Thinking about making a Playmaker actions package

Sure, you can do it of course. We were asked many times about support for Playmaker but we're currently too busy in a game project to create such asset ourselves, so you are very welcome to create it yourself and sell it to other users.

Of course your asset package must not contain any core class of Combu, but only your new files (demo scripts are not core classes, I mean the classes in /Combu/Scripts), so in the description of your asset you need to explicit that it doesn't provide users with Combu (just like we did here). If your asset needs any change to Combu core classes then I suggest to create a doc with the new/edited code required, or we could eventually discuss about what these changes are and see if they can be fine also out of your asset.

Thank you! It absolutely not spread any of the core classes, and I'll send you a copy along the way so you can double check.

If you don't mind, I'd like to use this thread to ask a few questions along the way about how you coded your demo script. I know there are some extra things there like the panel switching animation, but I'm really shooting for a full Playmaker conversion of the Demo scenes at the moment so I'm going to try to be thorough. I've got Login and Registration essentially done, save for a potential Playmaker bug that I'm getting checked out, and now I'm looking at the DemoPanel script.

Anyways, what I'd like to know is what this is all about:

private int m_OpenParameterId;

and this:

const string k_OpenTransitionName = "Open";
const string k_ClosedStateName = "Closed";

and then this:

m_OpenParameterId = Animator.StringToHash (k_OpenTransitionName);

It appears to have something to do with storing the state of the currently open Panel/Menu screen, but I've never used StringToHash before so I'm a bit confused. I'm honestly not sure if I even need that or if I should just make a separate few Playmaker actions for maintaining tracking of what panel is open.

Thanks!

m_OpenParameterId is used to cache the animator variable hash/id so that it can be used in SetBool and GetBool, nothing special with it, it's normal way of setting variables on Animator ( http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Animator.StringToHash.html).

Thank you!

Ok, I've got Login, Install, Menu switching/Open panel, and Log Out Playmaker actions all working. I do get one weird warning in the console when I log in though:

Parameter 'Hash 0' does not exist.
UnityEngine.Animator:SetBool(Int32, Boolean)
CombuDemoPanel:OpenPanel(Animator) (at Assets/Combu/Demo/Scripts/CombuDemoPanel.cs:37)
CombuDemoScene:OnUserLogin(Boolean, String) (at Assets/Combu/Demo/Scripts/CombuDemoScene.cs:45)
Combu.<Authenticate>c__AnonStorey14:<>m__26(String, String) (at Assets/Combu/Scripts/User.cs:102)
Combu.<DownloadUrl>c__Iterator2:MoveNext() (at Assets/Combu/Scripts/CombuManager.cs:411)

It appears that the CombuManager is trying to change the menu status internally, despite none of the CombuDemo scripts being called directly in my Scene. I suspect this might have been a mistake on your end, as it appears that CombuManager is relying on the Demo scripts in this instance when I'm guessing not everyone will be using it in the same way you do in your demo. What do you think?

Please follow the lines in the stack trace: CombuDemoScene.OnUserLogin calls OpenPanel after a successful login at line 45 as written in your stack trace.

Nevermind on the last post, I thought CombuManager was doing something weird requiring the use of the Demo scripts, but instead I had forgotten to remove the CombuDemo function from the Login button. Oops! The funny part is I could have sworn I checked that multiple times already. 😉

Just sharing if anyone is interested, but I've finished actions for Registration, Logging in, and Loading the news, as well as a couple other minor things, and now I'm in the process of making actions for the Mail system, which is slightly more difficult than expected due to the need to build a inbox, message display, and compose message UI screens to really show off what the system can do. I've been starting with what's available in the original demo scenes and enhancing them slightly to show off functionality/possibilities a little more.

My current plan is to finish converting the first demo scene into being entirely run by Playmaker actions, then I'll get it up on the Asset store and move on to the other scenes, and finish off with new scenes for things like File sharing.

I also need to really look into what Combu is capable of regarding SQL tables, as my end goal is to build a system for my own game to allow users to share files(puzzle levels) between each other and even a popularity/search system... but I'll figure that out later.

Webbstre said
I also need to really look into what Combu is capable of regarding SQL tables, as my end goal is to build a system for my own game to allow users to share files(puzzle levels) between each other and even a popularity/search system... but I'll figure that out later.  

I have dove a level editor with save/load feature for a client, I used JSON serialized Hashtable uploaded as UserFile with sharetype Everyone (for proper purpose you could create an add-on with your own web services, classes and tables to upload these files in a specific folder and listing it to retrieve).

An inexpensive Playmaker companion sounds great to me. I can use all the help I can get. 🙂

hopeful said
An inexpensive Playmaker companion sounds great to me. I can use all the help I can get. 🙂  

How odd, I could have sworn I replied to this earlier today. I think the action pack is going to be very, very useful! I'm adding in a lot of examples or extending what is already in the demo scene to make it easy to see how to build what you need, and will probably write a bunch of tutorials (or do videos), so with the extra effort and really discovering how much Combu is capable of I'm now thinking of doing the pack for 10 dollars (with occasional sales when Combu or Playmaker or on sale). Right now I'm working on a full mail Inbox for the demo scene, which is taking a while.

And speaking of such an inbox, I need to ask Mr. Skared Creations a question about the Mail.Read() usage. Two questions actually. The first is, how do you properly mark a single message as read? I've tried a number of things with the code but I keep getting errors about the arguments not being set up correctly. I imagined it to be a simple Mail.Read(int MessageID) but instead there are things about groups and long and long[] and I really need a working example for how to make a single message as read.

The second question is this: Is there a way to then mark a message as Unread?

I'll just work on message deletion while I wait for a response 😛

About your first question, did you check the documentation? Click here, it contains an example (of course you know that an array can perfectly contain a single item).

About Unread, there's no such feature currently.

Oh wow, that's waaaaaaaaaaay more useful than the page I've been using:  http://skaredcreations.com/api/combu/class_combu_1_1_mail.html

I had no idea there were all these examples and explanations in a section that you can't find via the searchbox. It's amazing I've done as much as I have, honestly 😛

As for the Mark Unread, I guess I'll make a feature request. Umm.... how do I do that on here?

Your feature request has been already annotated, anyway in the documentation check out the menu RELATED PAGES since it contains sections for all features 🙂