While using Energy Bar Toolkit you may notice that bar renderers have multiple types. Here you’re going to learn what this means.

uGUI Renderers

This is the default and recommended way of rendering bars introduced in Energy Bar Toolkit 3.0.0. uGUI renderer are utilizing the new Unity GUI subsystem (called uGUI) that has been introduced in Unity 4.6.

Pros:

  • Renderers are 100% uGUI components!
  • Reduced draw call count
  • Can be used with Sprite Packer or Texture Packer
  • Great multi-resolution support
  • Very easy to use
  • More features than any other renderer

Cons:

  • None known

So why bother with any other rendering methods? If you’re new to Energy Bar Toolkit then you shouldn’t bother!. Other rendering methods are here only for backwards compatibility. That’s all!

Mesh Renderers (deprecated)

Mesh renderers is a rendering method 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 (deprecated even more)

OnGUI renderers are original progress bar renderers that Energy Bar Toolkit 1.0 was released with. Due to numerous flaws it’s very recommended to switch to any newer rendering type.

Pros:

  • Easy to instantiate

Cons:

  • Many, many draw calls (bad for mobile devices)
  • Slow on mobile platforms
  • Difficult positioning
  • OnGUI() drawing is very old and poorly supported method of rendering things in Unity

NGUI Widgets (waaaay too deprecated)

NGUI widgets are the fourth kind of Energy Bar Toolkit renderers. Because of many difficulties of maintaining code dependent on NGUI API, these renderers are deprecated. Please look at the NGUI Integration Tutorial

Pros:

  • Deep NGUI integration

Cons:

  • Very little number of features
  • May broke with NGUI update