GUI using custom graphics - GUI approuches

Hey everyone, i’m at the point of a game build where i need to develop the GUI.

Previously i’ve used custom GUIskins, and also GuiText/GuiTexture setups.

But i know little about this method or what is going on here - i have seen it setup in this manner a few times and want to understand more about it;

This is a picture from Zombieville USA, showing their Unity screen from an article.

They have all there GUI elements off-screen but in the scene, same with all their letter objects.

MY QUESTION

  • I assume they do this to save on redrawing the GUI and obviously use there own methods to show this GUI, either being a 2nd camera or what not, Do they enable/disable the different objects? do they move them into view? Basically I dont understand this approach?

I hope i make sense and someone can make light of what and how this approach works. Thank you.

UPDATE: ok so it is one texture, most likey atlased and displayed for PrintScreen purposes, unless anyone has other insight?

I have a 2nd part question to this at - http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/128205/gui-letters-number-text-custom.html

which im also tackling!

Hey man,

From their article:

“The largest textures used were for the backdrops and main menu, which allotted 512 512 texture space. Characters are 128 128, and the houses where slightly higher at 256 512. Additionally all elements in the UI were comprised of a single 512 512 texture which includes the store you encounter between each level.
So with that said, during my play through I rarely encountered any frame rate drops, the iPhone handled the on screen elements quite easily even with scores of baddies on screen.”

Looks like standard atlasing to me and they’ve set that up for a screen grab? Could be wrong of course. You should check out Sprite Manager 2, it does a lot of the stuff mentioned in that article with ease :slight_smile: