playMaker

Author Topic: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)  (Read 4547 times)

Tyler

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Hello,

I am new to PlayMaker (to Unity as well but I know the basics I think without the programming part of course).

Is there a PlayMaker manual/catalouge or something similar?
I know there is the action reference and stuff, but what I am looking for is a dummy proof manual for instance like this:

How do I make the player move?
Create this FSM with this actions/transitions and events and so on.

How do I trigger a door open?
Do this and select this in action browser.

My problem is, I looked a ton of tutorials for PM but people always make it different. I can't find the best practice solution for all this stuff, don't want to add mistakes to my workflow from the beginnging but to make it right like it should be.

I hope you know what I mean.

I am kinda lost. If I want to add a function to a player or an object I thinking about what steps do I need. I want to avoid to add to many states if it's possible to make my desired function with three states instead of ten.

How did you start and what do you recommend me?
« Last Edit: July 07, 2018, 01:23:07 PM by Tyler »

verybinary

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2018, 12:33:45 PM »
I watched a (I think it was official) playmaker series when I first started. it was outdated at the time, but still showed me how playmaker worked, and how to piece together everything I needed to do what I wanted. nothing was real specific to anything I wanted, but it still showed me how to do "everything"
it showed how to make a door that opens, and gave me a template for the door to play around with to learn how to open it in many different ways.
the "turning 10 actions into 3" part of this is different. the more you understand about playmaker and its actions, the more efficient you can be. it boils down to practice. for now, use your 10 actions, soon, you will realize you can turn it into 7. then 5.
so... keep making stuff, make sure it works, and try to make it better. a lot of my learning has come from "this is too inefficient. delete" and I start again, looking for cleaner ways.
but yeah, try to do stuff, try to break stuff. do the tuts on http://www.hutonggames.com/tutorials_game_design_with_playmaker.php (these are the tuts I was talking about before) and just go with it, while looking back at the reference I was about to link to but read that you already know about it.

djaydino

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2018, 01:15:30 PM »
Hi,
Here is a page about Best Practice but its not yet complete.

https://hutonggames.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W1462

But for many cases there is not really a 'Best Practice' as many thing are depending on what kind of game you are making and even then.
You can achieve things in many different ways.

Tyler

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #3 on: July 02, 2018, 01:55:14 PM »
Thank you guys! Going to look throught it!

Tyler

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2018, 08:57:40 AM »
Man, I don't know how many hours I wasted but I can't go on...

How do I make my Player move and jump at the same time with PlayMaker?!

I mean when I have a character controller my character can't jump, but if I deactivate it then he can jump with his rigid body add force....

I thought PlayMaker is to safe me time not prolong it...

I just want to make my game and not to be busy with such basics...

Why isn't there a clear manual how to achieve that? All I found were mixed up methods that just corner one problem but not both how it should be done the right way, very frustrating. I am still stuck at the very beginning of my game, the first step to set the movement of my 3D character....

I am annoyed to search such basic stuff over the internet where I should be already miles away with my game...  >:(

djaydino

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2018, 05:15:22 PM »
Hi.
Character controller is not really good to use, but for some early testing its ok.

So i made a custom action : ControllerAdvancedMove

Where you can trigger the jump with a bool.
You can place a 'Get key (down)' or a 'Get Button (Down)' and store the result in a variable.
Place that variable in the 'Controller Advanced Move' action.

You can get the Action on the attachment below.

Tyler

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2018, 01:27:01 PM »
Hi.
Character controller is not really good to use, but for some early testing its ok.

So i made a custom action : ControllerAdvancedMove

Where you can trigger the jump with a bool.
You can place a 'Get key (down)' or a 'Get Button (Down)' and store the result in a variable.
Place that variable in the 'Controller Advanced Move' action.

You can get the Action on the attachment below.

Thanks for your effort, how do I implement those scripts? What I have to do exactly... ? Sorry for noob question.

djaydino

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2018, 06:34:46 AM »
Hi.
It's a package actually.

You can open your project and execute the package to install it.

Then the action should be available.

Tyler

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #8 on: July 11, 2018, 05:28:15 AM »
Hi.
It's a package actually.

You can open your project and execute the package to install it.

Then the action should be available.

Yes, I already imported it into Unity, but there are only scripts I see in the Project Folder, can't choose them in PM or search for, what steps exactly I have to do?

djaydino

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #9 on: July 11, 2018, 08:17:07 AM »
Hi.
If imported correctly, it should be in the action list

named : Controller Advanced Move.

BeardedWonder

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #10 on: July 11, 2018, 07:18:41 PM »
Sadly i feel the same way

All the official tutorials are 6 years old, not very good, and take ages to get to the point.

