#scaleform

Added a way to see what team bonuses each player has used in the match lobby, and because I had previously made team boosters event-driven, it was super short and easy. AND it was simple to move to console because most of the code was shared (unlike everything else, unfortunately...). In total, I added a new list that populates with icons for each booster the player the list belongs to has activated, the icons animate in from the right, and they have mouse-over tool tips on PC courtesy of my ToolTipComponent.

Then I had to add a new Label to a button on console. Scaleform already supports auto-translation, but it was never hooked up before, so a few weeks ago I added the hookups. Today that paid off, as adding the Label required 0 code changes and took only seconds! Instead of the minute+ it would have taken previously for adding the translation in-code plus the logic for resetting it on button state change, which is auto-handled by the Label.

Scaleform 4.0 is free to use for educational purposes within Epic's UDK 3 application.

Scaleform 4.0 makes it easy to create menus, UI elements, and 2D graphics for modern 3D games. User interface designers can quickly become productive using familiar and mature tools such as Adobe Creative Suite.

The plan is to see if I can integrate this into my workflow by watching tutorials. This would be great to be able to use as a lot of game companies are using this or in house solutions.

I have been trying to get my head around this middleware program as it appears to be really useful but it is like anything new, it takes time to get to grips with it. It took me a full night to get it the flash plugin installed and working... It's not the most user friendly to set up which is a shame.

An issue I have at the moment is the lack of tutorials for actionscript 3.0 which I am familiar with. I have installed the actionscript 2.0 plugin as there are more tutorials on this – although these are basic. As I progress through the tutorials below and begin to gain a better understanding of the workflow and methods used, I will make a decision on whether or not I will use this approach to create my final piece. 

Tutorials

Unreal University: Scaleform User Interface Design

This video helped me integrate the Scaleform plugin within Flash & UDK. It appears super useful but I still need time to understand how to apply the programming scripts to my UI artwork. 

Scaleform pipeline and workflow

This is an great sales pitch, certainly makes me want to learnt this package but the learning curve and time is a major concern of mine at the moment.

Simple Menu Tutorials

Scaleform menu introduction

Creating a Main Menu with Scaleform & UDK

Autodesk Gameware Tutorial 1/11

Other Resources

Scaleform + Actionscript: Tomb Raider UI Showreel

We started prototyping World Zombination using Unity’s built-in UI but quickly needed to find a better solution to meet our PAX Prime demo deadline. We looked for a UI framework that would be quick to implement, easy for our small team to work with given our tight resources, and also one that wouldn’t hurt performance.

At first, we decided to use Scaleform because it’s used in many AAA games and it allowed our artists to use Flash, a tool they have a lot of experience with. It worked well for the demo, but we had some issues with the Unity plugin and performance and decided to evaluate two more options: Coherent UI and NGUI. Coherent UI is an interesting new product that allows developers to build a UI in Unity using HTML, CSS, and Javascript, while NGUI is widely used with Unity and has been recommended to us by many of our friends in the industry.

Tests 

(Please note that tests were run in October and some data may no longer be accurate.)

Setup:

The goal was to test how these different frameworks affect game performance and to get an idea of what the workflow would be like for the artists and engineers implementing the UI.

We created a simple version of the game that loads a zombie mission with no UI. We then created two versions of the HUD with the three test libraries. One version used only the static HUD and the other added ten animating arrows to simulate the missing widgets, like health bars and objective markers. Each game was run on device and performance numbers were collected in Xcode using the Instruments tool.

Hardware:

iPad 4 16GB running iOS 7.0.2.

Software:

Xcode, version 5.0

Unity, version 4.2.1f4

Scaleform Unity Plugin, version 4.2

NGUI, version 2.7.0

Coherent Pro Trial, version 1.5.1

Results:

In performance testing, NGUI performed the best and Scaleform performed the worst. Scaleform consistently took ~18% of frame time updating. Coherent was the most inconsistent; it performed well displaying static UI (<1%), but when we introduced animations, Instruments showed it taking over 20% of the running time.

Performance Test:

CPU Usage (% CPU) 

Real Memory (MBs)

Summary

Scaleform:

Pros

Authored in Flash, which our team has a lot of experience with.

Supports vector graphics.

Cons

Performance issues: It’s unclear how well Flash content will actually perform when you're authoring it. For example, embedding symbols in different configurations can have a drastic impact on performance.

Cost: Standard license is $295 per platform per seat (we’re targeting 4 of their supported platforms with a team of 10).

Getting access to source code to fix performance issues requires a commercial license, which costs considerably more.

Support & Community: Scaleform provides support forums, but we haven’t had good luck with them when trying to address our performance issues.

Scaleform for Unity is still new (less than 2 years old) and there doesn’t seem to be many games using it.

No web player support.

NGUI:

Pros

Working in Unity means that the artists can view their changes in game as they make them.

Best performing library out of the ones we tested.

Supports all of our targeted platforms including the web player.

Cost: Site License is $2,000 and per seat is $95 (standard) or $200 (professional)

Support & Community: NGUI is widely used in the Unity community and is frequently #1 in the Unity asset store.

There are people on our team and in our shared office space that have NGUI experience.

Access to source code.

Cons

Our UI artists had no Unity experience.

Requires more engineering support for layout and animations.

Coherent

Pros

Uses HTML, CSS, JS

Authored with... anything! (Well, anything you would use to make a web page.)

