Freelance Year - May 2024

To begin the month, I worked on Keyboard UI Navigation. This was done through a free plugin that I got the go-ahead from the client to test, and we found this one more successful than the previous.

It was set up by creating a widget known as “UI Nav Component" that would be a stretched button, which then would be added to widgets.

Then, upon their layout on the screen, the player could use the WASD keys to navigate through the menu. This was an optimal solution at first, as it correctly displayed buttons hover states and was easy to set up.

However, the issue did lie in the plugin not supporting multiple players, with the UI navigation of multiple players needed for the character setup screen. Thus, the client then turned down this plugin after they tested it for themselves, but it was still informative to know for future single-player projects where I want to have an interface that supports both keyboard and mouse. 

Beyond this, the client decided to change the menu style to a 3D widget that allowed multiple players to control it through cursors that overlay the HUD. This helped to allow other players join the menu, but also had a few unfortunate caveats.

First of all, upon trying to render a widget outside of a called widget, the widget’s transparent objects would instead show as solid colours.

In addition to this, the widget would only show what’s inside of the widget space, even if the images extended outside of it. Because of this, images that came from the edge of the screen were cut off, breaking the design of various interfaces.

Due to be the final week of the deadline, I couldn’t fix all of the issues that came with this, but I tried to visually improve the errors that came in light of this.

The biggest eleventh hour change involved redesigning text boxes to have a slanted edge instead, for example, which would help the player from avoiding seeing the crop. Additionally, we resized the less important buttons on the menu so the collision would no longer intercept with each other.

Additionally, we’d decided to make the buttons smaller and farther apart at the cost of visual flair in order to ensure functionality in avoiding overlaying buttons. The first attempt at this resulted in some stretching, but in the end we settled on this design. Were I to have longer on the project, I’d like to find a solution to this, as I enjoy the menu’s design but also understand its incompatibility with Unreal Engine.

Additionally, I added different icons for character colour and hair colour. However, the icons were too big at first, as I originally made the menu around three and not five. Thus, to solve this, I sized down the buttons by 25% so that they all fit in a row. Additionally, the client thought the player having to drag their cursor over to the edge of the screen was tedious, thus leading me to add a ready button instead beside each character.

Finally, upon my final day on the project before my deadline, I worked on separating the options menu into columns, as well as removing a minimap option due to the interface’s removal and different tabs for volume.

I also added an animated loading screen based on a concept from a few months ago, though served as a visual addition more than a coding one, due to it having no actual functionality.

Beyond the project’s submission, changes were requested in preparation for the client’s end of year show. This involved tip-text on the loading screen, chosen through a simple random variable, and new buttons on the character select screen to resolve the issues that came with the previous ones no longer touching the edges.

Twine

For an internship application, I learned the program “Twine”. While I cannot show the project itself due to NDA, I learned how to create branching paths, inclusive of paths that loop back to the beginning statement. Writing in a notepad-like application, you are able to set the dialogue responses and where they lead.

Furthermore, you can test it out in browser, as to figure out how it feels and looks, as well as being able to simply go back and forth between dialogue.

Though the internship application was unsuccessful, I am glad to have learned it, and feel it would be fun to mess around with outside of the restraints of prompts.