PlayMaker Lite/Programmer Edition - VisualStateMachine

[MrPriest]

Hello everybody.

I bought Playmaker since it seemed amazing.
Don't get me wrong, it IS amazing.
But I am a coder, and I like to have complete control over my code and its structure.
But I am not that skilled in creating a good FSM, thus I searched for, and found, Playmaker.

Is there a possibility of adding an option to only use the FSM and visual state editor?
That is, I want to write the conditions, actions, events myself, but have Playmaker control the way the FSM and editor view function.

Is that clear enough?
I am not talking source code stuff, just having the entire code in scripts, rather in the editor, while the editor will only show me visually how the states operate.

Hope to get an answer soon!
If not, sadly I will have to abandon the use of Playmaker (this is not a threat, I just can't feel satisfied with writing editor-based applications if I did not write the editor myself).

Thanks!

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

Interesting post

 Unfortunatly no, Playmaker doesn't create a open scripted version of your fsm like uFrame would do as you create your classes and patterns.

As a coder myself, building a lot a bridges between PlayMaker and other assets on the asset store, I have to say it's not really a problem that the fsm behavior is not open source for 99.99% of the cases, and actually, typically a massive gain!

I know there are lots of scripted fsm on the asset store, have you searched on that already? As an exercice, indeed writing your own visual fsm editor is fun, I would enjoy having a go at this too, but practically, the time ( read money) you will spend building a visual fsm editor from scratch outweight greatly the direct productive gain of just using PlayMaker or another visual fsm editor for that matter. It simply isn't comparable, and was for me clearly why I won bids on certain projects over other developers. I actually must admit that on a very particular project, I could not have succeeded without PlayMaker given the requirement and budget an, it's quite simple... I was faster than the engineers on the other side making changes to the actual device I was supposed to make a simulator for... quite something as they where coding too, but they did not had PlayMaker! eh eh


 Now if you want to build a system you will sell on the asset store, then yes, it makes sense, but if it's for your own projects, I am not sure you how far you would be able to take this if you have to meet deadline and work on a budget. In your free time, then yes, it makes sense too, and I would be personnaly quite interested to see your progress on this! so keep us updated if you can.

I have been down that road when I started programming myself I wanted to do it all, because I feared loosing control over the project by using too much third party and to be honest I am glad I did cause I learned a lot! But now I can achieve more with existing third party with a smaller budget, less stress and quicker production schedule ( that's a lot of plus indeed), the key is to choose wisely what works and what is not working for you, so indeed I am not judging your decision at all, it's totally fine. PlayMaker is a tool like anything else, you use it or not, it's up to you.

I am ( we are actually ) pushing Alex a lot so that he expose more of the framework, so I concur with you that indeed gaining access to more in depth features of PlayMaker make sense. But I also witnessed over these couple of amazing years that Alex is carefully analysing what can be exposed and what not and so far he's been right all over, with 5* rating and thousands of positive comments ranking in the top 5 grossing of the asset store consistently since day one! So it's tricky, because other solution offering what seems to be greater and deeper control don't make it so far because they loose something along the way it seems, it's a very interesting thing and I can't really understand why.

Could you explain what you would achieve with an open sourced fsm? Are you comparing this to uFrame as well?

 Bye,

 Jean

[MrPriest]

Thanks for the detailed post!

I do not really want an open source of the FSM.
What I meant was, for example, create states in a script, each state will have its entry and exit conditions, as well as functions/actions it can do only while in that state. Playmaker does that, but everything is GUI-based. I managed to combine the editor with the scripts (by calling the variable classes, basically), but it feels like I have a double for each variable (script bool, and FSMBool, for example).

From outside the script, I'd like to see the state flow.

So really, just the state engine and the visual representation of it.

And I do share your "problem" of wanting to have as much control and do as much as possible myself (I actually would create an engine myself if I had the time/experience).

Anyway, I am not really abandoning Playmaker, I want to learn to use it, it would be only unfair if I give such an amazing plugin no chance.

And if you wonder - I am a programmer in a company, gaming and making games are my hobbies, and I want to make games for a living in the near future.

Anyway, thanks a lot.
I'll be around!

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 I see, yes I would like this as well, for me the main reason would be that we could generate fsm at runtime as well as serializing fsms into xml or something so that we can generate online helps and similar work.

 I think that several members went quite far into this, I know this one is very advanced in controlling and accessing playmaker under the hood.

http://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/index.php?topic=7989.msg38505#msg38505

 For me the biggest missing feature in the api is delegates for events, so that we can register a script to receive a PlayMaker event either global or targeted to a specific fsm or gameobject. When that will become available, it will provide better integration all around.


 Bye,

 Jean