Image from DSTA's article linked below

Admiral's Battleground

A project made in conjunction with Singapore's Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA). Admiral's Battleground is a local multiplayer MOBA-like game that focuses on real-world naval battles. Made using Unreal Engine 4, it is a Windows game.

PORTFOLIO

Project Overview

2021 - 2022 ・ Team Size: 10 ・ Unreal Engine 4 ・ C++ ・ Jira ・ Sourcetree

An ambitious project that was inspired by real life naval warfare, the core gameplay revolves around detection and information and using it to complete various goals such as attacking/defending other ships, an area, or traversing the open seas. It is designed to host matches of up to 5v5 per round.

It features 3 game modes: death match, domination and scenario.

The game gathers data generated during matches played to study create artificial intelligence (AI). The AI will be able then use the data learned to make crucial decisions and train players in naval warfare.

Roles

UI/UX Programmer
UI/UX Designer
Systems Architect/Programmer

UI/UX Programmer

Unreal Engine 4 ・ UMG ・ Blueprints

As the only programmer dedicated to UI/UX in the game, almost if not all the game's UI was programmed by me. This includes:

Creating custom drawers and other UI elements
Integrating and implementing design and art to vision
Reviewing design and concept, and advising what can or cannot be done and ways to work around it
Functionality, states, data reading
Sending, receiving and displaying relevant and necessary data over the network
Making sure the UI elements behave correctly across screen sizes
Optimization

Networking
As this was my first project that had networking, it was a challenge. There needed to be clear separation of data that was locally available on the machine itself and data that was server-only, and how to pass this server-only data to the local machine.
Minimap
Involved world to map transformation and had to be accurate despite the different sized maps.
Ability (Tooltips, states, icons, ranges etc.)
It was a challenge to handle the main and sub-states. Some abilities even had multiple type of shapes to show their range and behaviour.

circle in circle - in use ability state.png

UI/UX Designer

Figma ・ Adobe Experience Design ・ Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud

Take charge & communicated with external, overseas UI designer
Worked closely with UI/UX designers & producer/game designer to conceptualize UI
Point out inconsistencies and room for improvement where necessary
Suggested improvements on how to improve current UI, resulting in needed overhauls
Communicated with fellow designers what the requirements were
Ensuring the necessary information was conveyed across in a clear manner
Convey to the artist on UI requirements, such as screen resolution

In total the game UI went through 3 iterations before the final version.

Systems Architect / Programmer

Unreal Engine 4 ・ UMG ・ Blueprints

Much of what this task entails was creating and establishing systems and the framework that the game would run on. As I was in charge of UI, the system for that fell to me; I also had a hand in other systems.

UI System
Communication between the server & client
Displaying of information
Integrating and using UE4's Online Sessions plugin
Account system
Integrated external POST API plugin (VaRest)
Communicated with external web server for account authentication, saving & loading of data
Data table creation and reading
Save/Load game system
In-game chat system
Settings

When creating systems, I wanted to ensure that it was robust enough to handle any future potential request or change that would be needed (within reason) while encapsulating it so that it would be maintainable, and easy enough to use that any programmer would not need to jump through hoops to get the result they wanted. Since this was my first project involving multiplayer, I learnt a lot of things such as replication.