how to not repeat the same Random State in a State Machine

Questions & Answers
1

I am trying to make my states not repeat twice.

// Function for next State
void goToNextState()
{

//  declaration for nextState
BossState nextState = (BossState)Random.Range(0, (int)BossState.COUNT);
// goes to next state via string name
string nextStateString = nextState.ToString() + "State";
// gets the name of the current state to a string 
string lastStateString = currentState.ToString() + "State";

// updates the current state
if (lastStateString != nextStateString)
{
    currentState = nextState;
    StartCoroutine(nextStateString);
}

    // stops in case of weird behaviour
    StopCoroutine(lastStateString);
    StartCoroutine(nextStateString);

}

2

If you want a state to never repeat, you could keep a list of “used states” and check against that.

BossState nextState;

if (usedStates.Length == BossState.COUNT) {
    // We have used all the states up! We should abort to avoid getting stuck in an infinite loop.
}

do {
    nextState = Random.Range(0, (int) BossState.COUNT);
} while (usedStates.Contains(nextState))

usedStates.Add(nextState);

It would waste less cycles if you instead make a list of “available” states and remove from there once you’ve picked one, too.