User Experience Designs for the Star Engine.
In 2021 my role at Cloud Imperium Games changed, and I transitioned from Senior QA on our Vehicle Features Team, to the sole UX Designer for our Editor Team.
I was based in LA; my team was located in the UK and Germany.
Tools
OBS / Microsoft Teams for Sessions
Confluence for Documentation
Jira for Tasks and Bugs
Miro / Figma for Journey Maps, Flowcharts, and Mockups
Testrail for Editor Testcases
Overview
During my time on the Editor Team, I contributed to many designs for existing tools and crafted new ones to solve for our Core Tech Group.
I became an amplifier for developers within Core Tech Group (CTG) and our other developers around the world. I voiced when they encountered bugs or had frictions with their tools.
I started with individual 30-minute sessions with specific team leads, then moved to their members.
I would embed with for a short period of time, learn about their tools, how they were utilizing them and design possible solutions with my engineers.
Eventually, our notoriety was popular enough that we created larger standup-meetings to present our upcoming work, get feedback, and talk shop with any developer who wanted to make the meeting.
We built a small community of developers actively participating in the growth of the tools and reporting their issues and overtime gained appreciation for our work.
With the aid of my 5 engineers and Producers, we worked on a variety of projects for the Editor. Snippets of these projects are detailed in the following sections below:
01. RASTAR - BASE BUILDER
Level Design / Environment Art
Video overview of Early WIP Rastar Building Tool
Problem Statement
“How can we support Level Design and Environmental Artists create many different Outposts in our Galaxy?”
What did I do?
Core Technology Group asked me to assist with development of their prototype Base building tool, named, “RASTAR”
I provided concepts, wireframes, and early implementation with our internal tool, “Building Blocks” which is a visual scripting tool that is utilizes XML / CSS
I also provided concepts and mockups for a Player Facing version of Rastar
Results
Level Design and Environment artists now early tool to help the development of Outposts on Planets.
It had been the first time using our native UI tools. It took some time to get used to it and fix it up for developers.
While difficult, it was surfacing issues for the UI team in general, as it pertained to Hot-Reloading of the UI, and our use of the UI within the Editor Window.
02. Editor Documentation
Documentation and Bringing Awareness
Problem Statement
“How can we support growth of new tools and provide more for the user when it comes to troubleshooting in the Editor?”
Why was this an issue?
Editor and Tool documentation was Outdated
Current Link inside the Editor leads to external CryEngine documentation
No Troubleshooting guides, or Contact information to our team
What did we do?
Created Patch Notes anytime the Editor was Updated and branched
Created an Archive for Patch Notes to reside
Lead Engineer wrote a script to auto-publish Change lists
Included Feature Updates and user feedback forms
We coupled these with Chat Channel Updates and Global emails
Results
Our team now had centralized documentation which helped us as we developed
It also served us deepen our impact via internal communication across the global studios
Any user who wanted to see changes and reach out to us about issues or improvements could do so
New Users who had never touched our tools before now had guides
03. VIEWPORT VISUAL MANAGER
RENDERED USEFUL
Problem Statement
“How can we provide users with a refined control of viewport visualizers?”
Why was this an issue?
Our Single-player and Multiplayer Levels, and Tech Zoo’s are populated with hundreds of objects
Each object in the engine receives visual “helpers” which could be Toggled (Show/Hide)
The user’s viewport will get cluttered easily because there is no way to adjust rendering of helpers and other visualizers like manipulator Gizmos, or Cinematics.
This also makes singular or multi selection difficult and reduces FPS for users because they are now rendering that many helpers
Many of the options which control the visuals for the Viewport are located in bespoke tool windows in the Editor, no tool tips, and might overlap another visual render option.
What did we do?
Audit of the entire Editor’s viewport visualizer options, examine every menu and sub-menu for rendering options, shortcuts, etc.
Assess if they were still functional, performant, needed alterations, or should be removed
Created a window which houses all Viewport Visualization options
Runs parallel with our new Editor Settings Menu which was also refactored as a result of this project.
