While using Energy Bar Toolkit you may notice that bars are divided into OnGUI bars, Mesh bars, and NGUI bars. Here you’re going to learn what this means.
Mesh Renderers
Mesh renderers is a new method of rendering progress bars that was intruduced in Energy Bar Toolkit 1.7.0. Before that, bars were rendered using OnGUI() method and DrawTexture() calls, but because of numerous flaws, new renderer was more than needed.
Mesh renderers are little more difficult to use than OnGUI() bars, because they need scene initialization. They are rendered using raw geometry and are trying to use only built-in shaders. As a result they are highly reliable and efficient.
Pros:
- Reduced draw call count (good for mobile devices)
- Can be placed in 3D space
- Good multi-resolution support
- Easy positioning
Cons:
- Little more difficult to use
OnGUI Renderers
OnGUI renderers are original progress bars that Energy Bar Toolkit first released. They are being replaced by Mesh renderers because of numerous flaws that characterize Unity method of painting in OnGUI() calls. Still they are most functional bars.
Pros:
- Most functional
- Easiest to use
Cons:
- Many, many draw calls (bad for mobile devices)
- Slow on mobile platforms
- Difficult positioning
NGUI Widgets (deprecated)
NGUI widgets are the third kind of Energy Bar Toolkit renderers. Because of many difficulties of maintaining code dependent on NGUI API, these renderers are now deprecated. Please look at the NGUI Integration Tutorial
Pros:
- Deep NGUI integration
Cons:
- Very little number of features
- May broke with NGUI update