Request for UI recipes
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The main goal of the Unity 3D UI Essentials title is to teach you how to use the uber fantastic new Unity UI system. It has a few examples but it’s aim is to make you understand how everything works and fits together.
It does not go to great lengths to show you how to build some fanciful UI system, that is always unique to your style of game and purpose.
The titles goals do not stop and are not limited to the pages within, so this is where this recipes post comes in. It’s aim to to offer suggestions for future blog posts I’ll do to either solve a particular problem or show the best way to layout a design.
So far the requests I’ve had are as follows:
- A radar style display
- Scrolling displays using keys and / or buttons
- More controls
So as none of my titles ever sit still, you can make requests in this forum post and I’ll do my best to put together a bonus article / tutorial on creating that recipe.
Note: all recipes will also be added to the Unity UI Extensions bitbucket repository here – https://bitbucket.org/ddreaper/unity-ui-extensions
So go wild, ask your questions and offer suggestions for what you would like to see 😀
Simon (Darkside) Jackson
@SimonDarksideJ
Dave ArnoldiHi again Simon.
I have a request for a UI recipe for you.
i have been trying for sometime now to superimpose calibration images on top of the new slider control.
at first glance you would expect this to be simple. Just divide the width of the control by however many calibration images you want and dynamically position the child images by X + result * calibration image sequence numer with pivot at 0,0.
the problem is the canvas scaler throws this for a loop.
the slider width is always reported as the same value regardless of scaling.
i have posted on answers.unity and only had replies from people with similar issues, no answers. I have also seen other lists on other forums with similar problems, but no solutions.
i am tending towards having to extend the slider control itself but I am hoping that there is a simpler solution that I am missing.
thanks
Dave Arnoldi
Do you have some supporting images for that requirement Dave? At first glance, it would seem you would also need to take the scale values in to account to determine the width of the slider control when placing child images. Or simply scaling the images and then just using the slider measurements.
The Canvas Scaler does do very different things based on the UI Scale mode is set to, so you could also try using a different mode.
Simon (Darkside) Jackson
@SimonDarksideJ
Dave ArnoldiImages are just simple vertical lines a couple of pixels wide over the standard slider control.
I agree that the scale factor needs to be accounted for, but cannot see anywhere that the factor value is exposed by the canvas scaler.
My next attempt at solving this will be to try extend the scaler class itself to make the calibration images a part of the control at a lower level, but that’s going to have to wait till I have a bit more time.
I’m gearing up to start beta testing my first mobile game and that’s kinda taking up all my energy at time at the moment.
Thanks for the reply though.
Jim PerryJust downloaded the book and will be going through it soon and hopefully post a review on my blog and Amazon. One UI that would be interesting to see that I didn’t see in the extensions project would be an expandable radial selector control. This would be useful as a skill/ability selector, possibly a dialog control as well. Something like this.
Clicking on an item in the main wheel could either select it or pop out a set of items under that item.
It would be a pretty complex control of course, but if designed right fairly flexible and usable for several different things. Ideally the items could be a graphic or text.
Thanks for the support Jim.
I think I can visualise what you are saying, although an image paints a thousand words 😀
The accordion and flow layout groups do something similar but flat. So I guess you are looking for something similar but round?
Simon (Darkside) Jackson
@SimonDarksideJ
Jim PerryI guess you missed the link to the examples. 🙂 Here’s the two I was talking about
Radial menu sample 
Radial menu sample 2 Clicking on an icon would have an arc fly out from that icon with more icons representing sub items.
Right, I get you now. Yes that would certainly be an interesting control, split in to two parts.
One radial layout component and then a radial selector.
Hmm, will have a stab at that one, Great Idea Jim
Simon (Darkside) Jackson
@SimonDarksideJ
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