BGUI - Getting dynamic HUD

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

Hello every one, I’m back from the dead (Ebola).
Errr, yeah just kidding! Just some nasty flu + ridiculous headaches, I’m fully operational now(still busy with work though), and ready to kick start my projets.
I want to add some interactivity to my game(s) and need a hi-res font display.

I need some help in having units appearing and disappearing in a scene display some data about their status on screen.
This is your typical RPG, RTS, and most games as a matter of fact do. But I haven’t seen any native function like that in the BGUI module. But my guess is that one can design a frame object that follows an objects world-to-viewport position, and go invisible if the unit is not visible or ends when the unit is destroyed.
But before I even start designing this I need to know if it wont be too demanding on the GPU or if there are other ways of doing it.
I want to use this method to open consoles, to place interruptors, dialogs, etc.

What advice, help can you guys spare for me?

Thank you for reading!

2

I’ve been using the BGUI pretty extensively (a version that I’ve heavily modified), and it actually can be somewhat taxing on the rasterizer (and logic too depending on what you’re doing) if you have a lot of them. You can probably have around a couple hundred visible widgets before it starts to become a problem. If you manage them well though and make them invisible/remove them when you don’t need them, it shouldn’t give you any problems.