Hi there! I'm very new to playmaker, but I'm a moderately experienced programmer, with around a year of experience with Unity.
I'm designing a strategy game (currently turn-based) where a major game mechanic is making choices in the face of a random crisis. Lots of strategy games make use of this (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis), as well as other RPG-influenced games. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I feel confident this is the game I want to make.
The events won't appear in any predictable sequence. Players will be presented with a random event, the logic of which will be controlled by a condition/trigger state. The player will then make a choice, and the consequences will unfold.
An event might be:
TITLE: Hard Choice
CONDITION: In Battle && Enemy Mage
DESCRIPTION: In all the chaos, you turn around to see a fireball hurling towards you. You try to dodge, but you stumble...
CHOICE 1: Face your fate
RESULT 1: Health -= 5
CHOICE 2: Throw your staff into the fireball.
RESULT 2: Staff = Destroyed
CHOICE 3: Push your ally* in the way. (*Subcondition: Ally is present/alive.)
RESULT 3: Ally Health -= 5
Some examples from other games...
(Above: A multiple choice card event from the Battlestar Galactica board game)
(Above: A multiple choice event from FTL)
(Above: A multiple choice event from King of Dragon Pass)
(Above: A multiple choice event from Europa Universalis 4 by Paradox Interactive)
I feel like I could probably set up a new FSM for each event, but I see that becoming really disorganized if I want to design 100+ events. That creates a lot of potential issues for debugging. And while I'd reluctantly take on that mess, I'd also like to create something easy / readable enough that I can have some of the artists and level designers tweaking and rebalancing events as necessary.
I'm even thinking of defining events in XML and trying to process them through some kind of "Event Processor FSM", but I'm not really sure if that's the best way.
Does anyone have any advice for how to approach this? Is this appropriate use of playMaker, or should I combine playMaker with some other solution?
