Place gui elements below thumbstick in roblox - roblox

The thumbstick on lower left controls player movement in roblox for touch enabled devices. I would like to place some gui elements in that same corner (under the thumbstick) which are just for display like frames or text labels (not buttons or input elements). Its a good place in my opinion to put things that the player might want to glance at occasionally but not interact with directly.
When I place these elements it blocks the normal thumbstick behavior. The thumbstick is drawn on top of the gui elements like I want but I cant click the part of the thumbstick that is on top of other gui elements. When I inspect an active game I can see the thumbstick is at z index 1 and I put my gui elements at zindex -1 so really not sure why its blocking things.

NM found the elements were marked selectable and active. I disabled those thumbstick works now.

Related

Part of unity text field jittery/smudging in Hololens 2

My team has made an application in Unity3D with MRTK for the Hololens 2. Our main menu inside the application does not use a Canvas, but includes Quads to display pictures and Text Mesh Pro's 3D text fields. I have found that, while this menu is open, several elements like the top-left corner picture and part of the text fields are jittery when you hold your head steady. When you nod your head, the affected parts of the text seem to lag behind so that they end up lower or higher than the text that remains steady.
The cutoff point between stable and unstable text is always the same. There is a central area that is stable. Text that is too high, or too far to the left or right in unstable. The division is in the middle of the letters (For example, the top-most part of the capital letter S is unstable, while the smaller letter m is stable.) It does not matter if the viewport is centered on the center or the side of the menu. Other objects in the menu, such as buttons, that are further outside the center, are still stable.
I'm aware that there can be problems with hologram stability, but I do not understand why only part of the same textfield are affected. I can't include screenshots or videos because the effect doesn't show up in screencaptures of the Hololens.
Does anyone know what could be causing part of an object to be unstable in the Hololens, and what might be done about it?
Edit: I made an edited screenshot to try and recreate the visual effect seen in the Hololens:
It seems to be related to depth reprojection. Text doesn't write to the depth buffer by default, which can lead to instability. MRTK have some tips, including specifically for TMPro:Depth buffer sharing in Unity

