Downloadable custom node pack support

[tarragonfly]

Description

From experience with other engines, Visual Scripting tools need more than calling engine API 1:1. For Unreal's Blueprints there is a highly curated and battle-tested library of high-level nodes that can contain any amount of code, even a player controller within a node or two. But this is not realistic without Epic's resources and massive workforce working on industry leading games.

Another I've seen succeed is the Flow Canvas + Node Canvas combo in Unity. They were one of the first to the market, sure, but they also focused on performance and very simple API. Double clicking a node opens its C# source code in the IDE so you see all implementation details immediately. And adding a custom node is just a couple of clicks away, since their API is very simple to use and user oriented. The tool is designed to be extended by default, which has led some studios to adapting it if not on AA level then certainly in III. See The Long Dark and other known examples. Both tools also cover all graph needs, from script graphs to state machines and even behaviour trees. While the community is not large, easily extensible API and covering all graph types has made this tool combo successful in studio and pro indie environments

And the final example being Playmaker for Unity that's purely (and only) state machine driven, which I dislike. But they've succeeded way more than Flow/Node Canvas and even official Unity Visual Scripting due to their community driven ecosystem where people can upload/download custom node packs for 3rd party integrations, and even whole features already pre-made in node form. The ease of sharing and discovering custom nodes made this tool a huge success. Meanwhile, official Unity Visual Scripting is basically a C# visualizer calling engine API 1:1, and the community is more or less dead for it even though it's the most accessible.

I think for Orchestrator to truly thrive it needs support for easier custom node addition and sharing. I don't expect any online backend specifically for this, but people should be able to write, export and share node packs on the Asset Library without having to redistribute the whole addon. I've tried to look for custom node docs, but haven't seen any. Please point me in the right direction if they exist.

Implementation ideas

No response