I’ve been a professional developer for 6 years, I know C# inside and out, and though I’m new to Unity, I have no problem writing scripts to accomplish things. Only a few hours in, my game is progressing nicely, but, like most people, time is my most precious commodity, so I’m open to anything I can do to expedite things.
The reviews for Playmaker speak for themselves, and I’m considering grabbing it while it’s $45, but it’s a product that sells itself as an alternative to knowing how to code. Some of the reviews speak to it being a boon to experienced developers. Can some people here weigh in as well? Is it worth it if programming is your wheelhouse?
Well I think its more for artists or people who cant program if you watch etsskis video about qube it was made using UDKs visual scripting language, they made the whole game without any programmers.
i bought it when it was on sale… opened it twice and i think i’ll never use it. it’s much faster for me to code.
anyway i’ll keep it for my son when he’ll want to start developing a game
I wouldn’t describe it as an alternative to knowing how to code. You can get so far using just PM and little coding knowledge but the more code you know the better the output will be. I’m a very average coder, more of a ‘designer’ and my major downfall is keeping things organised.
I soon lose the ‘flow’ of a project and become frustrated after going through pages of texts and scripts and keeping the connection between them…this is where PM comes in for me. The flow is natural, I even pencilled in the start screen of my first/current Unity/PM project on a notepad and took it over to Unity once I was happy with it. My game does rely on a bit of scripting though, so if you can master the binding of PlayMakers FSM’s to just a few scripts you have a lot of power at your disposal.
I watched the tutorials and like krur, I purchased it on sale “just because” it’s so cool. I watched the tutorials and thought, “Gee, I really should take a serious look at that when I have some time.” On top of that, I actually played one of the games featured on their Website and thought, “Really? Really! Wow! That’s great!” So it’s very capable.
I hand-jam all of my code. It’s just the way I do things. Playmaker is essentially a state machine and if you’ve never programmed before, then it makes perfect sense because you don’t know any better. I don’t mean that in a negative way. It is what it is.
Watch some of the tutorials, start coding, and then you’ll figure out if you need it or not.
Yup it’s completely doable with Kismet in UDK, and it taught me some things, that I later transposed into scripts, but now, I’d rather code it in. Unity’s code is tons simpler than UDKs Uscript.
Playmaker operates little differently than programming. I think every visual scripting plugins does. So, some things can really seem like - ‘oh I can do this way faster in C#. This is slowing down my dev process.’ When you are coming from a programming background, this can be your initial reaction.
Once you get over it, you can find Playmaker is really helpful in developing a game visually, like a flowchart. It’s not really a flowchart, but gives you a workflow somewhere between a flowchart and programming. So, you can get developing more rapidly, as you don’t have to design the architecture and then program. And this really helps. Also, coming from a programming background really helps in developing your own actions and extending Playmaker the way you want to. As you know programming has different levels and it’s usage. Playmaker being at a very high level, it doesn’t limits you in any way.
In my work, I have to do multiple tasks, design, draw, model, texture, rig, animate, do fx, render, composite and code. So, I don’t have to look at the architecture every time and try to remember the maze of interconnections and function calls when I get back to code. One look at the PM flow and I back inside the project.
FlyingRobot thank you so much you just sold me playmaker for your reasons as they are exactly what I would need it for I am a 12year c# and other language developer. But as an idie I have to take concept art to finished game including all the tasks you mentioned I would use it to speed up my production and not worry about complex logical head aches.thank you soooo much.and this is the only reason I would expect an experienced developer to get it like ourselves.
I would like to have a node based visual programming environment, that actually mimics current unity’s language the best way possible.
I’ve put this very quickly just now, but this is kind of what I would like:
It’s basically the same functionality as our current coding language (in this case Unity Script)…
Right now, text coding is one dimension, you keep adding line after line. And scrolling gets long quick if you don’t separate it into several scripts. You have to divide your code into several scripts for the sake of being organized, but often that also makes your code confusing, as scripts need to communicate each other.
It would be better to be able to layout our code so it’s easier to find, like a map.
When using nodes, you gain the benefit of bi-dimentional coding. I’m convinced we could handle more code if we could layout it this way. But maybe it’s just me!
When I started using Unity I said I would never use a visual designer, but sometimes after spending months working on graphics and animation, when I come back to scripting I find it hard to get in the mindset and be productive. Theres a lot of huff and puff moments where I can’t be bothered with scripting.
some days I just get so bored of it and then purchase a visual tool, then I start it up for about an hour and then feel I’m letting myself down and feel the need to focus on learning to code better. This week I decided that I would focus on playmaker and see really what it has to offer. I always thought playmaker would be just for prototyping, but I soon realized that it’s really much better than that. Very powerful tool indeed !
I’m so impressed with “playmaker” and the tutorials are just fantastic. You will be up and running in no time. The team behind Playmaker are the most productive asset developers I’ve ever seen, they just keep on pumping more and more functionality.
You can create custom scripts and add them to Playmaker, so complex things that would be longer to create in playmaker you just need to code and add.
I’ve just started using Playmaker and I’m a pretty experienced programmer. I’ve found that it’s useful for AI and other state-based things, especially when timing is involved. The nice thing is that it has the ability to call methods and set properties on a MonoBehavior, and the Playmaker component itself lets you trigger events and change variables in the FSM.
So basically, whenever I find myself thinking “this would be way easier in C#”, I stop, do what I want to do in C#, then hook it back up to Playmaker so I get the benefits of a visual state editor.
I use playmaker for all the same exact reasons FlyingRobot mentioned. Im a solo dev and I want to be responsible for all the other areas of game dev, art, gameplay, models, animations, textures, etc. So people like us, love to save time and work more efficiently so we can put that time into other areas. Playmaker is an excellent tool especially for solo devs. With playmaker you can rapidly develop your game and in a very organized way. All programmers had this experience before where they code something, and then one day they go back to it and look at their code and say to themselves “what the heck did I code here”. With playmaker, this will never happen again. Really easy to pick up where you left off and see what you where doing because its a visual representation of what you did instead of trying to understand your old code again.Its perfect for people who cant code and even better for people who can code. If you can code you can extend playmaker and make your own custom actions.
I am also a programmer and I know both uniscript and C# and have fully coded most of my previous projects. But ever since I started using PM I have saved so much time and have been able to focus on a lot of the other areas like art. definitely worth it, best asset ever purchased.
Hmm… I see where you’re going, but I’m not seeing how adding an extra dimension would help. Wouldn’t that make things harder to find, since you’ve got an extra axis to search on? Also, it’s now potentially harder to search as you’d lack the highly refined tools available in text-based IDEs. Plus, if you visually represent what’s connected to what you’ll get “spaghetti code” in the most visually literal form possible short of throwing your dinner at your screen.
On that note, text based IDEs (and modern languages themselves) have pretty good tools to help you navigate your code. Code folding, go-to-definition, find references, info popups when you hover over things, code completion, etc. etc., all of that stuff helps.
Short answer no.
As soon as your behavior becomes more complex, you’re in trouble. You’ll end up with trillions of little boxes and gazillions arrows. :\
If you know how to write decent code then:
If you work alone, no artists or designers, write everything in code.
If you work with artists/designers and they want to take control over the game (events, behavior, whatever) then it’s a good idea to abstract lot of code into higher states/behaviors and let them glue those chunk of code.
