Essential Params Expand

Essential Params Expand is the other half of the Fictiverse pack's sampling-parameter duo. Where Essential Params bundles five settings into one opaque EParams packet, this node takes that packet back apart and hands you seven individual outputs: cfg, steps, denoise, sampler, scheduler, an ays boolean, and - the useful twist - a ready-made SAMPLER object.

Think of the pair as a single parameter block with a cable. Essential Params is the control panel where you set everything once; Expand is the outlet that turns the bundle into real sockets a sampler can eat. You can chain multiple Expand nodes off one packet, so you can fan the same settings out to a base sampler and a hires sampler without ever setting the numbers twice. That's the whole reason the pair exists - one place to change "20 steps" and every downstream sampler obeys.

How it works

The packet is just a six-value tuple; Expand unpacks it and reshapes the values into usable outputs. Three behaviors are worth knowing because they make the node forgiving in ways that can hide mistakes:

• Falsy values get replaced with defaults. If a value in the packet is 0/empty, Expand substitutes a sensible fallback: cfg → 8.0, steps → 10, denoise → 1.0, sampler → the first in ComfyUI's list. So a broken or empty packet won't crash - it'll quietly sample with defaults. Great for robustness, dangerous for "why did my settings change?"
• The ays scheduler is special-cased. If the packet's scheduler is "ays", Expand substitutes the basic "simple" scheduler and sets the ays boolean output to true. The reasoning: AYS (Align Your Steps) is a scheduling scheme applied on top, and the boolean tells downstream custom samplers that know about AYS to use its schedule. Plain KSamplers just get "simple" and run normally.
• The SAMPLER output is a live object, built via ComfyUI's sampler_object() - the actual KSampler object for your chosen sampler name, ready to hand to a node that accepts the SAMPLER type rather than a name string.

Inputs and outputs

One input:

• _ (EParams) - the packet from Essential Params.

Outputs:

• cfg (FLOAT), steps (INT), denoise (FLOAT)
• sampler (string name), scheduler (string name)
• ays (BOOLEAN)
• SAMPLER (SAMPLER object)

Wire cfg/steps/denoise/sampler/scheduler into a KSampler, or SAMPLER into anything that takes a sampler object.

Installing it

In ComfyUI Fictiverse Nodes. ComfyUI Manager → search "ComfyUI Fictiverse Nodes" → install → restart, or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Fictiverse/ComfyUI_Fictiverse

No extra dependencies - it uses core comfy.samplers. No models. Apache 2.0.

Common issues

Pack gotcha: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'custom_nodes.ComfyUI_Fictiverse' means the folder isn't named exactly ComfyUI_Fictiverse; rename and restart.

Node-specific traps: the silent default substitution is the big one - a 0 in the packet (which shouldn't happen with normal use, but happens if you hand-build or transform a packet) becomes steps=10 with no warning. And you can't use Expand standalone; it needs a real EParams packet, so the pair has to stay together. If you're wondering "why is the sampler different from what I set," check whether the packet actually contains what you think - Expand faithfully reports whatever tuple lands on its input.