Workspace: Highlighting/Styling Nodes based on "Type"

[heygleeson]

List of relevant node types, in regards to story/dialogue flow:

• Orphan Nodes (no entry/exit)
• Start Nodes (no previous entry, but contains >1 exit)
• Flow Nodes (has entries & exits)
• End Nodes (>1 previous entry, but no explicit exit)

(Do these actually have formal names?)

It can be useful to get an at-a-glance idea of the node's type by it's visuals (e.g. starts/ends have blue/red borders, orphan nodes have dashed borders, etc.), and adding an additional filter for node type (e.g. tag __type), would be pretty nifty.

[FaultyFunctions]

React Flow has node type concepts for input (Start), output (End), and default (Orphan & Flow). You can customize node types (and they recommend this) fairly easily in that I think but I'll need to actually mess with it to see how it works. Though, what would be the use case for filtering by node type? Could this not be solved with other organizational features such as grouping or canvas layers? Or is this a different use case than those two features?

[heygleeson]

Slightly different - I imagine it as way to help the writer verify which nodes are properly connected. The writer might not add the necessary jumps at the time of writing (either due to unfamiliarity with the syntax, or if they are writing more modular snippets), and might delegate that task later.

Node styling based on type would already help with this - filtering would just be an added bonus (and might be useful for bigger files).

[FaultyFunctions]

So the use case would be as a todo or a warning system for not having jumps? Not sure if that really justifies adding this feature since it seems like a really small use case. Plus the writer can already see if there aren't any jumps, there won't be any arrows coming off of the node, right?

[heygleeson]

You're right, it's a much smaller use case than any other feature. Probably better not to prioritise it until we notice it as an actual thing people want. I'm thinking too far ahead.