What is the most effective way to create a State Machine in Fusion 2.5?

[zip2kx]

You shouldnt activiate deactive groups, instead use an alterable value or flags to determine the state.

E.g. if flag 0 determines idle and flag 1 is chase.

Player attacks goblin
-Turn goblin flag 1 on
-Turn gobling flag 0 off

Goblin flag 1 is on
Goblin flag 0 is off
-Always look at player

Goblin flag 0 is on
Goblin flag 1 is off
-Goblin movement stop (or whatever you want it do when idle)

You could probably use AlterableStrings too instead of flags and then check the string what it says.

[mobichan]

Personally, I use an AlterableValue called "eState" and set it to a value to determine its state. A value of "0" means the enemy is making a decision based on a random pool. Then I change the value to correspond with an action (ie 1 = idle, 2 = walk, 3 = attack, etc). You can also use an AlterableString so it is easier to read the enemy state, but that is generally a little more cpu intensive if you plan to have a lot of enemies going at once. The thing to always remember is that if you don't use groups, you generally need a condition on each line that checks the eState value.

[fleisl]

You shouldnt activiate deactive groups, instead use an alterable value or flags to determine the state.
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Why do you say this? I rely heavily on activating and deactivating groups as my game progresses through various stages and conditions. It's a really handy way to make sure only the code I want at any given time can run. It also helps organize my code in bite-sized chunks. I'm assuming it's also a great performance helper, as the system doesn't have to check all the events that aren't currently relevant (since the groups those are in have been deactivated).
And in fact one place I'm using this is in a state machine.
So I'm curious why I shouldn't activate/deactivate groups?
In a related note: if I deactivate a group in an event within the group, will the following events in the group still execute on that frame or does it stop that group processing immediately?

[Volnaiskra]

In a related note: if I deactivate a group in an event within the group, will the following events in the group still execute on that frame or does it stop that group processing immediately?

No, they won't execute.

[zip2kx]

Why do you say this? I rely heavily on activating and deactivating groups as my game progresses through various stages and conditions. It's a really handy way to make sure only the code I want at any given time can run. It also helps organize my code in bite-sized chunks. I'm assuming it's also a great performance helper, as the system doesn't have to check all the events that aren't currently relevant (since the groups those are in have been deactivated).
And in fact one place I'm using this is in a state machine.
So I'm curious why I shouldn't activate/deactivate groups?
In a related note: if I deactivate a group in an event within the group, will the following events in the group still execute on that frame or does it stop that group processing immediately?

That works if you have one singular object. If you have more than one of the object, e.g. several enemies, it breaks their AI if they ALL dont get transfered to that new Group.

Let's say you have groups called Idle (where the enemies just walk around not chasing anything) and Chase (when enemies get triggered they chase you). One of your enemies get triggered and you deactive the Idle Group, either everyone will get triggered and chase the player or if you use an alt value to check for trigger that lone one will chase and the others will just float away. That's because you made Fusion skip the entirety of the idle events.

That's why you use flags or alt values to check for the objects condition.