What are some good tools and techniques for making in game UI? I'm looking for things that help artists-types create and animate game HUD (heads up display) UI and can be added to the game engine for real time playback.
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Is it relevant which language the game engine is written in? If so, you should edit your question and title to say what it is. – Andrew Swan Sep 19 '08 at 05:57
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Agreed, depends heavily on your language/framework. – Iain Sep 19 '08 at 16:00
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Thanks to UDK , for integrated ScaleForm ! – Emadpres Oct 23 '11 at 04:08
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If you are working with a middleware environment like Torque or Unity3D, they include a GUI framework to build on. Flash is an ideal tool, but to use in anything other than a Flash or Shockwave3d game you need to purchase ScaleForm too, which is expensive and isn't easy to get hold of for indie developers. WPF and Silverlight look promising for this purpose, but so far haven't been set up for game integration.
Unfortunately, for many developers the only solution is to roll their own UI components from scratch.
Iain
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Using flash will give the highest productivity for the graphical artist (well - if he knows flash).
You may want to have a look at gameswf. It's a bit dated but seems like a perfect match for your problem.
http://tulrich.com/geekstuff/gameswf.html
Another option would be to just do the entire UI in your 3D content-tool and use your animation system to play back the transitions.
Nils Pipenbrinck
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1There was never a large community around it, but the code still works.. – Nils Pipenbrinck Sep 20 '08 at 00:06
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One option is to use Flash in conjunction with a package called ScaleForm. This allows the artist to make the UI in flash and then ScaleForm executes the flash in game.
Torlack
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1This is a great option, but it's expensive and not necessarily accessible for indie developers. – Iain Sep 19 '08 at 15:58