Why Playmaker and not Bolt

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 it's important to understand that we are ok with competitors, it's healthy, so no one has to justify anything for not using PlayMaker as krmko said, these are just tools, and it's fine that you prefer one tool over the other based on your approach, knowledge, etc etc.

and it's true that comparing PlayMaker and Bolt doesn't really apply just because thye both are 'Visual' unless you use Bolt solely with its fsm system, they have a very different approaches to problem solving and how to approach Unity development.

But I have to say that @hutonggames goes the extra miles to provide forum support, I think it's been a clear choice since the early beginning that helping actively on the forum was the only way forward, videos and tutorials gets outdated faster than it takes and costs to make them ( not that there should not be any, there are plans to revamp the whole samples and video series, but you get my point I think). To me, over all these years, I don't think that we could have help better/more by concentrating on static content, instead of helping people on a one to one bases, cause in the end, this is the closest form of support we can offer. The ripple effect is that once a topic is discussed, it creates a precedent that is searchable within the forum, and the case can be further explored, brought back to light is there is a regression or something new in the mix. This is impossible with a tutorial or video to account for the history of a case or question.

Bye,

 Jean

[Broken Stylus]

I wanted to do something REALLY simple. Put "Hello World!" on screen.
In playmaker you need prefabs and proxies and stuff.

In Bolt you just use the Unity uGui as it is.

Sorry Playmaker, I'll be back if you ever get a system that isn't to fragmented and hard (for stupid people like me,) to understand.

It's actually very simple. But if you're serious about making pretty displays of rich text, you'll have to move to Text Mesh Pro.

The downside to it is that it takes a bit of training to handle it, but once you know how to create new font atlases and fiddle with the materials, you're never going to want to rely on uGUI's basic text.

And Text Mesh Pro is free, sort of "officially" supported by Unity and is completely covered with PM actions too.

[...]

I tried replicating some of the Playmaker FSM's in FlowCanvas and Bolt yesterday for fun. It was fucking hell, i can't imagine doing things any other way.

[siumanchunandy]

Bolt 2.x And Playmaker Combine !

Step 1. Use Bolt 2.x Making PM Action.

Step 2. Bolt 2.x Export C# Script .

Step 3. apply C# Script For Playmaker Action .

All visual scripting Done , Combine apply !

[Alex Chouls]

Interesting thread

To be honest I'm not a huge fan of visual scripting that simply turns every c# command into a node. Sure it can help you play around without worrying about syntax, but it still forces you to think like a programmer. And to do anything complicated you have to think like a really good programmer, which takes years of practice and is a really deep rabbit hole! Also if you're working that low level I'd prefer to have the powerful tools in something like Visual Studio for auto-complete, debugging, refactoring etc.

PlayMaker attempts to solve the problem in a top-down way instead of bottom-up. You still have to think logically, but the higher level state/event structure helps you build more interesting behaviors without having to think in a programming language. It's more like working with a flowchart (which most people can understand) vs working with a circuit diagram (which is a specialized skill). I like to think of PlayMaker as a design tool - you can block out entire behaviors visually before you add a single action. I think this works for non-coders, but also as a programmer myself, I find many problems that are hard to code/debug traditionally are actually easier to solve in PlayMaker! Games especially are basically a lot of states changing over time - and that is the problem PlayMaker is designed to simplify.

That's the philosophical overview anyway! But we're always working to improve PlayMaker and community feedback is a big part of that. So tell us what works for you, and what doesn't...

[PlaymakerNOOB]

Hi.
@miguelfanclub
There are several prefferences that you can turn on/off to improve the performance

What exactly are these preferences that can speed up playmaker, im curious as to what I may be missing.

[...]

Error checking, turn off everything and it will work fine. Turn them on once in a while to fix errors.

[PlaymakerNOOB]

Sure, i'd love to do that... but I cant seem to find where those options are to turn off.

--edit---
I just realized that the Actions tab has a gear icon for settings and ditto for Error Check and changed some settings.

[djaydino]

Hi.
Please keep thread on topic

[blackant]

to me playmaker helped me a lot undestanding programming logic in a first time and  later on, by creating myself custom actions, directly learning coding in C#.

i tested bolt 1 time, but no playmaker is more fun and easy to use to change.
i'm also using Blueprint on Unreal, wich is really powerfull but needs a lot of work to understand everything in it.

playmaker is a great tool to start learning programing process for all novices on any engines.

[Broken Stylus]

Bolt 2.x And Playmaker Combine !

Step 1. Use Bolt 2.x Making PM Action.

Step 2. Bolt 2.x Export C# Script .

Step 3. apply C# Script For Playmaker Action .

All visual scripting Done , Combine apply !

I was wondering if this was possible. Is it a reliable method to build PM actions? Does Bolt expose most of the Unity API which you could reach through C# coding?

PS: Bolt is growing fast, they have 320 ratings already, Playmaker has 468.

[djaydino]

Hi.
Never tried but i do not think that is possible.

PS: Bolt is growing fast, they have 320 ratings already, Playmaker has 468.

I think you did not look good

Playmaker has (on 02/25/2020) 3253 user ratings and 468 user reviews
and Bolt has has 320 user ratings and 179 user reviews

I just check the asset store

[tcmeric]

Bolt uses reflection to access those APIs I believe. Although fewer people are familiar with using reflection, but its a method of meta-coding. Meaning using code to access or write code (which is actually pretty cool and fun). However, it is far less performant than directly coding something (such as playmaker does in its actions).

Writing actions for playmaker is much slower, however, the result is faster, more organized and does 'things' vs exposing a single function or variable.

https://mattwarren.org/2016/12/14/Why-is-Reflection-slow/

[...]

You don't need Bolt to write actions, if you know how to use Bolt, you certainly have enough knowledge to make your own action for whatever. It's not that it's hard anyway, most of the stuff comes down to getting the variables and calling the existing methods. There's so many made actions available that you can analyse how anything is made.

Bolt is cool, but i never saw the meaning of doing exactly the same thing as coding but via graph. Playmaker is something much, much more.

[Broken Stylus]

Playmaker has (on 02/25/2020) 3253 user ratings and 468 user reviews
and Bolt has has 320 user ratings and 179 user reviews

OK I see, right.