Making Play with Playmaker
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During the preproduction of the Runes of Kalevala, a team member stumbled upon a plugin for Unity called Playmaker by Hutong Games LLC. Playmaker allows for a easier time when creating state machines since it does not require the user to script out the entire state machine. Instead the user can create state machines by simply dragging out lines between the states and the states themselves have actions that are executed when the state is reached. The actions are chosen from a long list of available options that allows for varied enough functionality that Playmaker can become as powerful as if the state machines where scripted by hand.
Using Playmaker, I managed to create a state machine for an enemy AI that can walk back and forth between two points while searching for a player. When a player is found the enemy chases them until they reach a distance close enough to attack and begins attacking. If the player gets far enough away from the enemy, the chase is resumed. Creating this took me roughly two afternoons and it could have otherwise taken me weeks. It gives me a similar feeling when I used Unity for the first time. It feels like cheating because it is so easy, but as I learned using Unity that if a tool seems to make work easier, just accept it and spend that time on making the game better.  |
