Panda3D Manual: Finite State Machines
  <<prev top next>>  

A finite state machine is a very powerful tool for managing states. A finite state machine has a number of states, an initial state, a final state, and some way to change from one state to the other. For example, a stapler can be defined as a finite state machine. It has two states, open and closed. The open state is its initial state, and the closed state is its end state. It transitions from open to closed by pushing. While this is a very simple example, finite state machines vary greatly in complexity.

Panda3D has two different finite state machine systems, FSM and ClassicFSM. ClassicFSM requires the user to create the finite state machine and acceptable transitions beforehand, while the new FSM implementation can define these states implicitly. The ClassicFSM implementation is only maintained for historical reasons; we recommend new code should use the new FSM implementation.

  <<prev top next>>