I'm a big proponent of visual scripting (where it makes sense) but you really do miss the text-based tooling like grep.
One trade-off you can make is using text-based serialization so you're at least able to grep the yaml or JSON or whatever and get to the right file at least. This of course costs you some editor load time.
On the flip side you're basically always using an IDE to edit the visual script. In theory symantic search should be possible and built in although reality usually falls short.
Someone in a previous HN thread mentioned the idea of a standard graph syntax. Something that game engines and tools could store their graph-based assets in. If there was a standard syntax then standard tools could be made and we could end up seeing something like a graph grep. One one could imagine a visual studio graph editor type app with plug-in support. Even a standard merge tool would be a huge step up for non-text-based code assets.
I'm not familiar with this but it seems more geared towards visually representing flow charts but it doesn't have the necessary verbosity for visual scripting. I might be wrong but I think this is only part of the puzzle. Can rules be defined such that, for example, a node port must be pointed to, or that a default value is available?
Besides the declaration of a graph, there also needs to be a way to define semantics, ie something akin to a Language Server Protocol. That way tooling can enforce validity while editing a graph.
It sounds like you're trying to make something new, in which case: I'd forego standardisation concerns for now, and focus on getting something that works, and where future prototyping can be backwards-compatible.
One trade-off you can make is using text-based serialization so you're at least able to grep the yaml or JSON or whatever and get to the right file at least. This of course costs you some editor load time.
On the flip side you're basically always using an IDE to edit the visual script. In theory symantic search should be possible and built in although reality usually falls short.
Someone in a previous HN thread mentioned the idea of a standard graph syntax. Something that game engines and tools could store their graph-based assets in. If there was a standard syntax then standard tools could be made and we could end up seeing something like a graph grep. One one could imagine a visual studio graph editor type app with plug-in support. Even a standard merge tool would be a huge step up for non-text-based code assets.
A man can dream!