Lo-Fi Games

Was looking at the User Interface for Kenshi recently, and wondered if it was written in Ogre's QuickGUI, or some other plugin. I couldn't tell by simply digging in the XML files, and figured someone out here would know.

I've seen what Ogre is capable of and know that Kenshi could do with some facelifting in the UI department (either temp or long term). Granted it is still in Alpha, but with recent developments (Greenlight being one of them) polishing a bit more would be highly advantageous. As I've worked with UI designers before on larger projects, I may try my hand at something more robust for Kenshi.

Thanks ahead of time for any answers and info!

Edit: Due to the somewhat varied list of possible GUIs in use with Ogre (along with simply using built-in Ogre functionality as an option), you can see why I'd ask before delving into the XML too heavily.

Edit 2: I did some more poking around and think I answered my own question, just need verification now. If you're reading Chris, is MyGUI the UI you intend to go with for the launch, or was it a simple interim UI choice based on simplicity and availability? Cheers.

Why are you asking? There are plans to modify the existing GUI, parts of it might remain the same at least in function.

Specifically I was asking if the current choice of UI as a library was the long-term choice, or if it was a stop-gap solution for Alpha building/testing.

I was going to give a go at an improved UI for both standard def, and multi-monitor systems for Kenshi, but didn't want to dump time into it if the current UI was temporary at best. Chris is only one person, and while he wants to keep Kenshi to a small well-defined development group, contributions would not be frowned upon if I'm right.

It uses MyGUI, and thats a permanent choice. Most of the GUI layouts are hard-coded however, because the MyGUI layout editor doesn't allow you to make things that adapt to screen resolution. But if you can do an awesome graphical facelift I would be willing to pay for the work.

It looks to me after a cursory review, that many (if not most) of the UI layouts in Kenshi's MyGUI are done in XML. The layout editor you mentioned is probably gui-ish itself, and therefore limits you in certain ways. (a bit like the difference between using FrontPage and coding directly in HTML/CSS)

There are a lot more people now using multi-monitor setups (I'm among them), and the MyGUI display really gets mangled across multiple monitors. It would be nice to end up with multiple GUIs, or even better - one that adjusts to the current resolution.

A friend of mine (DarN) worked on many of the UIs for Oblivion, Fallout, and Skyrim which were all done in XML. He was successfully able to integrate UI adjustment tools directly into a separate custom menu that allowed toggling elements on/off, size adjustments, position changes, etc. I see that as all being possible in MyGUI at first glance.

The thing about making a UI more flexible and customizable, is that it also has to stay more generic (i.e. no really fancy skins). Where Kenshi is concerned, I think the game world itself is visually striking enough that the UI can take a back seat, and simply be very flexible and customizable. And while my XML is a bit rusty, I'm sure I can get back up to speed and see what I can toss together.