During the last part of this little article series I mentioned how I used a queue in each state object to allow for continuous transitioning to occur. The reason for this is to allow for complex transitioning to occur. One example for this is a logo screen where it needs to fade in, stay on screen and then fade out again. Rather than relying on managing the states manually, we can add states on to a queue so they occur automatically.

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There comes a time when simple state management just will not cut it anymore. I found this out while building up the code base for Thrust’s GUI library. As the objects on the screen became more complex, so did their states. This article covers a new way of thinking about an object’s state, a design that has been proven in Thrust (v1.x). The goals of this state system include the following:

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