Integration of CEGUI - opinions?

[Master-Athmos]

I'd like to hear some opinions on the integration of CEGUI in Spring. It's an OpenSource (LGPL) project which works for Direct3D as well as OpenGL just as it can be run in Windows, Linux and even MacOS. It has been used by AAA titles such as Torchlight down to small indie titles. Actually there was someone integrating it into Spring but that must have been about 5 years ago and he suddenly disappeared...

So does any developer have an opinion on this? An integration should be possible in terms of code just as for the license. I think it really would be a leap ahead from the game creator's side as doing GUIs via Lua currently is tedious at best and when thinking of the GUIs currently around they also have a great performance impact while not showing too much. I'd prefer to use such a base which has been around for years instead of having each and every game / mod reinvent the wheel while basing their GUI on a Lua codebase...

CEGUI looks powerful, performant, free and proven to work in dozens of games to me. Would an integration be feasible?

[FLOZi]

Personally I don't see any advantage.

[Satirik]

would be awesome

[Master-Athmos]

It also seems that there is a Lua coding option on the way (there already are some tutorials for it) meaning that people even might not have to learn any of the CEGUI specific scripting at all but just can use Lua to tell what they want to have...

EDIT:
Some tiny "techdemos":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8uAsGte_8M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46FZ21O4 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIzIVRdG ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRC5R9aA_Zs

Looks promising - I especially like the rotation and the shader based glass effect...

[hoijui]

a cross-mod available GUI framework would be nice for writing random widgets. but really only if it is usable from Lua. of course we could also use it to replace the 3 or 4 engine based windows if it is only available form C/C++, but then it would really not be worth it.
Of course you could say "but it will not fit into the theme of games/mods", but some widgets will just never be written without a GUI framework that is always available. for example, i would like to have some AI related widgets, but i would not want to write them for specific mods only, or learning a different GUI thing for each one.

[Satirik]

a cross-mod available GUI framework would be nice for writing random widgets. but really only if it is usable from Lua. of course we could also use it to replace the 3 or 4 engine based windows if it is only available form C/C++, but then it would really not be worth it.
Of course you could say "but it will not fit into the theme of games/mods", but some widgets will just never be written without a GUI framework that is always available. for example, i would like to have some AI related widgets, but i would not want to write them for specific mods only, or learning a different GUI thing for each one.

http://www.cegui.org.uk/wiki/index.php/ ... _and_CEGUI

[Master-Athmos]

Someone else probably should check this but there definitely are quite some Lua capabilities. I couldn't find out the recent state though as some information I found were a bit dated. But you e.g. can find those Lua "tutorials" giving the impression that the Lua integration is way beyond an experimental status:

http://www.cegui.org.uk/wiki/index.php/ ... _and_CEGUI
http://www.cegui.org.uk/wiki/index.php/ ... s_from_Lua
http://www.cegui.org.uk/wiki/index.php/ ... irstWindow

I don't see the main advantage in easier cross mod/game compatible widgets (although that sure is a positive aspect) but I rather see the gain in the possibility of really good GUIs showing up. You sure can do GUIs with Lua and that possibility is going to stay anyway but I have to say that I didn't really see any GUI that impressed me. Things like ICEUI or REDUI didn't introduce much more than transparent rectangles and more options to push them whereever you want. At the same time their performance really sucks although not showing much. CA's Chili seems to be the most complicated and advanced one to me but it really seems to take ages to code all the needed stuff and keep it performant...

That's why I think that CEGUI's main advantage is that it does the job once and it does it really well instead of having to reinvent the wheel for each and every game. It also offers options we don't have (like that fancy shader stuff) pretty much out of the box. I have to say I'd really like to use something like that in an upcoming project. I have no idea though how much work an integration actually would be but I think it's nearly a no-brainer to get those years of work which went just into GUI relevant stuff...

[SirMaverick]

A gui framework provided by the engine would be great. Some mods provide own frameworks but you can't easily write a widget with a gui component that works in many/all mods.

[hoijui]

am i right in that you would not integrate this yourself?

[Master-Athmos]

Me? I unfortunately lack the coding abilities to do so...

[AF]

What's to stop us using QT and rendering translucent html elements over the battlefield? We could do everything shown in those tech demos, only we can embed html5 videos and flash animations. It'd also help with OS X support and the various SDL issues

[Master-Athmos]

Does it also provide Lua access or something like that and has it ever been used for a game?

[zwzsg]

It has been used by AAA titles such as Torchlight down to small indie titles.

I thought Torchlight was an indie!

[Master-Athmos]

Hmm - I thought they reformed themselves from a failed MMORPG project and assumed they had a financial supporter. I don't know for sure though. Is there a real definition of what an indie is?

But oh well the point was that it got used in projects with commercial success just as for small hobby projects. It's free, seems to be powerful and stable and could extend Spring's UI part with "all the nuts already cracked for us" which is why I think that an integration would be neat...