I'm working on a small puzzle game in Unity which is UI based. Most of the UI elements (screens/popups) that I use have a specific animation that will play when that element gets displayed on the screen, as a sort of opening transition. In order to do this, I am using the state machine of the unity animator, with two states: Hidden (the base state) and Visible. The state transition is controlled by an 'isHidden' variable in the state machine. All of my elements are also managed by a display manager, which easily allows me to show a specific element when I want it to. The animations are hooked up to this display manager, as it controls the 'isHidden' variable in the state machine.
The way that this works: when changing from Hidden to Visible, the opening animation plays since it is attached to the Visible state. When that particular UI element is hidden again, the state is also changed to hidden (done via the display manager). This happens without an animation. This means that the next time this particular element is shown again, it will also display the opening animation again, and it won't remain stuck in the Visible state.
This all works fine for most of the screens/menus/popups which I am using. However, I am having a particular issue with my 'game' element. This is the gameobject that displays the level which the player is currently playing. Every time the player loads a new level, I want the same opening animation to play when it displays the new level. But during this process, the display manager doesn't hide/show the game object (since there is no need to) which means that it doesn't call the animation from there. So what I'm doing is: when I am unloading the current level, I manually set the 'isHidden' variable to true. Then when I am loading the new level, I set it to false. Hoping this would make the state machine switch from 'visible' to 'hidden' and then back from 'hidden' to 'visible', and triggering the opening animation.
However, the result is not what I had hoped for. Using Debug I can see that I am changing the variable in the state machine, but it doesn't update the state right away. This isn't a big surprise to me, as I can imagine the state machine needs some time to process the new variable value before it will change the state. Since I'm changing the value twice in the same method, I assume the state machine doesn't register this change. But it does mean that this probably won't get me to where I want to go.
Is there a way for me to quickly 'reset' the current state, so that I can replay the opening animation? Basically doing Visible -> Hidden and Hidden -> Visible all at once?
Ps. I have tried using a trigger instead of a boolean as well. The result seemed to be the same: It works with most of my elements, but it still doesn't play the animation when loading a new level.
The way that this works: when changing from Hidden to Visible, the opening animation plays since it is attached to the Visible state. When that particular UI element is hidden again, the state is also changed to hidden (done via the display manager). This happens without an animation. This means that the next time this particular element is shown again, it will also display the opening animation again, and it won't remain stuck in the Visible state.
This all works fine for most of the screens/menus/popups which I am using. However, I am having a particular issue with my 'game' element. This is the gameobject that displays the level which the player is currently playing. Every time the player loads a new level, I want the same opening animation to play when it displays the new level. But during this process, the display manager doesn't hide/show the game object (since there is no need to) which means that it doesn't call the animation from there. So what I'm doing is: when I am unloading the current level, I manually set the 'isHidden' variable to true. Then when I am loading the new level, I set it to false. Hoping this would make the state machine switch from 'visible' to 'hidden' and then back from 'hidden' to 'visible', and triggering the opening animation.
However, the result is not what I had hoped for. Using Debug I can see that I am changing the variable in the state machine, but it doesn't update the state right away. This isn't a big surprise to me, as I can imagine the state machine needs some time to process the new variable value before it will change the state. Since I'm changing the value twice in the same method, I assume the state machine doesn't register this change. But it does mean that this probably won't get me to where I want to go.
Is there a way for me to quickly 'reset' the current state, so that I can replay the opening animation? Basically doing Visible -> Hidden and Hidden -> Visible all at once?
Ps. I have tried using a trigger instead of a boolean as well. The result seemed to be the same: It works with most of my elements, but it still doesn't play the animation when loading a new level.