Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
State machines
In life, as well as game development, state machines (or
Finite State Machines
(
FSM
) as
they are more commonly called) are a core component for day-to-day running. At a basic
level, they tell us exactly what we are doing right now, what we were doing previously, and
what we can do next.
They are commonly used for:
• Menu systems
• Game-level transitions
• AI/Behaviors
We can implement these within games in various ways, from the very basic (and generally
hard to manage) to a more ordered system and beyond with full state managers.
A basic state machine is like a flowchart and looks something like the following diagram:
