Quote Originally Posted by gcarreno View Post
After a little bit of searching on https://gamedev.stackexchange.com I found a mention to Finite State Machines (FSM) and it clicked immediately!!!

DUH!! Of course that's what I want. Why didn't it occurred to me initially is still a mystery
Hey don't be to hard on yourself. I also had to sleep over before I realized I should recommend you to use one of state machine designs. But I see you already figured that out by yourself

Any way.
I also wanted to say that wile you are searching for state machine examples you should note that most of them are only showing the simplest state machine examples with very low complexity like general game state (whether you are in main menu, is game loading or is the game in progress for instance).
But the state machine that you will need for your game will probably need to have much higher complexity. But don't let that discourage you.

Also you might want to check Decision_tree and Behavior_tree concepts.
Now while these two concepts are most often used for implementing AI they can also be used for controlling your game state.