Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Strengths of finite state machines
The straightforwardness of a state machine relies heavily on large amounts of data. One of
the key strengths with such a structure lies in the fact that the statefulness of an agent is in-
herent within the logical structure.
Compared to a decision tree, finite states isolate the amount of possible actions that can fol-
low from another action. To create the same sort of flow in a decision tree would be inher-
ently difficult and would require embedding some sort of userdata that maintains the state-
fulness we get for free with a finite state machine.