Potential GiGi replacements: Dear ImGui

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Vezzra
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Potential GiGi replacements: Dear ImGui

#1 Post by Vezzra »

This thread is dedicated to the discussion of the "Dear ImGui" library as a potential replacement for GiGi.

It has been suggested at the July 29th 2020 online voice chat meeting.

There was one main concern raised, regarding the "skinability" of this GUI library, which is of course an important criteria. FO is a game, and whatever GUI library or engine we're going to use needs us to allow to customize the visuals to a very high degree.

I found an entry in the FAQ of ImGui, which answers this specific question:

https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/m ... dear-imgui

To quote the relevant paragraph:
You can alter the look of the interface to some degree: changing colors, sizes, padding, rounding, fonts. However, as Dear ImGui is designed and optimized to create debug tools, the amount of skinning you can apply is limited. There is only so much you can stray away from the default look and feel of the interface. Dear ImGui is NOT designed to create user interface for games, although with ingenious use of the low-level API you can do it.
Emphasis added.

IMO that pretty much answers our question. Considering that, I don't think that ImGui is a viable option for us, but others might disagree. Please give your comments/opinions, if we should consider ImGui regardless, or rule that option out.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Potential GiGi replacements: Dear ImGui

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

A video about using Dear ImGui: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWXrFetSH8w

hifron
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Re: Potential GiGi replacements: Dear ImGui

#3 Post by hifron »

There is also option to use ImGui.NET with something like Veldrid(for .NET(supports Android)) and reusing SDL2 library.

But maybe in future bridge between .NET(with C#) and C++ and with Python won't be so huge due to compilers and IDE development including problems with cross-platform development(Veldrid is Cross-platform: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, but probably not so much widespread, although used in something like OpenSage).

o01eg
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Re: Potential GiGi replacements: Dear ImGui

#4 Post by o01eg »

We don't use .NET for FreeOrion at all. Not sure if it could be helpful.
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