Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
It has been a long, hard road with many bumps in the way, but the journey has
begun (I say begun because the
Unity UI
journey does not end with Unity 4.6;
it will continue to evolve into Unity 5 and beyond like many other components).
With a keen eye on the future, the new
Unity UI
system delivers on several core
points, namely:
•
Extensibility
: Each and every control is a script and you can create new
scripts to derive from them and create your own controls.
•
Uses sprites
: The new Unity UI system is predominately built on top of the
new sprite system introduced in Unity 4.3. It has also however extended the
sprite system with some new features as well.
•
Tight integration with GameObjects
: Each control is a GameObject in its
own right with the same capabilities as any other game object including the
ability to add further components and/or scripts.
•
Exposed events
: Each control has its own events which you can attach to and
extend upon.
•
Tight integration with rendering and update loops
: Because they are
GameObjects, you can even override the default rendering and updating
of a control.
•
Animation
: Each control can be fully animated using the new Animator
dope sheet and Mecanim. Some controls (such as the button) leverage
Mecanim to do state-driven control. There are even animation specific events.
•
Screenspace AND WorldSpace
: Finally UI can be drawn in 3D in a
performant way that doesn't involve hacking the project together or
having to use PRO-only features.
•
FREE
: Unity UI comes as standard as part of the free license version of Unity
(indie developers rejoice).
•
Open source
: Unity has made the source for the UI system open source and
available for anyone to look at and even offer fixes / new suggestions,
to coders delight.
New layouts
The layout features begin the story of the new
Unity UI
; they set the stage and
ultimately define where controls will be drawn, in which direction they will be
drawn, and also how they fit within a certain area.
