I am using the array lists for various things like managing strings, but I don't think my inventory system is going to require it as it's not ever going to be very complex and there will never be variable quantities to deal with. I'm actually treating inventory just like any other set of objects in the world that the player can interact with, so the possible inventory is unique per scene. And I do have plenty of Unity experience I actually taught a class in Unity (be it an art class) and I've shipped a couple titles built in Unity before (with teams of programmers of course). But I haven't wired logic before or scripted anything myself, and that's where I am struggling the most.
I have a system that works and achieves most of what I want, but there are a few areas I'm having trouble debugging regarding raycast errors (everything breaks if I change the distance now, or try to have different FSM's cast different distances which is a showstopper for my intended design) and like I mentioned before the FSM's being able to get out of sync or out of expected order causing a broken state prohibiting progress. And this is all due to the fact that I have no master logic outlined and am just blindly doing things one step at a time until they work.
I am wanting to throw it away and redo it as I'm basing high level states being determined by what cursor texture is currently active. It's the only thing I could imagine because of my lack of experience in this area. But I'm ambitious and motivated to solve my problems.
I read a post where you said to treat things more like organs of a body working together rather than trying to build large systems to manage lots of things, and I am doing that for the most part but I believe I could simplify my high level state determination without relying on cursor textures and having different redundant FSM's talking to each other to achieve this as it's become overwhelming to maintain rather than having many simpler independent fsm's.
I guess what I need is to sit down with a programmer, explain my goals, and work together on sketching up the logic that would encompass this all before getting too far ahead of myself, I do believe it could be much simpler than I know how to make it.
Is there a place in this forum for developers interested in collaboration? Can we create one if not? It'd be priceless to me to have such resources. Like I could trade art services for logic construction advice.
I am currently building a website to track and share my project and it's progress, but I don't wanna hire anyone as I think part of the story behind the development of my project is more interesting if I do this on my own without hiring a programmer (though maybe it's unrealistic and eventually I'll need a partner or to hire someone), But right now I just want guidance with the most enigmatic parts, as this playMaker is amazing and is going to change things as far as independent developers go I believe!