Replace Unity GUI for NGUI? [SOLVED]

[coxy17]

Hi,

I am building a game for Android and hear that Unity GUI uses alot of draw calls and can impact on performance. I already have my GUI setup, do you think it will be simple to replace with NGUI?

Cheers

[TrentSterling]

If you mean the old GUI, not the 4.6 GUI, I can tell you that it depends.

It won't be a small amount of work unless you have a small amount of UI. The systems are totally different.

[coxy17]

its the old gui. I only have 5 buttons, so will it be ok? just been reading and i think i can do it :/

1.add NGUI buttons and assign a playmaker script to them
2.then create a sprite sheet for my 5 buttons for these buttons
3.then edit FSM states in scene to point to new ngui buttons instead of Unity GUI (some fsm's use strings for scores)

am i along the right path? or is there more to it?

also you mentioned 4.6 GUI, is this better/worse to use than NGUI?

thanks

[Lane]

Have you tried the new uGUI in 4.6? It's quite easy.

[coxy17]

Hi Lane,

Will the 'new uGUI in 4.6?' work with playmaker? also is it good on draw calls

[Lane]

I'm not sure about specifics, but it's the official new gui for unity and works very similar to ngui. I don't think there is a lot of performance information yet since 4.6 is still in beta.

[coxy17]

Just done some reading on unity ugui and theres not much info on performance and draw calls. So I guess its safer to go with ngui at present Plus im not sure if ugui is going to be good for ios/android without spending time doing tests. Just a shame its not out of beta :/

[jess84]

uGUI was significantly better in performance on Android for me, compared to the old GUI system. I had to ditch Daikon Forge as it was awful performance wise.

uGUI is pretty buggy at the moment, and a bunch of obvious features just aren't there, but I think it'll probably be the best solution when it's done. The Reference Resolution stuff (for auto-scaling based on device resolution) works really well.

Anyway, I'd suggest doing a backup and installing the beta and evaluating it yourself. You can always easily uninstall and revert to your older Unity build.

[coxy17]

Thanks jess

I'll try a beta version. You said that ugui its better than unity original gui. But how does ugui compare to ngui? Have you used ngui?

Thanks

Nick

[jess84]

I haven't.

All I can say is that it's significantly faster than Daikon Forge. (you'd have to look it up how DK Forge compares to NGUI for a comparison)

[coxy17]

Cool. I'll take a look.

[coxy17]

Ive decided to use NGUI, it has reduced my draw calls significantly. I would recommend NGUI, but as a non coder myself, you will need time to get to grips with it, i found it challenging, apart from that its worth the time.