UGUIDots
UGUIDots is a Data Oriented Tech Stack library aimed to bridge the gap in between Unity's WYSIWYG UI and the Entity Component System. This is a low level library which augments on top of Unity's UI and does not serve as a replacement - so the workflow of authoring UI designs in games largely remains the same.
Why do this?
A DOTS compliant UI is still underway (which will be based off of UIElements). Until then, I need a UI solution, that most designers can get familiar with - without building too many custom tooling. Similarly - one that has the performance capabilities for both mobile and desktops. That said supported platforms are primarily for:
- Android
- iOS
- Linux 64 bit
- macOS
- Windows 64 bit
Wiki
The wiki is currently being worked on and contains basic information about Image/Text pipelines.
Changelog
General purpose change log can be found here.
TODO
Support for the following will come over time - depends on the needs for my own game.
(?) - Maybe I'll support?
- Canvas Scaling
- Anchoring
- Image stretching
- Button actions
- Button states (with color support)
- Hierarchy based disabling
- Text Rendering
- Input fields
- Subscene support
- Support manual image / text batching of static UI elements (static analysis)
Installation
OpenUPM
There is currently a known issue with OpenUPM, where Unity internal scopes are added to the registry. After adding the
package via OpenUPM, head over to the manifest file and delete the com.unity.* under the scopes entry.
cd <path-to-project>
openupm add com.initialprefabs.uguidots
Git Submodule
git submodule add https://github.com/InitialPrefabs/UGUIDots.git <path-to-folder>
Manually
Download the latest release and add it to your project directly.
QuickStart
All UGUI elements are converted into their entities format via the ConversionSystems (depends on what is currently supported). When entering play mode, the root Canvases are destroyed and render instructions are pushed into an Orthographic Render Pass.
You will need a gameObject with the RenderComandProxy proxy attached. This is where the RenderPipelineFeature is stored
and needed by the MeshRenderSystem to enqueue GPU instructions to render the UI.
Sample Repository
Please see the Sample repository here.
Dependencies
- Unity 2019.3fx
Grab these from Unity's package manager.
- Burst 1.3.0
- Entities 0.8.0-preview-8
- Jobs 0.2.7-preview-11
- Collections 0.7.0-preview-2
- UGUI 1.0.0
Note
Regarding Entities 0.8.0-preview-8 there is an issue regarding the preprocessor defines for Android. Please follow the instructions in this Unity forum post to resolve it.
Limitations
Development is still underway - so not all of the features Unity has by default is supported. Similarly - there are certain cases that are not accounted for, like sub canvases as I barely use features like that.
Credits
Some thanks to a few folks who've helped me figure out things along the way
- Sabrina Lam (Logo artwork)
- Valentina S.
- Arthur D.
- Mason R.