What I accomplished as an Associate Technical Designer lll
• Learned Unreal Engine 5 and created tutorial videos for coworkers to watch and learn about various topics such as World Partitioning, Enhanced Input Systems, and Editor Utility Widgets
• Designed, implemented, and iterated on various gameplay elements in UE5 prototypes such as Player Abilities (Ground Pound, Hookshot) and Weapons (Assault Rifle, Sledgehammer, Scimitar, Foam Gun, Gravity Gun)
• Used Miro to create a whiteboard containing all information about the weapons being designed for the prototype, containing properties (Rate of Fire, Reload Type, etc.) and info about how they would be implemented alongside other disciplines
"Wrecking Crew" Prototype
Demo of weapons I designed and implemented (Foam Gun, Heaven's Lift, and Sledgehammer) being used to alter and utilize the destructive environment in any creative way the player pleases
Demo of the Foam Gun and AI being used to create fun and wacky experiences with the player and destructive environment
Work Summary
After Saints Row completed, the technical designers went out to learn Unreal Engine 5, which would be our new engine of choice to replace the old proprietary engine. Tech Design aimed to be the experts of UE5 in order to make sure people of all disciplines knew the most efficient best practices and pipelines to implement their work in engine. This meant I immersed myself in every corner as I could in UE5, including Blueprint scripting, C++ coding, UI, AI, Animation, and much more. We were able to apply these skills in prototypes to better get used to Unreal and prove design concepts for our next project.
In these prototypes, I believe I flourished as a Designer, heading Player abilities and weapon design while helping other disciplines with bug fixing, joining scripts, and picking up any work they were struggling to get done that sprint.
For "Wrecking Crew" (our team and project name), our goal was to create realistic destruction of structures and make sure its fun to do so. I was the sole Weapons Designer, so I made sure the weapons I designed were tools that the player can use either strategically or guns blazing to cause chaos.
