Understanding nodes

Nodes are basically pre-written functions that perform a specific task when they are activated. For example, the print node would be equal to this in Java :

System.out.println("Hello World")

When you are connecting nodes, think as if you are just connecting blocks of code to each other. Similiar to calling a series of function in normal programming

void program() {
    println();
    save();
    load();
    add();
}

There are various types of nodes in FlowForge. You can explore them from the "Functions" List. These nodes are called "Function Nodes". Nodes by themselves don't do anything. They need to be connected to each other via either a normal connection or X connection (explained in next chapter)

Here is another example of the loop node

The Loop node performs a task n number of times. You can either decide how many times you want to execute a node by manually entering the number in the box, or you can add an integer node in the "Times"

This would be equivalent to this in Java :

for (int i = 0; i > n; i++) {
    System.out.println(i)
}

Here, 'i' means iteration, and it corresponds to the number of times the block should be executed. If you look closely in the Java example, you can see we are also printing the 'i' value.

It is sometimes neccesary to access the iteration value for a loop. In FlowForge, you can use the "Iteration value" output point to access the iteration value. (More of this will be discussed in next chapter)

In the next chapter, we will study about connections.