playMaker

Author Topic: Best third party GUI solution with playMaker support: Daikon Forge Vs. NGUI  (Read 6674 times)

JonathanBurroughs

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Right now I don't even know if I need any systems complex enough to warrant a third party GUI solution. But even so both Daikon Forge and NGUI are looking mighty appealing, if just to play about with.

I see both have long-standing playMaker support. But which is best?

I appreciate "best" is hard to define, so I'm most interested in just person opinion. Which has been the easiest to pick up? The most flexible to use? Has offered the most powerful solutions? Which is best supported by playMaker?

Anything which can influence my thinking would be most welcome.

jeanfabre

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Hi

I have been personnally using ngui quite a lot, and moving to DFGUI to check it out and I will stick to it for that project for sure.

I think Ngui does things somehow a bit better, but only just, it's really I guess a question of learning above all, both have incredible features, none really are easy to work with... you will likely have a love/hate relationship with both, just because we all want to jump and do it all without having to learn and experiement first... so indeed, there is a lot of that: first learn!!! they are both incredible UI systems.

Now, DFGui port of PlayMaker is incredible, hundreds of custom actions!! so you will get more with dfgui on the playmaker side then with Ngui. Having said that, I can do everything I want with ngui as is already, by using the available actions on the wiki or on the asset store, plus Get/set property... which really is giving you access to 99% of what you need.

I still think that SpriteManager and EZGUI are fare more powerful than the new UI sdks that came later, some of the stuff in there are in my opinion incredibly more easier and actually make sense... but again, it's "expensive" to check out just for the sake of it, and I am not sure how well it's supported now.

 Bye,

 Jean

Dev_Sebas

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Don´t know... but I´m waiting for Unity4.6 (GUI)
Just my 5 cents.
Cheers

JonathanBurroughs

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I think I'm going to be too scared to upgrade to 4.6 on my current project for fear of breaking compatibility with all my plugins.

jeanfabre

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Hi,

 Always back up before upgrading Unity, or any assets for that matter.

 I do think that the new Unity Gui will not be anywhere near what ngui or dfgui is providing... I whish it would, but I seriously doubt it... It's just to much decision making for a built in feature, which means less room for trial and errors, Ngui has years of battle tested development, DFGui is also very very solid, even tho with less years of development. Unity... it's been their 6th or 7th attempt for a GUI system so far if I remember correctly...

bye,

 Jean

pixelquaternion

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I just had a look at the new 4.6 GUI and i was about to buy daikon forge but it seem like the DF developers are abandoning this asset and it is completely removed from the asset store now.

Seem like i will no other choice then to go with NGUI since not enough people have compared if the new UGUI is on par with other third party solution.

Guess we will just have to wait a bit.

jeanfabre

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Hi,

 yes, I would wait a bit, at least, you can now test it properly more or less with the open beta on 4.6.

 I am currently working on bridging events from uGui to PlayMaker, and I do think it has potential, I wasn't convinved much few month ago, but it's more and more polished now, and so it looks like it could become a very valid option against third parties ( but still way behind in terms of features of course, but that's to be expected initially)

 Bye,

 Jean

doppelmonster

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Df gui is open source now. You can download it here:
https://github.com/TakuanDaikon/DFGUI

I havent used ngui yet but i am surprised that jean prefers the playmaker support of df gui. I would have thought ngui has better support.

The df gui/playmaker workflow is straight forward once you get the hang of it. Most of the time you just need About 4 actions to create basic guis.

Many complain about the mobile performance of df gui. I myself didn't run into performance problems yet.

jeanfabre

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Hi,

 I do like it a lot but the lack of support makes it a no go as far as I am concern, that's very unfortunate. I had to withdraw it from a project, and it's always difficult for the client to appreciate this is for the best. Df gui going open source is not a good thing in itself it means you are on your own now and so future updates of Unity and various platforms will likely break and give more and more problems, that will unlikely be solved officialy. So a very dangerous path on serious projects in my opinion.

 Bye,

 Jean