I really like all the functionality this asset provides. It's very convenient for creating enemy behavior or animations. And most importantly, any changes can be easily made by the designer, without the need to distract the developer.

This is a 3 in 1 product, which all 3 are great products. Behavior, state machines, and dialogue. You can literally crate an entire game with this pakage alone

I think I got this from a humblebundle years ago and I never ended up using it - oh the wasted hours! I was working on designing NPC behavior and I was trying as usual to implement all the code myself and not rely on third party solutions. I came to the point where I was trying to basically create this plugin myself, when I was googeling for ideas I came across this plugin and I was very confused that I owned it.. So I thought why not give it a go. Granted the documention (from my perspective) leaves something to be desired, I just want to use its visuals and leverage my own code and states. It took me a while to get it to work for my needs (multiple blackboard instances is what got me) but now that I have it setup correctly it is so simple to use and adding a new behaviour to an NPC is a couple of minutes of work and does not increase the complexity or readability of the project because its leveraged via the behavior tree asset which visually shows you whats going on. It makes my project a lot cleaner and straight forward! I regret it took me so long before trying it

tl;dr: you can transition NodeCanvas state machine states via methods in your own scripts and execute methods from your own scripts in the NodeCanvas state machine states. I know it is much more powerful than this but these are the only two features I needed and the only two features I use, and it is pure joy. (these features are not heavily advertised to coder heavy devs so I thought I would mention them here) Expanded: I am very hesitant to rely on 3rd party tools for critical infrastructure, which is why I am extremely pleased that NodeCanvas is able to fulfill a very crucial role for me which is "opt-in delightful enhancement" -- in other words, that makes it an essential tool! Like the best kind emotional manipulation, the fact that I COULD walk away from NodeCanvas at any time makes me never want to give it up! By comparison, with the built in VisualScripting, it almost feels like you need to go "all in" with visual scripting. Strangely, it's very hard to intermix unity scripts with the built in visual scripting state machine graph editor. Since it's "all or nothing", I opt for nothing. (not to mention the recompile times for visual scripting seem really long). I am sure I could eventually figure it out in Visual Scripting, but for the "time value of money", you can figure it out much faster and with almost zero boiler plate using NodeCanvas. With NodeCanvas, I was able to design my own state machine, my own state and action scripts, and then do the wiring (that I COULD do by hand) with NodeCanvas. It saves me a ton of time and is delightful.

Probably one of the best behavioral AI assets available—if not the best. It offers great performance, is simple to use, and allows for modeling highly complex behaviors with just a few clicks. The documentation is top-notch—you don’t often see assets this well-documented. Internally, the code quality is excellent—clearly built by someone who understands software architecture and follows best practices. The asset is also very clean; I’ve never encountered any warnings or errors. Integration is seamless, and extending the system is effortless—creating custom nodes is as simple as extending a class. Definitely a tool you can rely on!

Using NodeCanvas with Slate is very useful, you can achieve very complex sequences with very little hassle. Like with Slate, docs could be better...

I really like this asset. It is the best one I’ve tried for visual state machines and behavior trees. Pros: -> It allows you to create state machines and behavior trees very easily, including nested ones. ->It is easy to understand what is going on, as you can easily see states and transitions in runtime. -> It has a nice and clean UI. ->It’s fast enough; I have never experienced any performance issues caused by NodeCanvas. Cons: ->There is a lack of complex tutorials. The tutorials I found on the website and the YouTube channel were not enough for me. I completed all of them and still want to see more complex and real-world examples. I found a couple of good videos about this asset on other YouTube channels. ->This asset has its own serialization system for nodes. While I understand the reasoning behind this, it definitely needs MUCH more documentation, especially for complex types. For instance, I had issues integrating the FMOD inspector with this asset and eventually decided to use a workaround (and as I understand from the unofficial Discord, no one has successfully integrated it). I was able to integrate Unity localization, but it was quite challenging to figure out how to do it. I would really appreciate more tutorials that cover complex types. Overall, I enjoy using this asset in both of my projects, and I highly recommend it to anyone searching for visual state machines and behavior trees.

I tried many Fsms. This is the best.

I'm a software engineer by trade, I've owned this asset for a long time since I got it in a bundle. I've used this asset in the past for simple things in College, and had a good experience. The editor looks great, the visualization of running nodes is slick and makes it simple to debug, you can do quick tests for systems without making throwaway code, and the asset is extremely well documented. I tried to use it for the first time in a long time for a large project and after about two weeks I have formed this opinion on this asset: It does not scale well. All the provided Tasks are too granular to save time, and I refuse to use reflection in production code for performance reasons. The remaining path is to write a bunch of modular custom tasks to suit your project, which just builds your dependency on the asset (which is especially scary after poking around the forums, which are not as lively as I hoped) as well as doubles the amount of work you need to do to support your designers. Some of the features I would expect to work simply do not work (such as marking blackboard variables as exposed so you can assign scene/prefab information in the inspector. this is basically required if you want modular subgraphs.) and any attempt to help yourself by exploring the codebase is made more difficult due to extreme code style inconsistency and years of hastily refactored legacy code. I'll be looking into another solution or creating my own. This asset may still work great for you if any of the following are true: Your project is a prototype You are trying to learn the basics of FSM's or BT's Your game is extremely simple Like all opinions, mine is not valid in all contexts. Please use your best judgement.

Downloaded and unpacked into 2021.3.16f1, a supported LTS version. Errors with function calls that do not exist, conditional compilation tags that result in errors, multiple outdated API calls that no longer are supported. Don't waste your money. It literally does not compile straight out of the box. Edit: Developer's response below is wrong. On 2021.3.16f1, and 2021.2.7f1, if importing this asset into a completely fresh project and select Yes to auto-update scripts, there are 7 immediate compilation errors. If you click No to auto-update, there is 1 compilation error. Link here to this issue on the developer's support forum for proof: https://nodecanvas.paradoxnotion.com/forums/topic/compilation-errors-on-import-fresh-project/ The developer tests this on 2021.3.37, which includes new API calls added in 2021.3.18. He does not test this on the version I list, 2021.3.16f1 (LTS), which does not have this API call. Meaning, the developer did not do basic repro yet wants to convince you that this bug does not exist.