And most tutorials ive seen are really terrible aswell.

I did read that  PM is not very user friendly when you first start it, and can take some time to get used to.

I think where it differs is yeah there might be 20 tutorials of the code for the thing you want, vs no tutorial for the thing you want to do in playmaker

But if you play around, and experiment with playmaker you will make it work. If you play around with coding you are going to go so much slower, thats what i keep telling myself anyhow!

Thankfully part of the process of this whole thing is making mistakes at the start. You won't get the fsm or code 100% effective right out of the gate, just as much as if you started drawing you wouldnt get scale or perspective 100% right first time. Your first drawing may be not very good, but you can keep at it and constantly improve.

Sorry i cant point you towards any tutorials though

djaydino

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #11 on: July 12, 2018, 01:19:39 PM »
Hi.
I must agree that the official tutorials are getting to old.

But there are many good tutorials on the user tutorial wiki page
and on Youtube.

I do think PM is user friendly, but it also has a learning curve.(That learning curve is a lot lower than learning Unity C#)

One of the biggest mistakes new people do (in C# and Playmaker) is to build immediately that great game they have in their minds..... and then hit a lot of brick walls (believe me i was one of them)

Its way better to follow some tutorial series and then start making some very simple games (or even better look to a simple game and try to recreate it)
And this counts for PlayMaker and C# (and other programming languages or  visual game engines)

BeardedWonder

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #12 on: July 12, 2018, 02:26:32 PM »
I'd have to disagree on there being good tutorials on youtube, going through the 16 simple tutorials linked on the user page there are a LOT of 3-4+ year old videos there,  and its a very small number of tutorial topics to start with, with nothing for 2d (the 2d platformer uses 3d models and character controller, there is no true 2d/sprite based tutorials that i can see, with nothing to do with colliders or things that are generally put in "newby" games. Tutorials for inventory systems and quality settings are of little help if you arn't sure how to even more or pick up/collect any points at all.

i tried for 4 hours to find help for a basic platformer movement tutorial or help, move left and right and a jump. I STILL can't get it even close to functioning, meanwhile a 10 sec google finds a plethroa of working tutorials for a c# code for it, and 45 minutes later a script has been written and it works better than 4 hours + of fiddling around with play maker

I would agree the learning curve is smaller than with c# itself (i'd not have gotten as far as i did with c# as playmaker by playing and tweeking things myself) and its MUCH easier to debug, but the lack of tutorials is frustrating and makes progressing feel very very slow when you can find much more tutorials for what you are trying to do but in c# itself. Sadly  its very easy to become lost when following them and the code you write ends up being basically code you copied and are no better more educated than when you started.

Brass tacs is more people do old style scripting vs playmaker, so there are more tutorials and more people to ask and advise when something doesn't work


EDIT: To anyone else reading this i would highly suggest both watching tutorials for c# aswell as learning to use playmaker. Some things you will find easier when you understand the logic behind it, or may be even quicker to "get up and running" in c#
« Last Edit: July 12, 2018, 02:32:48 PM by BeardedWonder »

Tyler

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #13 on: July 13, 2018, 06:19:07 AM »
Yes, that's the problem. Very old tuts plus there are no tutorials with the basics what a gamedesigner needs, just the basics nothing more.

Best way would be 2 tutorials one just for the basics. A simple 2D platformer and a 3D third or first person shooter where you collect coins, using triggers and stuff including UI of course.

Playmaker was sold very often and in this 6 years of existence (?)  there is no tutorial that covers the basics? Very disappointing. The documentation isn't helpful either and I paid for this tool 60 bucks...

I understand the very basics (variables, integers, methods, if else, loops and so on) of C# and can code just a litttttttle bit. I thought it will be a piece of cake to get into Playmaker but no. The search how to do something is so painful that I consider to find a solution in C#... that is obviously not what I and the creator of PM have in mind I guess...

There are tutorials on youtube but mostly such that you make your desired function and then there occurs another problem out of the first function that have to be solved. So you have another riddle that you don't know how to solve...

Please make a manual that you can work with, such I wrote "I want that Player pick up a coin" -> do this and this, like a dictionary or a library to search for actions.

Or just a project that covers most basics, stuff that you need the most when developing a game. It's always the same, movement, enemy, player, pick up, carry stuff, weapons, raycast for weapons, triggers to open doors or props (a chest), and so on...

djaydino

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Re: Manual for PlayMaker for actions I want to make (dummy edition?)
« Reply #14 on: July 13, 2018, 09:34:40 AM »
Hi.
On The Ecosystem there are several samples you can download (selct filter on and select samples, then 'browse')