Debug tree enhancements

[bitbrain]

The tree implemented in #1 works great, however, especially for larger trees it becomes less useful. There are a few challenges here:

• with larger trees, it is a bit difficult to understand what is actually happening (as effectively 50+ actions get activated constantly so it defeats the purpose)
• with larger trees, the rendering of the tree seems to prefer spreading the tree horizontally rather than utilizing the entire space available

In order to solve this, I am proposing a few changes:

1. update the rendering logic so trees are rendered in a more compacted manner by moving some branches further down rather letting them on the same "level"
2. have an option to collapse/expand sections of a tree
3. have a way to "slow down" the ticks somehow - this might be difficult and maybe can be solved separately by having an ingame speed scale applied instead rather than solving it in this addon?
4. have a toggle to show more information on nodes (like variable values etc.)
5. have a way to also visualise blackboards?

I am curious to hear your thoughts!

[GeroVeni]

Since the nodes in general are mostly horizontal, I wonder if a left-to-right direction for the tree would fit it better the the current top-to-bottom. This could still benefit from further branch placement optimizations but I think would make the graph more compact

[DarkMessiah]

Horizontal layout

Godot_v4.0-rc2_win64_aMH6vKwyqd.mp4

[Werninator]

This is probably the way to go, +1!

[Werninator]

I'm putting a +1 on proposal 2: allowing to fold a sub-tree by clicking on a node and maybe giving them a theoretical name that is not reflected in data might be a cool way to simplify things. And maybe even help to encapsulate certain sub-trees with visual feedback before actually moving things around.

Another approach would maybe be to have some kind of filter to only show nodes that have returned a state already and/or hide nodes that haven't been ticked for a while. This might be confusing if the speed is too high, though as things would pop in and pop out in large trees.

[DarkMessiah]

What do you think about this?

Click - Minimize/Maximize node
Ctrl + Click - Minimize/Maximize node and children

Godot_v4.0-rc2_win64_YYe0oXu2da.mp4

[Werninator]

Oh this is already helpful, very cool!

I was thinking something like this, plus maybe being able to add a title to a minimized Node:

img

But maybe you have an even better approach, as you can still see the type type of nodes

[DarkMessiah]

Hm, I think we can impement both options :D

• Minimize/Maximize for all nodes
• Collapse/Uncollapse for Composite or Decorator nodes