How to Keep Blueprints (Mostly) Readable

The Blueprints Visual Scripting system is a great tool for programmers and non-programmers alike. It can be used to prototype or to fully implement features into a game, and its visual style makes it easy to read... Well, most of the time.

Blueprints can get pretty complex - connections between events, variables and nodes can often begin to overlap, it can be hard to tell where one event ends and another begins, etc. So it is no wonder that there's a whole blog dedicated to "Blueprints From Hell".

Here are two ways I try to keep my blueprints readable, at least to an extent:


1. Comments - There are two types of comments in Blueprints - Node Comments and Comment Boxes. Node Comments can be added on top of a node to specify what it's meant to do, while Comment Boxes can denote what a set of nodes do as a group. This can help organise content by its functionality. Above is an example of a comment box from a previous blogpost.


2.  Reroute Nodes - These allow for changing the direction of a wire, making blueprints less of a tangled mess! I have not used them much in Foundation Year to be honest, but I have since come to rectify that mistake.

Of course, Blueprints can get pretty bad even then, but using comments and reroutes does help make things much clearer!

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