Panel/Sprites won't update after being set inactive then reactivated

I've run through an entire fault tree trying to diagnose this, with no joy.
I'm writing a 2D card game in Unity/C#. I have four panels (one per player) that hold the cards, name, discard pile, etc. for each player. I need to have a pop-up dialog panel come up over the player panels when the user wants to change options. For some reason, I cannot get the pop-up to appear over the card sprites (it does appear over the other elements: interior panels, images, text boxes, etc.). I've tried adjust the Zpos for the dialog box panel, but nothing changes. That's problem one, but it leads to a more worrisome issue.
The bigger issue is this. Since the options panel won't display in front of the players' cards, I thought I'd just deactivate the player panels, display the dialog, then deactivate it and re-activate the player panels when it's closed. That works fine: for three of the panels. The fourth panel comes back on in its previous state, but the graphics on it will no longer update.
I've debugged and discovered the new cards are being handled correctly (sprite names changing, etc.), the discard pile is being updated, the player's name is being highlight/de-highlighted as the game progress, but none of it is appearing! It's visually stuck in the state it was when I deactivated it.
Investigating further, I've determined the error crops up anytime I deactivate and the re-activate that player's panel, whether I do it via the inspector (attaching those events to a button click), or do it in-line in script. I don't even have to open the options dialog box: I put SetActive(false/true) statements in my game code and it immediately kills the graphics updating for that panel. The sprites, text, etc. remain as they were when I deactivated and will not update.
player3Obj.gameObject.SetActive(false)
player3Obj.gameObject.SetActive(true);
Doing that to the other three panels has no effect and works fine. I see nothing different about panel 4. In fact, I can deactivate only one of its card sprites, and when I turn it back on, it is now "stuck" and won't update, even though all the other cards in that player's hand will. Same if I deactivate/re-activate one of the text fields. It will no longer update, but everything else does.
I've got no exception errors or anything, but this looks to me like some kind of memory problem, though I can't imagine what. It shows up in my Android build, no it's not specific to my machine. I'm throwing this question out there hoping someone has seen something similar.
If nothing else, maybe someone can tell me how to get my options panel to display over the card sprites. But I hate to leave a problem undiagnosed: they have a way of coming back and biting.
Update
Here's the code that isn't getting displayed. The cardBackSprit values are updating correctly, as is the gameObjectSprite, but the image onscreen isn't changing:
void DrawCardBitmap2(int Player, int cardSpot, int cardIndex)
{
string spriteObjectName;
spriteObjectName = "Sprite_Player" + Player + "_" + cardSpot;
gameObjectSprite = GameObject.Find(spriteObjectName);
gameObjectSprite.GetComponent<SpriteRenderer>().sprite = cardBackSprite;
}
There's a lot to unpack here. Let's break down your post into a series of questions:
1. I cannot get the pop-up to appear over the card sprites
It sounds like you're using the UI Canvas in Unity to handle your info panels for your players, but gameObjects for other elements. This is good, but the UI Canvas' sorting order is a bit different from standard game objects.
UI elements in the Canvas are drawn in the same order they appear in the Hierarchy. The first child is drawn first, the second child next, and so on. If two UI elements overlap, the later one will appear on top of the earlier one.
In order for your pop-up to appear above other elements in your canvas, they need be be higher in your scene's Canvas hierarchy.
Important to note: Canvases set to any Screen Space render mode will render over other game objects in the scene. Canvases set to World Space will render in their world position in the scene. The only render mode that uses Z Position to choose sorting order is World Space, but this is not my recommended solution to your problem.
My recommended solution:
Break your UI into multiple different canvases. Specifically, move your pop-up to a different canvas and place it higher in the scene hierarchy than your card sprites. When you enable/disable or move the pop-up, it will now appear over the card sprites.
2. Four panels (one per player) that hold the cards
From context and some of your code, it sounds like you have SpriteRenderers in your UI Canvas. This is known to be a complex rendering problem. Common advice involves using 2 cameras for rendering, and use camera depth to raise sprites over UI elements. However, redesigning your UI canvas is probably simpler.
3. Using GameObject.Find and complex strings at runtime
GameObject.Find is not performant, and it's not robust. It looks through all elements in the scene and returns the first object it finds with that name.
This poses a few problems:
You cannot have game objects with the same name anywhere in your hierarchy, even if they are nested in different places.
CPU cycles are wasted searching through all objects.
Hidden dependencies on object names that only show up during runtime.
Here's a great blog post on some better practices. I recommend using the [SerializeField] attribute and configuring it via inspector.
4. Canvas isn't updating when objects inside of it change
You can consider invoking Canvas.ForceUpdateCanvases() in LateUpdate(). This is more of a hack than an actual solution, but if this solves your problem it is likely an issue with canvas rendering. If this does not solve your problem, then this problem is likely elsewhere in your code that is currently not provided.
A canvas performs its layout and content generation calculations at the end of a frame, just before rendering, in order to ensure that it's based on all the latest changes that may have happened during that frame. This means that in the Start callback and the first Update callback, the layout and content under the canvas may not be up-to-date.

How to guide tvOS focus items for curved SKNodes

My tvOS app generates a game board using SKNodes that looks like the following:
Each shape, separated by lines, is an SKNode that is focusable (e.g. each colored wedge is composed of 5 SKNodes that gradually diminish in size closer to the center).
My problem is that the focus engine doesn't focus the next focus item (SKNode) that would feel like the logical, most natural next node to focus. This issue is because the focus engine logic is rectangular while my SKNodes are curved. As you can see below, there are inherent problems when trying to figure out the next focusable item when swiping down from the outermost yellow SKNode:
In the example above, the focus engine deducts that the currently focused area is the area within the red-shaded rectangle based on the node's edges. Due to this logic, the focused rectangle overlaps areas that are not part of the currently focused node, including the entire width of the second yellow SKNode. Therefore when swiping downward, the focus engine skips focus to the third (middle) yellow SKNode.
How would one go about solving this focus issue so that focus is more natural both vertically and horizontally for my circular game board of SKNodes without seeming so sporadic? Is this possible? Perhaps with UIFocusGuides?
You have to handle the focus manually. Use the methods listed below to check for the next focused view from the context.
func shouldUpdateFocus(in context: UIFocusUpdateContext) -> Bool
In this method, you will get the focus heading direction (UIFocusHeading). Intercept the required direction and save your required next focused view in some property. Manually update the focus by calling below methods
setNeedsFocusUpdate()
updateFocusIfNeeded()
This will trigger the below
preferredFocusEnvironments: [UIFocusEnvironment] { get }
In this check for saved instance, and return the same. This will help you handle the focus manually as per your requirements.

