playMaker

Author Topic: What all can you do with PlayMaker?  (Read 3118 times)

jasonjacob

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What all can you do with PlayMaker?
« on: May 07, 2019, 08:12:53 AM »
mod edit to remove porn links

Edit (by Djaydino) : user has been removed as it was an ad bot (or a person spamming ads)

Usually i remove all their posts/topics.

But i do think this is an interesting topic, so i did not remove this one :)
« Last Edit: May 11, 2019, 11:24:41 AM by djaydino »

Thore

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Re: What all can you do with PlayMaker?
« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2019, 10:23:48 AM »
The point of view is more or less irrelevant to assess games, and how difficult they are to make. Making games is hard. Making something robust and marketable is harder.

Playmaker is a tool to visual script using state machines, which are great and intuitive to make games (running, jumping, attacking etc). In each state, you put actions, which are mini-scripts that can then interact. They are literally scripts, and you can write your own. That way you can also learn coding in a more controlled way. That also means that Playmaker state machines can be just as technical and challenging as code. This isn’t magic.

The main benefit are 1) states, 2) bypassing syntax problems. It gives most people working with Unity a leg up, because actions give instant results and you can see what goes wrong and where. It is also not supposed to replace scripting. You can use both, or depending on what you end up doing, do it all in Playmaker.

User Examples:
https://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/index.php?board=10.0

daniellogin

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Re: What all can you do with PlayMaker?
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2019, 10:26:06 AM »
Everything. Seriously.

I started making games for a hobby about a year ago. I can't even script a simple "hello world" message. However with Playmaker, I literally feel like I could make anything.

My last 'complete' project is basically just like Mario Party. It has a real working spinning wheel which uses physics, so each player takes turns to use that to get their dice roll (so it would feel real and the player would get the feeling they had real input to a random event, not just a magic (seemingly fake) number appearing on a simulated dice), race to the end of the board, trigger random bonuses/punishments, play mini games (like one is a kind of paddle game where you switch colours to match the falling target), gain score, etc. I'm using playmaker to activate all the animations, including stuff like characters pushing each other out of the way as they overtake them on the board, particle effects, sounds, etc .

My current project is a third person adventure shooter. The character controller is 100% Playmaker. The only part not Playmaker is the actual Unity playercontroller component, which playmaker is sending the inputs to. My character moves from walking to full speed run based on how far you push the stick on the controller, and it's set up so a walking animation plays and transitions to a run in a very smooth fashion. This is made smooth by the fact that I read how fast the player is going and use that to alter the speed of the animations played. The player can duck, jump, switch weapons, aim or relax, ammo count... the works.

Shooting is done with raycasting for some weapons, but objects with colliders for others. Last night I just finished messing around with and setting up arrows which move very fast, but use a system where they raycast and slow down right before impact so they don't pass through nor miss their collision. When my rigged player is hit, the arrow parents to the body part so it realistically sticks half way through the impact point and moves with the limb. I also just set up footprints which are done by animating an FSM on and off to raycast the point down to put decals on (using Easy Decal and their provided actions to actually attach the decal).

Should I go on? I think I rambled enough. My point is that I can't code anything, but I haven't found anything I want to do that I can't do with Playmaker. I look at any game these days and think 'I could make that', and even take ideas now for game mechanics without much hassle of how to actually create them.

If you are a programming wizard with no limits already though... maybe that's a different story. I hear though that it's still good for prototyping and planning to make a sort of draft with PM and use that plan to go program it directly.

Fat Pug Studio

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Re: What all can you do with PlayMaker?
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2019, 03:20:25 PM »
I'm using Playmaker for almost 3 and a half years (already, wow) and i must say it's an indispensable tool. I'm still learning and tweaking everything and will be releasing the first game soon, so it's possible to work on the game with it as a sole solution from prototyping to complete product.

For everything external you use, you can make your own actions and keep on working (if an asset is not supported, but usually is).

Sure, FSM's can get messy if you are not organized, but so can scripts and coding.

We need some more stuff for it to be the perfect solution though, global variables can't be renamed, there's no grouping the states, no integrated pooling (but it's coming) and some quirky behaviour sometimes.

Usage examples? Everything.
Available for Playmaker work

ch1ky3n

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Re: What all can you do with PlayMaker?
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2019, 11:22:10 AM »
Plus, it works great when working with team, especially if your team is a group of non coders. They can grasp the concept easily and make your live better.

The challenge is of course organizing the FSMs and make it neat and clean. I couldn’t find a single thing that can’t be done in Playmaker as long as Unity can handle it.

hoyoyo80

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Re: What all can you do with PlayMaker?
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2019, 08:22:07 PM »
Never felt game programming is so fun. It is just converting step by step pseudocode with PM action.

Thanks PM. BTW now im on a serious project whilst learning unity and PM, and manage to almost complete prototype of the first level:)