Valve made their own GUI library called VGUI. I am wondering how were they able to make their GUI library and what methods they used to make it. Did they use Win32 API or something else. Is there an open source code for VGUI?

Please answer these questions and help me out as much as you can.

There's a lot of GUI libraries around -- https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+GUI+library

VGUI was originally implemented in Half-Life 1, which had three different rendering back-ends: OpenGL, Direct3D, and pure software (managing pixel arrays by themselves, and then using the minimal amount of Win32 API to copy them to a window). So I would assume that the original VGUI implementation would've been written to output drawing commands in a fairly abstract format, which could then be rendered by different rendering implementations.

On 11/20/2019 at 3:25 AM, Hodgman said:

There's a lot of GUI libraries around -- https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+GUI+library

VGUI was originally implemented in Half-Life 1, which had three different rendering back-ends: OpenGL, Direct3D, and pure software (managing pixel arrays by themselves, and then using the minimal amount of Win32 API to copy them to a window). So I would assume that the original VGUI implementation would've been written to output drawing commands in a fairly abstract format, which could then be rendered by different rendering implementations.

Thank you a bunch, this helped me a bunch.

The most popular (but not necessarily best) thing in game GUIs nowadays is Dear ImGui. It's easy to understand, well maintained, well documented, and easy to get up and running.

Promit said:

The most popular (but not necessarily best) thing in game GUIs nowadays is Dear ImGui. It's easy to understand, well maintained, well documented, and easy to get up and running.



I thought it was being used more for debug menus, early prototypes etc. - is it actually being used as main/actual UI?
Out of curiosity, are you aware of any published games that are using imgui?