A few Questions before I BuyPlayMaker!

[euma12]

Hello everybody, I just joined these forums to ask some things about PlayMaker so I can decide If I would buy or not!

1)Does PlayMaker make the performance of the game slower?

2)Can I achieve everything that I could do with C# or using PlayMaker there are limits?

3)Using PlayMaker saves time?

4)Are there proffesional games out there that are made with PlayMaker?

5)Once I buy PlayMaker I can create commercial games without adding credits(to PlayMaker) or something?

And lastly... I was wondering how long this sale(50%),will continue(It says during the unite2012 but it is still on sale).Is there any specific date for the end of the sale?

Thanks!

[jeanfabre]

Hi and welcome

1: Playmaker doesn't really impact on games performances in terms of pur benchmark ( or so little that really it's irrelevant). What can really hurt your game performance is poor design, that is not related to wether you use scripts or playmaker. Does that make sense? for example if during your game loop you are doing too many unnecessary things or bad things that Unity itself do not recommend or is affecting performances, whether you do it in c# or playmaker the performance will be poor. PLaymaker will not tell you when you do something that affect performances, you will still be responsible for learning how to build efficient real time applications in Unity, that means read the docs and the various content online to get a feel for a particular feature and it's common practices.

2: Pretty much yes, tho c# access to third party and some corners of the unity api will be more direct then in playmaker, in playmaker, you will sometimes need to create your own actions to fit your needs, but that's already advanced stuff, and the forum is always here for you to requests actions and help on that matter. If you have already c# experience, then no limits!!

3: As far as I am concerned, I know how to script, yet playmaker still saves me time, because it's not just a tool for people not acquainted with scripting, but it's also a very powerful finite state machine which in itself is way easier and powerful than what you could achieve in c# if you have to do event based coding... anytime!

4: I am building professional applications in scientific and technical fields, not games, and they do use Playmaker extensivly. If you check on the member schowcase, you'll find plenty of very interesting games:

http://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/index.php?board=10.0

5: Once you buy playmaker, you do not need to add credits to it, it's totally up to you. What you can not do is redistrubite the actual playmaker sources themselves, so if you are two or more developers, each of them will have to buy their own license.

6: I don't know for how long it is on sales, sorry

 bye,

 Jean

[euma12]

Thanks for your answer !
First of all when I was talking about the PlayMaker Performance I was meaning : games that are made with C# have a better performance that these games that are made with UnityScript(In most cases).

Second, you say that I have to create my own actions to fit my needs.Am I creating these actions within PlayMaker or I have to code something tranditionally?

The other answers were just awesome!
Thanks again!

[Damian]

Thanks for your answer !
First of all when I was talking about the PlayMaker Performance I was meaning : games that are made with C# have a better performance that these games that are made with UnityScript(In most cases).

Second, you say that I have to create my own actions to fit my needs.Am I creating these actions within PlayMaker or I have to code something tranditionally?

The other answers were just awesome!
Thanks again!

Any slowdown is often bad coding. C# has not much better performance the "unityscript".
Often it depending on using wrong syntax for the task. Many time people use IF when they should use CASE instead.
Every stuff that needs to be tested take time and some syntax do take more CPU cycle then other.

Playmaker do work on most stuff, but to say it will work on all stuff you do is wrong.
BUT if there is anything missed you often have to choices.
1. Make your own action.
2. Write here and ask for it and most of the time Alex or some other will make the action sooner or later, depending on how important they are.

So you see we do help out here and we all try to make Playmaker better. We all win on that :-) 

[Red]

Though i can't really speak for the majority of the points, i think an answer to point 4 is a little off-the-mark... but i think that depends on how you define "professional."

if you mean by "professional" you're talking about a major game studio, then no... playmaker is likely not being used in any professional games.

but, if you mean anyone that's taking a serious effort to making a game that has some measure of quality as opposed to a novice/hobbyist game, then yes...

For example, i am actually professionally trained (Humber College if you're curious,) i have paid my dues with freelance and some corporate gigs (main field is character TD/Rigging but i can model, texture and animate and all of the other things that come with being a generalist.) and i'm also pushing to make a game. if that makes me a professional then that's cool i guess... but to me a person's level of professionality is not so much a reflection of their skill per-se but more pointing to the fact that they have actual industry experience. currently, i'm between gigs (i turned my back on the corporate scene... to me it feels more as if a corporate culture does more to stifle creativity than it does to nurture it.)

what i like about playmaker isn't about it's efficiency, it's more about having ways to make a game that doesn't rely on having to learn/re-learn a programming language. if you are extremely proficient in programming in either JS or C# then it comes down to a matter of which is more comfortable for you. if you find more comfort and control of your scripts by being able to get into the code and wiggle things around, then maybe Playmaker might not be the absolute best thing for you. but, if you're not an expert in programming language, playmaker can open up avenues to get your game made without having to re-learn a programming language.

that being said, honestly it does take a bit of learning to get used to Playmaker but the learning curve is much, much easier than with most programming languages i've tried.

and the price, given that it is licensed to you and not on a per-project basis is a huge bonus too which makes the cost an almost steal...