NGUI Free

[Mark D]

I'm giving the NGUI Free a trial run.  Is it normal that every time I save and close down Unity and when I restart NGUI is no longer installed?  I still have the file hierarchy in my project, but all of the scripts are gone and my UI is basically gone/not working.

[ArenMook]

No, that's not normal. Can't say I've ever heard of that happening before.

[Mark D]

Anyone have any suggestions?  I've heard a lot of great things about NGUI, but at this point I've had to restart my project three times simply for NGUI. 

I've tried reinstalling over my current project with no joy.  I can still see the NGUI components in my project, but all of the scripts attached to my UI elements are missing.  Closing and restarting obviously doesn't work since that's what started this. 

[Nicki]

How are they missing? Is the components marked as missing?

Have you moved the NGUI files from their default position?

It sounds like Unity loses the references to the classes, which I would normally attribute to meta files - but since it's free, I don't really know what can have gone wrong.

Do you have a version control system that removes certain files like dll's ? I know subversion doesn't pack .a files by default and that's screwed me over before. Maybe an antivirus is removing them for random reasons.

Regardless, this is not typical behavior, which suggests that it's something on your end. :S

[Mark D]

Thanks for the reply!

Everything works perfectly upon first install.  But if save and close down and then restart Unity, NGUI no longer appears as a menu option in the main UI.  NGUI still appears in my project files, but all of my UI elements are missing their scripts and the UI no longer appears.

[ArenMook]

As I said, I've never seen this happen before, or even heard of anyone having the same issues as you, so I can't be of much help. It's like something is deleting your metadata files. Hyper-active antivirus maybe. Something is seriously wrong with how you Unity is set up.

[electrodruid]

This has happened to me with the Pro version from time to time (not 3 times in a day, but maybe 3 times in the last 3 months). I can't remember how I fixed it each time, but likely some combination of Assets/Sync MonoDevelop Project, deleting the Library folder for the project so that it rebuilds everything on the next startup, restarting Unity and rebooting the machine. I don't know exactly which combination of these things fixes the issue for me - Unity crashes and oddities like this are depressingly common for me (10 - 20 crashes a day, and some weird brokenness like this at least once a week), but it's hard to know which things are  problem with Unity, or MonoDevelop, or NGUI, so I generally just have to shake my head and try to carry on 

[Mark D]

Thanks for that, Electro!  I haven't tried many of the things you've suggested there so I'll give those a try.  If I find the combo that works, I'll be sure to reply here so that we can share the information.

[ArenMook]

Also make sure to NOT use the Asset Server. It's a horribly broken system that's on its last legs.