I'll try not to bore you with my libraries in all of my entries. But yeah, I'm also aware that more examples, code snippets and sample applications could be helpful for at least some libGDX users. Even if there's like 10 to 20 people actually using my stuff.
Full disclosure: I'm the author of LML parser, which allows you to convert HTML-like templates into Scene2D widgets. It's a safe guess that I'm going to use LML templates for UI instead of plain Java Scene2D or some kind of UI editor (if there is one). But there IS something new about this project.
gdx-lml-vis is the new cool kid on the block. Basically, together with Kotcrab, we prepared LML syntax that parses templates into VisUI widgets. I've always liked the look (and generally more responsive feel) of VisUI, but once I've made LML, I used it in all of my LibGDX projects and ended up being too busy(/lazy) to dig into VisUI. Now I can – without having to return to the old ways of verbose and annoying pure Java UI code.
Now, if I could only try out all widgets and tweak the original skin to make it look less like a Kotcrab's application…
Oh, yeah. There's the gdx-lml-vis-tests project:
I'm kind of perfectionist and always I spend too much time on unnecessary stuff like trying to achieve the "perfect" UI look... sometimes even before the prototype is ready (or any game's logic code, for that matter). After the initial "please, don't spend the whole week tweaking the UI, pleasepleasePLEASE", I started recoloring Kotcrab's raw assets. And it's really amazing how flexible this simple UI is and how easy it is to end up with something that looks HELL of a lot better than most of my old stuff, which you definitely don't want to see. "My" skin looked like this:
UI got darker, blue was replaced with lime. There are some padding issues, but then again – I did not change any code, this is a simple skin replace. I might throw in some fancy title font and add game-specific stuff into the UI along the way, but I'm quite happy with the initial result. VisUI is definitely worth a look.
...Except I realized I need a bigger skin, since the default one is not very good for bigger resolutions (unless you plan on making game-dev tools rather than simple games). Fortunately, there's a scaled version of VisUI skin – unfortunately, it obviously uses different assets, so I needed to start over. Yeah.
This time I went with a darker green. And considering I'm a TERRIBLE artist, I somehow managed to turn decent UI assets to nearly unusable stuff:
Now, I think I'm going to merge some of Kenney's UI assets with Kotcrab's skin and see how it turns out. I'll probably drop the lime altogether, though.
...I should REALLY focus on something more important, shouldn't I?