playMaker

Author Topic: What is the best way to handle 2d gui objects with playMaker 1.1?  (Read 5032 times)

Tim

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Does playMaker do anything to optimize draw calls, like Sprite Manager 2?  If i want to create a heavy 2d object game, would SpriteManager still be the way to go?

I looked through the examples but none of them really have a lot of gui objects.

Thanks

tobbeo

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Re: What is the best way to handle 2d gui objects with playMaker 1.1?
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2011, 07:08:10 PM »
My two cents is to still use Sprite Manager 2. At this point you just have so much more control and I believe it's much faster. I am making a 2D game myself and I would love to have some Sprite Manager 2 specific actions implemented into Playmaker but I guess that all depends on the demand so make your voice heard!

Some day I'd like to get into writing my own actions so I can do stuff like this and share them.

jeanfabre

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Re: What is the best way to handle 2d gui objects with playMaker 1.1?
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2011, 04:50:12 AM »
Hi,

 Yes, make actions requests for SM2 and EZGUI on the forum, and I am sure you'll get them done.

Bye,
 
 Jean

Tim

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Re: What is the best way to handle 2d gui objects with playMaker 1.1?
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2011, 06:44:54 AM »
I read up on SM2 and watched some tutorials.  I now have a much better idea on what it does.  It does a lot more than I originally thought, so I am sure it is still the best way to handle sprites in Unity.  It looks like there are already requests for SM2 actions on the forum.  As I don't have SM2 I am not sure what actions would even be useful.  I have written a few custom actions and it seems fairly easy, so I may just write any I need to handle SM2 if I pick it up.

Thanks

tobbeo

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Re: What is the best way to handle 2d gui objects with playMaker 1.1?
« Reply #4 on: April 11, 2011, 06:13:36 AM »
I read up on SM2 and watched some tutorials.  I now have a much better idea on what it does.  It does a lot more than I originally thought, so I am sure it is still the best way to handle sprites in Unity.  It looks like there are already requests for SM2 actions on the forum.  As I don't have SM2 I am not sure what actions would even be useful.  I have written a few custom actions and it seems fairly easy, so I may just write any I need to handle SM2 if I pick it up.

Thanks

Let us know if you do, would be great if you could share them! I am also going to try and learn how to create custom actions for stuff like SM2. I created my first very simple one today, but it was a very, very simple one (FloatSubtract). I do hope that someone more code savvy than me gets to it first as I imagine I'll be spending a lot of time trial and erroring before I get decent at it.

Alex Chouls

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Re: What is the best way to handle 2d gui objects with playMaker 1.1?
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2011, 04:34:42 PM »
SM2 and EZGUI look awesome. Just so you know, Playmaker does optimize OnGUI with version 1.1. In Unity there seems to be a setup cost to calling OnGUI, so the cost increases with the number of objects using OnGUI. The PlayMakerGUI component centralizes all Playmaker OnGUI calls under one OnGUI call - so it's a LOT cheaper with lots of objects.

PlayMakerGUI also lets you preview GUI actions at edit time, without running the game. This can be very helpful for simple UI screens or mockups. But for more complex UI, a dedicated UI tool is probably the way to go... Anyway, give the Playmaker actions a try if you have time - I'm interested in feedback.