I attended the 2013 Tokyo UNITE and the thing that stuck with me most was in one of the presentations we were told that for testing and prototyping OnGUI is OK, but to never use it for production. That led me to try Prime31’s open source UIToolkit which is like opening a bag of worms. Now I’m about to spend the near $100USD to buy NGUI, BUT…
I hear that Unity is updating it’s UI system (I also heard a rumor that the NGUI coder was hired by Unity). Therefore I don’t want to pay the hundred bucks for NGUI only to have the new Unity UI arrive in the next update in a few weeks or months. If the update is more than 3 months away then the 100 bucks for NGUI may be justified. If the update is coming sooner than 3 months I prefer to wait.
Can you please give me an answer…Should I buy NGUI or should I wait?
It’s a fact that the ngui guy now works for unity. And nobody knows when the new gui is coming out, could be years away. There’s also a free version of ngui available, so if you just want to try ngui out without paying, you can.
Unity’s built-in OnGUI has been recently optimized (since version 4.0), so I don’t think it’s wise to just rule it out like that. It depends what on kind of app your creating, and for what platforms you’re targeting.
Plus, I heard that if you learn/like ngui, then you’ll like the new gui as well. So that’s just another reason to buy ngui.
You cannot work with promises. You have to use what is available. The old GUI solution is available, but sucks in many ways. And be it the many drawcalls that it produces. The new Unity GUI is minimum one year away. Maybe even more. I would really wonder when it would arrive before Unity 5. And maybe Unity cancels it again, like they seemed to have done with an already existing approach when hiring ArenMook for the new GUI.
When you can wait until the new GUI solution arrives, then fine. If not then the commercial plugins are your best bet. And NGui is a fine solution here.
NGUI works now, and it’s better in many ways. Try the free version and see if you like it, then wait for a sale (I got it at 50%). Even with the NGUI developer working for UT, they have a lot of catching up to do. If their final result is less awesome than NGUI some people would still keep using NGUI
The built-in GUI system may be faster now, but programming it is still downright weird. And it’s still not that visual.
I am developing for mobile so OnGUI is best passed by. And as it may be at least six months before my game is ready for release (I’m still in the studying Unity stage) I’ll use the free version of NGUI. Then when I’m finally ready to release the game and if the new Unity GUI system isn’t available I’ll upgrade to the paid version on NGUI.
I’ve always made my own gui’s. They’re not hard if you investigate/try to learn how to make them. Unless you’re making a complex menu based game I don’t really see what a custom gui can do for you.
