playMaker

Author Topic: Interested in Playmaker - Few Q's  (Read 4183 times)

Omninorm

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Interested in Playmaker - Few Q's
« on: January 04, 2013, 04:17:07 AM »
Hi there.

I downloaded Unity 4? Free version.
I then saw Playmaker, uScript and another system that says they are Staste machines etc. At the new price point special I can actually afford it. :)

Playmaker to me seems the most user friendly / easier although the uScript stuff looks  like it could get more deep?
Not sure and as this is a Playmaker forum I guess thats a silly and unfounded observation.

Now for the Q's:

Does Playmaker work with the new Unity Free version?
1.) If I later buy Unity iOS / Android or Full pro... will the same Playmaker still work?

2.)Can I easily combine code and Playmaker?
- For instance on thought would be to have my walk and run code in a script but then use Playmaker to trigger a lift, then when the lift reaches the top, I would trigger an Event from the Animation part of unity that say calls an enemy to start walking, then I would use Playmaker to check the distance of the enemy from the player perhaps or let the enemy trigger a switch via Playmaker.

Do I understand the way Playmaker behaves correctly? (I've just gone through the first few video tutorials so might be missing a lot.)

3.) Where does Playmakers capabilities end. What can't it do.

Thanks!



kiriri

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Re: Interested in Playmaker - Few Q's
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2013, 07:57:17 AM »
Actually we are surprrisingly unfanboyish about PlayMaker here I think. Just looking through the posts here you'll probably see some people noticing missing things and all, but all in all PlayMaker is just so stable that noone can really complain much.

1) Yes, PlayMaker works with Unity 4.0 indie, although it does not yet support many of the unity 4.0 features, as a large number of the userbase are still using 3.5 . If you decide on PlayMaker, I can help you write custom actions to remedy that though ;) . All actions are kinda open source, although they have a big copyright by Hutonggames in it :D

2) Yes, it's probably one of PlayMakers strengths. A lot of people pass messages and variables between scripts and FSMs all the time. You can also Set and Get Properties from scripts, which lets you choose from an automatically generated list which variable you want to get or set. Really awesome if you aren't familiar with a script, as it will also return inherited variables etc.

3) PlayMaker ends where the Unity GUI does. This means natively there are no ways to work with lists, arrays/hashtables, dictionaries, enums and private object classes. For lists and dictionaries we have a plugin called ArrayMaker, which extends Unities capacities by offering components which each contain a list or dictionary and can be accessed by playmaker as wel as changed via the GUI.
So effectively the biggest concerns are the object classes and enums. There are ways to get around enums by converting them to strings, but as for object variables, we can only access a few directly. This is why many plugins, such as A* or the like, need custom actions to work with. If you know how to program, then there should be no problem though.

I asked myself the same questions as you did, and seriously, there's not much of a difference between the FSMs here. PlayMaker just felt the most complete to me so I chose it. Future updates focus rather on core funcitonality than new actions, which I appreciate very much as we ourselves can write most actions without problems ourselves.

If you plan to use PlayMaker on top of your normal scripts then I think this is a great choice. However, if you want to use PlayMaker all on its' own for a huge game project, you will see that the GUI reaches its' limit after so many FSMs and states. It slows down a lot after a hundred or more states in one FSM. I doubt Antares or uScript would do any better in that situation though, but I can't be sure.

To not finish this post with a negative point...ehhh PlayMaker is great! really really great :D Nice community, the next update is tremendously exciting still and the ease of extending PlayMaker is just awesome :)
« Last Edit: January 04, 2013, 07:59:12 AM by kiriri »
Best,
Sven

Red

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Re: Interested in Playmaker - Few Q's
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2013, 09:06:16 AM »
Another factor to consider is the level of support you can get from either the devs or the community that uses each.

i don't know about uScript, but i have had a lot of help here on the Playmaker forums when i have come up against tricky problems or bugs.

that being said, assuming that the two packages are similar enough, i would probably weigh the decision based on all the after-market perks. best bet is to do some research and figure out which one you feel would be best for you... of course, most people here are going to recommend Playmaker as that's the program we use (and were, basically, brand-loyal) but in the end if you take away that brand loyalty and bias you can come to a better decision.

personally, i would recommend Playmaker as well... not just because it's got a good support network and a lot of actions both shipped and after-market, but from what i've been hearing development is on going for new features in future versions... so, i am kinda curious what those all will be.

Omninorm

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Re: Interested in Playmaker - Few Q's
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2013, 01:53:53 AM »
Thanks for the feedback.
I'll do a bit more research but i don't want to miss the special. ;)