August 17 2009Doing a Talk at GDC Europe tomorrow.
Hi guys & gals.
I’m giving a talk about the inner workings of immediate-mode GUIs at GDC Europe tomorrow (in Cologne). Looking forward to doing it – it’s been my main Unity development area for the past 2 years, so I guess I somehow ended up being an expert on that subject 
It’s Monday at 2:10 – 3:00 PM
If any of you are there, I hope you come – and if you want to meet up in Cologne, drop me a mail or a PM on our forum, and I’ll try to squeeze you in.
Jed said on August 17th, 2009 at 2:40 am:
Can you explain exactly what is meant by immediate-mode GUI?
Martijn G said on August 17th, 2009 at 11:29 am:
think there will be a video of it later ?? I hate that i’m going to miss it.. since its just too expensive
good luck !
Aras Pranckevičius said on August 17th, 2009 at 2:49 pm:
@Jan: “immediate mode GUI” is a concept used by game & editor GUI system in Unity. See Unite 2007 presentation for a short introduction. Also, a forum section on MollyRocket forums, where whole concept was basically invented: sticky thread with original video presentation.
Jed said on August 17th, 2009 at 5:16 pm:
I saw the forum on molly rocket — circa 2004.
I also saw a rebuttal to an immediate-mode GUI article in game developer magazine, summarized as “immediate-mode GUI = rejection of OO”.
http://osdir.com/ml/games.devel.sweng/2005-09/msg00042.html
Aras Pranckevičius said on August 17th, 2009 at 6:55 pm:
@Jed: I think none of extreme points of view are true. IMGUI is not “the only true way”. IMGUI is not “entirely bad” either. Object Oriented is not a holy grail either (and personally I find it less and less important over time).
bronxbomber92 said on August 17th, 2009 at 7:28 pm:
Will you be posting any slides online? I’d love to see them!
@Jed: There are also some nice tutorial that explain and wal you through a basic implementation of IMGUI here: http://sol.gfxile.net/imgui/
Harissa said on August 19th, 2009 at 5:50 pm:
Hmm, I’ve had a look at those links and I think I can see the appeal of an IMGUI but the fact remains that the rest of Unity is an object oriented system with a visual designer. This goes a long way to explaining the shock that unity developers feel when they encounter the GUI system as it stands.
I suspect that what we really need is a hybrid system. So as well being able to use an OnGUI call to specify the position of GUI elements you can also do it visually. You’d then be able to check/set the state of the element using the OnGui call or have an option to set an event.