Unity UI Strange Behaviour

I have a 2d scene with a camera set to the default distance of -100. If I add a canvas it for some reason has a default plane distance of 100 (not sure why as surely this would place it behind the scene?) and set to Screen-Space Camera.
The oddness happens when I add UI elements. For instance if I add a button, I first have to set its z position to at least -65 (Again I have no idea why) or it does not show in the editor. But if I run the game the Text does not show. Now if I delete the button element and instead first add another element (can be anything but lets just say it is a text element) then I add a button element. They are both not visible until I set one of their z positions to -65 or greater. Now that is strange enough but now if I run the game the element which is set to -65 is not visible but the one set to z position 0 is showing correctly...... now if I swap their z positions and run the game the one that was visible is now hidden and the other is now visible.......
What on earth is going on?
Note if I set the canvas to screen space overlay everything works fine without any messing about but the canvas looks tiny in the editor and is about 1/8th the size of the scene while being off centre and not resizeable or re-positionable..... When the game runs it is fine though and fills the screen (again I have not idea why this is).
Note my camera is set to a size of 540 in order to lock it to 1080p

In gamesalad actor moves out of the screen on x-axis

In gamesalad framework I am creating a game in which I have an actor which only moves on x-axis on touch is pressed. But when I move it to x-axis the actor goes away out of the range of the screen. Let me clarify that I am new to gamesalad framework.
plz help to solve the problem.
I'm reading this in two different ways:
1 - when you press your touch controls the actor disappears from the screen
2 - when you press the touch control the actor moves along the x-axis and out of the screen
For the sake of argument I'm going to assume that we're talking about number two.
What you'll need to do is restrict the actors movement to the boundaries of the current screen. You can do this is two ways with Gamesalad
1 - create an invisible barrier for your actor to collide against
2 - use a behaviour to prevent your actor from going beyond the screen boundary
I'll explain both:
1, Invisible barriers
What you'll do is create a new actor, and set it to collide with the actor that your controlling. You'll create a few instances of this actor to create a walled area for your actor. Although this works, it's a little cludgy and using additional actors in a scene take a little performance away from your application.
2, using a behaviour
In my opinion the better way is to use the given behaviours in Gamesalad itself.
To stop the player actor from moving off screen you can use a combination of Rules and the Constrain Attribute behaviour to achieve this.
The first thing to know is your screen size; for an iPad I believe it's 1074 along the x-axis.
So to stop the actor moving off either side of the screen you'll need to do the following:
Open up the player actor
the click on the "Create Rule" button on the top right.
A new rule window will appear, but default the first dropdown will say "Actor receives event" change this to "Attribute".
Next select the attribute to use the rule against, since we're interested in the x-axis we'll want to query that player attribute which will be:
(also known as self) > Position > X
Select the greater than symbol (">") and then enter the maximum width of the screen minus whatever border value you want, so I'll use 1014 (1024 - 10).
Find and drag the Constrain Attribute behaviour into your rule a set the actors X position to 1014.
This will stop the actor from going beyond one side of the screen, now copy the rule and amend the settings to that if the actor goes less than, say 10, it will constrain the actors X position to 10.
I'd post an image, but alas my Karma isn't large enough right now! Hence the large explanation!
Hope this is what you're looking for!
It is way easier than that.
In top of the Gamesalad Creator there is a play button, which you probably know, displays your progress. To the left of this button there is a button that looks like a little video camera, it changes the camera settings. So what you first have to do is click the camera button, then the rectangular camera screen will show itself as marked. In the center of each of the sides of the highlighted rectangular which is the camera screen, sits 1 little grey rectangular. Each of these needs to be pulled to the center of the camera view so that you get a little grey "cross" in the center and from the center to the boarder there will now be this highlighted color.
Second and last step is easy, just go under your character and in (type or drag in a behavior block) you type control camera... or drag the control camera block, which as by the type box is statet possible.
Since Gamesalad only can have one camera at a time, and you character is the only one with the control camera option applied it will follow him and only him. Wherever your character starts on the screen, the camera will follow it when it passes through the center of the screen. You may know this from Super Mario Bros. Where you start of a little to the left and walk right and the second Mario enters the center of the screen, the camera follows him from then on.
Hope this helps... :