Hi,
I'd like to comment on question 1:
It's not just a different interface, it's way more than this. It's a different approach and thinking process.
Basically, every time where a "process" is needed, where you actually built a flowchart of some sort when willing to explain what you want to achieve, that's where I find playmaker making astronomical difference compare to conventional scripting, because you visually build your process. That is if you come back to it in 6 month time, you simply read and follow the links in your playmaker fsm view and it all make sense even before you start playing the game. Then, if it doesn't you can see live how the process is evovling as you pla your game. 100 times better than putting breakpoint in your code.
Let alone that, it's simply let you concentrate more on what you want to achieve instead of how you will do it. Of course you'll need to learn and find your way around.
What I love to do is building the states, events and links before building any actions within the states. that's a very positive way to start thinking about what you need to implement, and this allow to quickly view and read in plain English what you are building. Then you simply put the actions in the State so that they actually do what it says on the tin. this is very good for iterative work, you start with something simple and make it grow and built up from there.
The last point is also something great for communication and task assignment between developers and clients that are actually having access to your code and code themselves. They can build a process out of States, Events, and then let you do that hardwork of building the actions, make custom actions, write scripts around that process. Very effective!
Bye,
Jean
