Usage of Heirarchy

[ryanprice]

I have a question about the recommended use of the hierarchy.

I use the SM.state property to do alot of conditional evaluation. i.e: if(SM.state == "active")

I would like to have say 2 states , "dying" and "dead". If I was to check this
if(SM.state == "dead") , is there a way that I could have that condition also = "dying" ?

I thought maybe if dead was the parent state and dying was the child, but that doesn't work

do I need to do if(state == "dying" || state == "dead") everytime ? that doesn't feel right to me.

Or should I have 3 states "deadAsParent" as the parent, and "dying" and "dead' as the child
and then only ever test (SM.parentState == "deadAsParent")

I may be overcomplicating this, as I am still grasping how to use this class in real-world cases.

Thanks again
Ryan

[ryanprice]

ahh I see you can't do this anyways (SM.parentState == "deadAsParent")

So i guess my question now is, if I go to a child state, does it play the enter: of the parent AND of the child ?

     monsterSM.addState("melee attack",{parent:"atack", enter:onMeleeAttack, from:"attack"})
     monsterSM.addState("smash",{parent:"melle attack", enter:onSmash})

does onMeleeAttack and onSmash get run ?
What are some of the benefits of using the hierarchy ?