Project Exhibited

Responsibilities

Developing menu and HUD widgets in Unreal Engine 4

For Project Exhibited me and a number of teammates spend our time implement the User Interface into the game. To achieve the final looks and flow of the UI we spend most of our time focusing on getting the theme and setting across using the visuals.

One of our core goals was to properly showcase the era within which the game takes place, the sixties. This was an interesting challenge as the sixties doesn’t appear to have a strong, singular visual presentation. The good thing was that this allowed us more creative freedom and let us go a bit wild with how we wanted to present the time period.

Implementing menu and HUD functionality using Unreal Engine 4 Blueprinting

In addition to creating the design for the UI, the team and I spend our time with the technical implementation of the HUD and menus. With fantastic help from the programming team we were able to properly implement the majority of the design of the UI while still keeping it a good learning opportunity.

Our main goal with the functionality of the UI is that it is easily accessible and is separate from the in-game world. We came to this goal as we as students did want to have our presence within the game and allow ourselves more significant input while not disturbing the player experience.

Designing game settings and user friendliness options

As part of developing the UI we also had to go into designing the game settings and user friendliness options. This was personally the most fun part of the developing the UI as it allowed me not only to get more research done into the technical aspects of the Unreal Engine but it also allowed me to get into researching designing for disabilities.

This was mainly achieved with the development of design documentation that informs us of our goals, limitations and reasoning behind the design decisions. The documentation served as a reference point to point other developers or outsiders to when trying to explain the design decisions and allowed us to have a cohesive vision for the game.

Implementing game settings and user friendliness options using Unreal Engine 4 Blueprinting

After having designed the system and requirements of the game settings and the user friendliness options we started the implementation of the options. This came at a great time as we already had a demo release that informed us as to how much people wanted these options. The implementation itself was relatively straightforward but we based it a lot of player feedback as to what our priorities are and fortunately we were able to properly implement what the players wanted.

The goal with implementation was to promote player freedom and allow for a wider range of players to play our game who otherwise would have difficulty with the experience. For instance, a surprising aspect was the importance of custom key bindings. Which we were able to implement properly and we were happy with how the player received it.

Setting up internal and external playtests

An interesting aspect of being a UI Designer was the involvement I had with the playtests we performed for the project. I was directly involved in setting up the equipment the schedule and the playtester.

As a student project we only really had access to our fellow students so in order the collect playtesters I would go around our campus and ask people if they would like to play our game, which fortunately a lot of people wanted. Equipment was also hard to come by so in order to be able to play the game I would borrow laptops and computers from team members who would also be present for the playtests.

Our main goal with the initial playtests was to make sure that our features were viable and sensible and that players would have a reasonable understanding of how the game works and how to achieve a win state. Later playtests served to make it clear to us if this was still the case and where we could improve.

Skills & Experience

VISUAL PROGRAMMING | RAPID ITERATING | USER INTERFACE DESIGN | IMAGE DEVELOPMENT | RESEARCH | DOCUMENTATION

Achievement & Responses