Remove SKAction and restore node state - swift

Question

Desired behavior is: when an action is removed from a node (with removeAction(forKey:) for instance) it stops to animate and all the changes caused by action are discarded, so the node returns back to pervious state. In other words, I want to achieve behavior similar to CAAnimation.
But when a SKAction is removed, the node remains changed. It's not good, because to restore it's state I need to know exactly what action was removed. And if I then change the action, I also will need to update the node state restoration.
Update:
The particular purpose is to show possible move in a match-3 game. When I show a move, pieces start pulsating (scale action, repeating forever). And when the user moves I want to stop showing the move, so I remove the action. As the result, pieces may remain downscaled. Later I would like to add more fancy and complicated animations, so I want to be able to edit it easily.

Answer 1

Thanks to the helpful comment and answer I came to my own solution. I think the state machine would be bit too heavy here. Instead I created a wrapper node, which main purpose is run the animation. It also has a state: isAimating property. But, first of all, it allows to keep startAnimating() and stopAnimating() methods close to each other, incapsulated, so it's more difficult to mess up.
class ShowMoveAnimNode: SKNode {
let animKey = "showMove"
var isAnimating: Bool = false {
didSet {
guard oldValue != isAnimating else { return }
if isAnimating {
startAnimating()
} else {
stopAnimating()
}
}
}
private func startAnimating() {
let shortPeriod = 0.2
let scaleDown = SKAction.scale(by: 0.75, duration: shortPeriod)
let seq = SKAction.sequence([scaleDown,
scaleDown.reversed(),
scaleDown,
scaleDown.reversed(),
SKAction.wait(forDuration: shortPeriod * 6)])
let repeated = SKAction.repeatForever(seq)
run(repeated, withKey: animKey)
}
private func stopAnimating() {
removeAction(forKey: animKey)
xScale = 1
yScale = 1
}
}
Usage: just add everything that should be animated to this node. Works well with simple animations, like: fade, scale and move.

Answer 2

As #Knight0fDragon suggested, you would be better off using the GKStateMachine functionality, I will give you an example.
First declare the states of your player/character in your scene
lazy var playerState: GKStateMachine = GKStateMachine(states: [
Idle(scene: self),
Run(scene: self)
])
Then you need to create a class for each of these states, in this example I will show you only the Idle class
import SpriteKit
import GameplayKit
class Idle: GKState {
weak var scene: GameScene?
init(scene: SKScene) {
self.scene = scene as? GameScene
super.init()
}
override func didEnter(from previousState: GKState?) {
//Here you can make changes to your character when it enters this state, for example, change his texture.
}
override func isValidNextState(_ stateClass: AnyClass) -> Bool {
return stateClass is Run.Type //This is pretty obvious by the method name, which states can the character go to from this state.
}
override func update(deltaTime seconds: TimeInterval) {
//Here is the update method for this state, lets say you have a button which controls your character velocity, then you can check if the player go over a certain velocity you make it go to the Run state.
if playerVelocity > 500 { //playerVelocity is just an example of a variable to check the player velocity.
scene?.playerState.enter(Run.self)
}
}
}
Now of course in your scene you need to do two things, first is initialize the character to a certain state or else it will remain stateless, so you can to this in the didMove method.
override func didMove(to view: SKView) {
playerState.enter(Idle.self)
}
And last but no least is make sure the scene update method calls the state update method.
override func update(_ currentTime: TimeInterval) {
playerState.update(deltaTime: currentTime)
}