What’s the best way to fix state transitions in Unity AI state machine?

[AnthonyH]

I’ve been trying to implement a proper state machine for my enemy AI in Unity, but I keep running into issues where states seem to bleed into each other, like the chase state occasionally triggering an attack animation before the enemy is actually in range. Has anyone else hit this specific snag with managing state transitions and how did you untangle it?

[Nicholas.T]

Yeah I ran into this too. I found the issue was the transition timing. I removed Has Exit Time from the chase to attack transition, and I gate the attack with a real range check that only flips when the agent is within attack distance for a frame. I also split the states so chase only handles moving toward the player, and attacking is strictly a separate state entered only when isInRange is true. Since then the attack doesn’t start mid chase and the animation feels like it belongs in the right moment.

[James.M]

I wonder if maybe I was chasing the wrong problem. In my case the enemy sometimes slips into attack because the animation triggers a hit event while still processing the chase path. I tried to fix by syncing animation events with a boolean, but I’m not sure if the root cause is the animator or the logic that decides when to flip states.

[Zachary.L]

Have you considered decoupling movement decisions from the animation transitions, using a separate controller to decide when to flip into attack instead of letting the animator drive the transitions?

[EricH]

I kept seeing the chase jump to attack when the distance was still a little off. I ended up adding a cooldown timer and logging distances, and it helped me notice the tiny edge cases, but I still feel like I'm not solving the underlying issue.