So now we have a deep appreciation of the past and a glimpse into the future. One thing you might realize is that there is no one stop shop when it comes to Unity; each feature has its pros and cons and each has its uses. There may still be cases when it is just easier to use the Unity legacy GUI to achieve an effect (still using the basic GUI.DrawTexture for a splash screen for example, although even that is very easy with the new UI system) provided you take the performance concerns on board with mobile devices. It all comes down to what you want to achieve and the way you want to achieve it; never dismiss anything just because it's old (except for GUIText and GUITexture, they are just really really old…)
In this chapter, we covered the following topics:
The history of Unity legacy GUI
Detailed walkthrough of the legacy Unity GUI
Whistlestop tour of the new Unity UI system and what we can expect from this title
In the next chapter, we will start with the underlying framework and guts behind the new GUI system, namely:
The new Rect Transform control (not just for Unity UI)
The new Rect Transform component (and why it's great)
The Canvas control
What Unity have done for scaling and resolution for UIs
The all new and improved Event messaging system for the Unity UI system, complete with new shiny raycasting features and helpers
It promises to be a fun ride, and once we are through that, then in chapter 3, Control, Control, You Must Learn Control we can move on to actually building some UI and then placing it in your game scenes in weird and wonderful ways.
Now stop reading this and turn the page already!!