Ability to test UIs in browser using Chrome Developer Tools or Firebug.

Incredibly fast iteration time

Coherent UI View can point to a URL, meaning you can host the UI files on your local machine and update the UI without rebuilding the app.

Cons

No access to source code

Some performance issues when doing animations in Javascript

Cost: the “Pro” tier price is not listed on their site. I contacted sales and support at Coherent Labs but didn’t get a response. The standard license is very affordable at $350 per seat for Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS and Android.

“Pro” tier is a “per title” license

Community & Support: Coherent is still new (about 1 year old) and there doesn’t seem to be many games using it.

No web player support.

We decided to go with NGUI for World Zombination because it did the best in our performance tests, we have NGUI experience on our team, and it has the biggest community. We have been using NGUI for a few months now and are very happy with it. We no longer have performance issues with UI and the transition from Flash to Unity as an authoring tool was mostly painless for our artists. I asked our UI Artist Mike to weigh in and here’s what he had to say:

“We've been using NGUI for a few months now, and I was a total n00b when we began. I have a reasonable amount of experience with Flash and Scaleform, and there are pros and cons to both. Overall, NGUI has a much easier learning curve and seems to be better suited to the kind of work we're doing. Though we lose the ability to construct UI directly in Flash with vectors, our UI art needs to be bitmap-based to achieve the look we're going for, so that point is moot. Considering that, we're only missing Flash's default design tools like rulers, guides, alignment, and layer effects. Frankly, I've found animation much easier in Unity rather than Flash, and updating components is much smoother with NGUI as opposed to Scaleform.

So far, I'm pleasantly surprised how seamless a transition from Scaleform to NGUI has been, and I'm enjoying working in the new environment.”

For more information, check out these links:

World Zombination

Unity

Scaleform

NGUI

Coherent UI

nope

all of my nope

maybe I'll appreciate it later if I actually get into game design... but for right now

I don't give a shit about scaleform's extra capabilities

Havok, a leading provider of 3D game development technology, announces today that it has integrated the full version of Autodesk Scaleform software into Project Anarchy, Havok's completely free end-to-end mobile 3D game production engine. The addition of Autodesk's industry leading UI solution to Project Anarchy complements Havok's Vision Engine, Physics, Animation and AI technologies and offers developers a complete solution for faster, more efficient game development. Games built using Project Anarchy can be deployed for free on iOS, Android and Tizen mobile platforms without commercial restrictions on company size or revenue. The latest version of Project Anarchy, which now includes Scaleform, is available for download now . Autodesk Scaleform has helped game developers create immersive UI for over 1,500 game titles. Leveraging the power of the Adobe Flash toolset, Scaleform provides streamlined, artist-driven workflows that help developers create 3D game menus, HUDs, animated textures, in-game videos and mini-games more quickly. "Project Anarchy was created to give mobile developers a complete solution for all aspects of the game development process, and Scaleform is the perfect addition to round out that package," said Ross O'Dwyer, Head of Developer Relations at Havok. "We have an incredibly active community and their feedback is really important to us. We saw demand for an improved UI system and we're happy to be able to deliver it and further empower our developers with the strength of the Scaleform toolset." "Scaleform provides a robust solution that allows developers to rapidly create high production value user interfaces for a wide range of game genres. Coupled with the comprehensive Project Anarchy toolset, developers are empowered to design innovative user interfaces seamlessly across many platforms," said Marc Bennett, Director Interactive Display Solutions, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. "The Scaleform toolset and the robust functionality offered by Project Anarchy allow developers to give their mobile titles a level of polish usually reserved for big-budget console games." Project Anarchy includes Havok's Vision Engine together with access to Havok's industry-leading suite of Physics, Animation and AI tools as used in cutting-edge franchises such as Skyrim, Halo, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted. With features like an extensible C++ architecture, a flexible asset management system, Lua debugging, customizable game samples and tutorials, and a full fmod integration for audio, Project Anarchy offers game developers the ability to quickly iterate on their ideas and create incredible gaming experiences. For further information, check out Project Anarchy for developers and Havock. More information on Scaleform, follow the link.

About Havok:

As a leading provider of games development technologies, Havok has over 13 years of experience servicing the most demanding technology requirements for leading customers in the commercial games and entertainment industry. A combination of superior technology and dedication to delivering industry leading support to its customers has led to the company's technologies being used in over 500 of the best known and award-winning titles including Halo 4, Halo: Spartan Assault, Assassin's Creed III, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Injustice: God Among Us, DmC: Devil May Cry, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, and Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour. Havok works in partnership with the world's best known publishers, developer studios and developer teams, including Microsoft Game Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., Nintendo, Ubisoft, NC Soft, Rockstar, EA, Bethesda , Insomniac, Relic, Bungie, Naughty Dog, Evolution Studios and Guerrilla Games. Its cross-platform, professionally supported technology is available for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 video game and entertainment systems, PlayStation4 and PlayStation3 computer entertainment systems, Wii, Wii U, PlayStation Vita, Android, iOS, Windows 8 (Desktop, Tablet and Phone), Windows 7, Apple Mac OS and Linux. Havok's products have also been used to drive special effects in movies such as Harry Potter, Watchmen, James Bond, and The Matrix. Havok has offices in Dublin (Ireland), San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Germany. Havok is an Intel owned company.