It’s easy to mistake PlayMaker for a visual scripting tool a la Kismet or uScript, but it is much, much more than that. In fact, I can see a visual scripting tool being used hand in hand with PlayMaker. PM is a tool to help you create state machines. It encourages you to develop games using a slightly different mentality–use states for everything! Of course, it’s not feasible to put all the weight on PM, but there are specific scenarios in which it shines. For example, handling input! Here are some quick tips to get the most out of PlayMaker:
Either I’m blind, or PlayMaker doesn’t come with an Action for the Unity NavMesh feature.
In either case, it’s only a few lines of code, which you can find below.
The only thing you may want to change, depending on how you’re using the action, is whether or not to include the Finish() method in there. This will exit the state if you have the transition set up, and you may or may not want to do that.
I’ve been playing a lot with the Unity NavMesh feature lately and I gotta say, it’s a really fun feature. There have been several third party solutions to pathfinding for Unity, and I’ve used a few of them myself, but Unity’s just has that je ne sais quoi. The API is very user-friendly, and building new NavMeshes is as easy as clicking a button.
The only (major) drawback I can think of is that it’s exclusive to the Pro version. While this makes the Pro version more appealing (as if it needed to be), it leaves out a very important feature that Unity’s competitors have had for a long time.
We’ll see how far I can push this system before I break it!
I recently posted on Indie DB about my project, Subvert, regrading a change of direction. This was in response to community feedback, industry vet advice and, above all, a team consensus.
In a nutshell, we’re starting over, but not really. Cryptic, right?
The new Subvert will most likely have a different title/subtitle and will be a completely different type of game. At the same time, we’ll be keeping a surprising large portion of the initial design in place. We’re basically trimming the fat. We want to stay true to the core principles of the game, but take on a project of the right scope for our team. As much as we’d love to make the game we originally envisioned, it’s not in the cards right now, and making a half-assed version of that wouldn’t be fulfilling to us, the players or anyone.
I will share more in the coming days about the specific changes, but I expect to be posting much more on this blog about them and to post progress every step of the way.
I’m sure some people will dislike the new direction, but at the end of the day, we need to stay true to ourselves and execute on OUR vision.
Before the rambling progresses, I’ll leave it here.
