe.AsPointer` so that we can benefit from byref parameters
without suffering overhead of pinning.
Co-authored-by: Raul Santos <raulsntos@gmail.com>
We were using it to workaround a limitation of `Unsafe.AsPointer` and
`ref struct`s. However, we can get the same result with some tricks,
since we have control over the declaration of these structs.
The setting is initially assigned the name of the Godot project,
but it's kept freezed to prevent issues when renaming the Godot
project.
The user can always rename the C# project and solution manually and
change the setting to the new name.
This new version does not support the following type arguments:
- Generic types
- Array of Godot Object (Godot.Object[]) or derived types
The new implementation uses delegate pointers to call the Variant
conversion methods. We do type checking only once in the static
constructor to get the conversion delegates.
Now, we no longer need to do type checking every time, and we no
longer have to box value types.
This is the best implementation I could come up with, as C# generics
don't support anything similar to C++ template specializations.
- Array and Dictionary now store `Variant` instead of `System.Object`.
- Removed generic Array and Dictionary.
They cause too much issues, heavily relying on reflection and
very limited by the lack of a generic specialization.
- Removed support for non-Godot collections.
Support for them also relied heavily on reflection for marshaling.
Support for them will likely be re-introduced in the future, but
it will have to rely on source generators instead of reflection.
- Reduced our use of reflection.
The remaining usages will be moved to source generators soon.
The only usage that I'm not sure yet how to replace is dynamic
invocation of delegates.
Changed the signal declaration signal to:
```
// The following generates a MySignal event
[Signal] public delegate void MySignalEventHandler(int param);
```
In the past, the Godot editor distributed the API assemblies and
copied them to project directories for projects to reference them.
This changed with the move to .NET 5/6. Godot no longer copies the
assemblies to project directories. However, the project Sdk still
tried to reference them from the same location.
From now on, the GodotSharp API is distributed as a NuGet package,
which the Sdk can reference.
Added an option to `build_assemblies.py` to copy all Godot NuGet
packages to an existing local NuGet source. This will be needed
during development, while packages are not published to a remote
NuGet repository.
This option also makes sure to remove packages of the same version
installed (~/.nuget/packages). Very useful during development, when
packages change, to make sure the package being used by a project is
the same we just built and not one from a previous build.
A local NuGet source can be created like this:
```
mkdir ~/MyLocalNuGetSource && \
dotnet nuget add source ~/MyLocalNuGetSource/ -n MyLocalNuGetSource
```
Previously, we added source generators for invoking/accessing methods,
properties and fields in scripts. This freed us from the overhead of
reflection. However, the generated code still used our dynamic
marshaling functions, which do runtime type checking and box value
types.
This commit changes the bindings and source generators to include
'static' marshaling. Based on the types known at compile time, now
we generate the appropriate marshaling call for each type.
Previously, for each scripts class instance that was created from code
rather than by the engine, we were constructing, configuring and
assigning a new CSharpScript.
This has changed now and we make sure there's only one CSharpScript
associated to each type.
The editor no longer needs to create temporary instances to get the
default values. The initializer values of the exported properties are
still evaluated at runtime. For example, in the following example,
`GetInitialValue()` will be called when first looks for default values:
```
[Export] int MyValue = GetInitialValue();
```
Exporting fields with a non-supported type now results in a compiler
error rather than a runtime error when the script is used.
This base implementation is still very barebones but it defines the path
for how exporting will work (at least when embedding the .NET runtime).
Many manual steps are still needed, which should be automatized in the
future. For example, in addition to the API assemblies, now you also
need to copy the GodotPlugins assembly to each game project.
Finalizers are longer guaranteed to be called on exit now that
we switched to .NET Core. This results in native instances leaking.
The only solution I can think of so far is to keep a list of all
instances alive to dispose when the AssemblyLoadContext.Unloading
event is raised.
