Working with AnimationTrees and AnimationNodeStateMachine

Maaack

Hey there, I'm looking for suggestions on how to best work with AnimationTrees.

My goal was to more than double the number of branches in my narrative, which was currently handled by AnimationPlayer and about 45 lines of code. I thought the AnimationTree would let me remove about 20 lines of code, as well as make it simpler to add more branches.

I'm about halfway done replacing my existing code, and I'm wondering if I should backpedal. I feel I'm already hitting the limits of the AnimationTree UI in Godot. My states fill my entire screen resolution, I'm having to move states closer just to join them with transitions before moving them back, and I'm having to repeat the same actions over-and-over. I don't see it scaling well. However, I do like that it provides easier readability and visualization of the state machine.

Do people have suggestions for dealing with state machines as they get more complicated? Are there other tools or plugins people would suggest?

Thanks for your time.

Maaack

I realized state machines can hold other state machines, which may help in organizing some of the states and transitions.

fire7side

When you say you are using the entire usable space, do you mean it doesn't keep expanding to fill number of animations anymore?

Maaack

@fire7side said: When you say you are using the entire usable space, do you mean it doesn't keep expanding to fill number of animations anymore?

Edited my first comment to clarify. No, that feature has worked fine - I'm referring to the space of my physical screen. Basically, I'm "missing a zoom in/out." Sorry for any confusion.

Maaack

To be clear, having to repeat the same steps multiple times is my biggest source of hesitation moving forward. I believe a lack of multi-select and group editing is at least partially the issue here. Being limited to one Advance Condition per transition also leads me to defining more conditions than I had previously.

I've not contributed to the Godot code base yet, and have confidence issues in starting, but I'd like to help if I can. I tried locating the UI related code in https://github.com/godotengine/godot by matching text in the hint boxes, but got no hits. I'd appreciate any pointers. Thanks!