doesComboSystemHaveTooManyBools = True

THE PROBLEM

In my head, using booleans for a combo system seemed straight forward. isPunching,  false? Then canPunch, true. Was simple until I realized I had to track more and more with each combo'd attack. 

"canPunch" 

"canPunch && canCombo && inComboWindow" 

"canPunch && canCombo && didPunchFirstCombo && inComboWindow."

The more combo's I added, the more complicated it was to track. I would test it out based on the state machine in the anim blueprint but it would go all over the place because some bools were in multiple paths. The State Machine was a whole new can of worms that got out of hand quickly. It looked like a spider web of disappointment.

THE SOLUTION

I decided to take a step back and research a better way because this wasn't it. Enter Notify States. With these and including some interfaces for pointing to the next combo attack, I could scale much more quickly and much more cleanly. The notify states allowed me to run logic when the animation reached the beginning of the notify state and logic when it reached the end. This gave me my combo window for chaining attacks. I could also name attack animations and point the next attack to it with my interface that I set in the notify state logic.

I could do this for each animation and customize it any way I wanted. Whether I did a 2 chain combo, or a 100 chain combo, all I had to do was point the notify state to the next attack. Depending on the user if they chose a punch, kick, heavy or light, the notify state knew where to go. If no combo was selected, it would automatically reset itself. This also became my solution for my collisions issue I previously had. I'm sure there's so much more I can do with notify states.