For this game, I would like to emphasize on the importance of a Game State Manager while developing a game. In the two weeks of making this game, I realized how significant game state managers are. Initially, in week one, which consisted of getting the prototype ready for the interim round, the three parts (Introduction, Main and Ending) of the game were based on transitions handled by functions and couple of flag variables.

 

As we kept moving forward and iterating our game in the second week, we realized our previous approach was messy and it was time to make it more organised by using states and transitions between them.   

 

Advantages of using finite state machines:

 

• State machine diagrams make sense when one has many states to take care of along with time triggered events. By time triggered events I mean specific actions that are stored as procedures that need to be executed at certain intervals or when the game enters a specific state. Every state will take an input and depending on the condition (Float, Int, Bool, Trigger), the next state may or may not be executed.

 

• Another advantage is that one can incorporate multiple changes without affecting the existing code.

 

• Though Unity’s animation system (mecanim) is generally used for playing animation clips, it can be redesigned as a Game state handler. State machines make the code more intelligible as it  gives the developer and designer an idea about how long each state is and what events are triggered in every state. It becomes easier for the developer to debug (as every state is visible and the state with an error can be caught very easily) and straightforward for a designer who wishes to understand the flow of the game very briefly.

 

• A state machine can take care of erroneous inputs, scenarios with more than one different state and fostering re-usable states.

 

• It helps the current game state to loop until the next action is triggered.

 

We repurposed Unity’s animation mecanim and used it to make transitions between different game states.

 

Steps:

 

1. We first create an animation controller that serves as a basis for the finite state machine.

2. We create states inside the machine. These states may or may not be animations. They can simply be used to accommodate looping conditions or triggering an action independent of animation. For example, tap to initiate scanning-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   3. We then add the animator to a gameobject that now holds the finite state machine.

   4. A game state manager script is created that contains functions. Each state can now be now be assigned a function as a condition             which when true, it will be executed and the next state can be triggered.

 

Some problems with Game state managers:

 

1. Transition duration must be set to zero to avoid overlapping between states.

2. Sometimes, the actions in the new state will not be executed because the previous state has not been executed completely. The triggers in the previous state may get set later and persist beyond the current state.

 

 

 

References:

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[1] Game state manager - http://gamedevgeek.com/tutorials/managing-game-states-in-c/

[2] Unity's mecanim - https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-Transition.html

[3] Finite state machines - https://medium.com/the-unity-developers-handbook/dont-re-invent-finite-state-machines-how-to-repurpose-unity-s-animator-7c6c421e5785