AS3 State Machine
State Machines are the greatest thing I've ever discovered when it comes to programming games. More and more I'm beginning to realize that a lot of the structure of the tools I've used is in fact a state machine!
To find out exactly what a state machine is, check out this wikipedia article which describes them as "...an abstract machine that can be in one of a finite number of states. The machine is in only one state at a time; the state it is in at any given time is called the current state. It can change from one state to another when initiated by a triggering event or condition; this is called a transition. A particular FSM is defined by a list of its states, and the triggering condition for each transition."
An example of this in action in my games are the guards in Super Ninja Slash. They have a couple of different states. Idle, Alarmed, Shooting, and Dead. That covers all their bases for their behavior.
Without using a state machine, writing code for all of that behavior can quickly become a giant mess of if statements and booleans. With a state machine, I can completely separate all the code for the guard's Idle state, the Alarmed state, Shooting, and Dead.
Finite State Machines
To find out exactly what a state machine is, check out this wikipedia article which describes them as "...an abstract machine that can be in one of a finite number of states. The machine is in only one state at a time; the state it is in at any given time is called the current state. It can change from one state to another when initiated by a triggering event or condition; this is called a transition. A particular FSM is defined by a list of its states, and the triggering condition for each transition."
An example of this in action in my games are the guards in Super Ninja Slash. They have a couple of different states. Idle, Alarmed, Shooting, and Dead. That covers all their bases for their behavior.
Without using a state machine, writing code for all of that behavior can quickly become a giant mess of if statements and booleans. With a state machine, I can completely separate all the code for the guard's Idle state, the Alarmed state, Shooting, and Dead.
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