Entire game using GUI elements?

Questions
#1

Hi folks. I’m fiddling with a new prototype, a super simple arcade puzzler, which I started just as a quick experiment to learn how to use the GUI system. Its basically just a static grid with blocks that can be moved from tile to tile, turn by turn. There’s no world or camera to move around, no need for physics or even collisions of any kind. Think about something similar to THREES.

A friend suggested that the entire game could be made with only GUI elements, and from I’ve been trying, he seems to be right. Doing so might even be easiest solution to handle both screen size scalability and screen-to-world input conversion.

But, as I still know just the basics GUI functionality, I wonder if there could be some possible issues with this approach that I can’t foresee yet.

Those that have more experience with Defolds GUI system, what do you think about the idea? Are there any possible pitfalls that I should be aware of?

Showing excess graphics outside of "official" game dimensions
#2

I don’t know about pitfalls specifically, but I have seen multiple people supporting the concept of GUI-only games. If it seems viable for you, then go for it.

#3

Blossom Blast Saga was made almost entirely with GUIs. A gamejam where we only use GUI to make a game would be interesting.

The main thing you should be aware of is that z does not change the draw sort order of nodes, you need to do that with set parent / move above / move below.

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#4

…and using layers(specially for batching ).

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#5

That’s actually not true. I think most of it used game objects. BUT the first Defold game released by King, called Keyword, was made entirely with GUI. I managed to find a screenshot online:

keyword-vs-3
keyword-vs-3.jpeg900×1394 149 KB

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#6

Ok, so it can be done. Its it advisable though? Even for these kind of games, would game objects still be preferable for some reason?

Thanks everybody for your answers!

#7

There should be no performance issues creating games using GUI only. Some restrictions:

  • Currently a max node count of 1024. This will be fixed soon (https://github.com/defold/defold/issues/3587)
  • You can only have a single material assigned to a GUI, which may limit you if you want different shaders on different nodes
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#8

I made a game using only GUI called Rainbow Pop. Using only GUI is really nice actually. The development can be quicker because you clone nodes rather than using game objects and factories.

The limitations @britzl mentioned are the big limitations. In my project those weren’t an issue.

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