Where can I find information on creating a heavily windowed game?

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Hi Guys - I'm interested in making a game through unity but given the specifics of it's gameplay I can't find tutorials to help me!

Basically the game will consist of several windows or frames.

In 1 window there is a view of a town. Players in the game are represented in this window to maintain a visual connection with what is happening. In this window cutscenes between day/night cycles will be shown and the player avatars may move. This window will take up approximately a quarter of the screen. I want to have a 3d view here (although representatively a 2 dimensional sprite view would work as well). This will not be a town you can travel in and the camera will be static.

However the main part of the game takes place in the other windows or frames. There is a chat area at the bottom that is VERY important as the game is based around user communication. There will be other frames to the side that include timers, check boxes, preferences, etc.

So basically most of the screen should be information and keyboard accessible without necessitating any 3d elements. Only one portion needs 3d for the sake of aesthetics.

Is unity3d for me and if so where can I find information that suits my needs?

As far as I can tell the 2d GUI implementation isn't very flexible and the rest of the tutorials on the web are for 3d menus. Currently the only workaround I can see if to define the windows as some sort of HUD but that seems clumsy.

The genres I can think of comparing it to are stategy (eg. Europa Universalis) or even poker games where apart from the conceptual ease that comes from a 3d view all the main action takes place in a 2d informational environment.

Any replies/suggestions/links are extremely well appreciated!!

1 Answer

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All doable. For the multiple windows, you can use multiple cameras, each with a different viewport rect. For determining what gets rendered by which camera, you can use layers, and/or use object positioning.

For the GUI elements, you can try the built-in GUI system. If that doesn't meet your needs, you might take a look at (e.g.) EZGui. Failing that, you can implement your own system, which, while it wouldn't exactly be trivial, shouldn't be any harder than it would be with any other game engine.