Accessible via Shortcut and Button near top of Viewport
Results
This was a win for all developers, as they could easily find, filter, and manage what is currently displayed in their Viewport.
Increased FPS by refactoring the ways we rendered specific visualization helpers
With “Presets”, users can create multiple visual environments, rather than a singular one with on / off.
If a user needs a set of cinematic visualizers, and another for debugging they can toggle between the two without effecting the other, and return to the Default Visual settings
04. COLOR PICKER
Pick, save, connect
Problem Statement
“How can we improve our Color Picker to suit Tech Artists needs?”
Why was this an issue?
Outdated Color Picker and Interactions
Limited Options for Custom Colors
No Connection to other Tools, which utilize Color Picker often
What we did:
Added Multiple LUT (Look Up Tables) which allow users to select specific Color Spectrums, ie. for Skin, and Hair
Updated Interactions, Keyboard Shortcuts, and Custom Color Presets
Connected our Tint Palette Tool, which gave users quick access to pre-determined Color Palettes.
Who did it help?
Lighting, Character, Vehicle, Level Design, Environment Art
05. Object References
PREVENTING LEVEL DECAY
Problem Statement
“How can we prevent users from Deleting Objects with References and reduce Build Failures?”
Friction:
When users Delete game objects, our Delete Modal did not inform the user that a game object contains a reference.
Because of this, it was causing Build Failures, broken levels, and massive headache for teams.
This resulted in wasted time applying fixes and reverting changes in Source Control
What did we do?
Developers I worked with had a very detailed breakdown of the problem and what they wanted.
My role was to surface the surrounding user flows in our tool ecosystems, and make sure we have “safety checks” in key areas.
We created a new tool, “Delete / Object Reference”
This triggers if any link or reference was found in the Object Delete List which was pending.
This window provides a safe method to prevent decay, and null references.
Users can select and modify the Objects in the pending list, make their change, and go on to their next task
Who did it help?
New and Old Developers of all kinds. This was a huge time saver for everyone as they now know when Objects have a Reference before they Delete the Objects and cause Asserts and other critical errors in Builds.
Results
Our group of developers we tested with called it, “a godsend” to saving time.
Level Decay and bad changes decreased drastically once our tool branched into other streams.
06. Cinematic Track Library
BACK ON TRACK
Problem Statement
“How can we reduce the clicks it takes to find and add Track types to a Node in our Cinematic editor tool?”
Friction
Our Cinematic tool, “Trackview” and our Cine Team requested a better solution to the way they add, “Tracks” types to on the timeline.
Nested Lists containing Tracks were too long, and took too long to find specific tracks.
Code Strings were displaying instead of proper names, and long strings truncated the text
What did we do?
Fixed Strings
Created a small pop-up window with a filter for quickly finding the Track you want
Filtered out any irrelevant tracks that aren’t applicable to that entity type
Provided Favorites
Who did it help?
Cine Team, Marketing, and Animation were grateful for a quick win
07. Content Browser
Asset Organizing and Sharing
Problem Statements
“How can we provide better cross discipline collaboration between teams and their assets?”
“How can we provide quicker visualization and filtering for assets?”
Why was this an issue?
Outdated Asset Browser was difficult to navigate, asset folder organization was a mess
No clear way of sharing assets between users who use different file locations.
No great way of filtering for and viewing objects in our outdated asset browser window.
What did we do?
Big fans of any modern asset manager, we looked to others and how they collected assets and filtered for game assets.
Results:
We added Asset Tags, Filters, Favorites, and organized the folder structure
We added Collections which can be created locally by users and then shared globally or kept private for team members only via version control.
Conclusion
I established a UX process where there was none at Cloud Imperium working in the Core Technology Group. Aided by my trusty Games User Research Book, the Toolsmiths Discord, and utilizing internal and external mentorship - I was able to form a substantial relationship with hundreds of developers in the global team and improve the quality of life for them and the editor. I am very proud with my teams accomplishments and my time on the project.