Inventory Pouch

The number of inventory items increased in the second release. Working closely with the gameplay engineer, we designed this expandable inventory that balanced the need for quick access with the need to hold many quest items.

We gave priority to weapons in the 'mini' slots. Later we also added an 'organize' mode to make those actions more efficient. I also gathered feedback about desired improvements, and worked with our gameplay engineering lead to ship the shoulder holsters feature, allowing an item to be stored on the player's back.

The inventory pouch was one of the most complicated UI mechanics. The fun idea of turning a conventionally 2D UI element into a 3D object doesn't scale well. Diagetic elements have to follow laws of reality and industrial design, thus inheriting all the problems of real-life objects. If we had more inventory items in a future release, we would have moved most of the feature to the 2D Pause Menu.

Tutorials

Game mechanics need to be paced out for learning and building your character.

In VR, a lot of common features are stuck to your body, or mapped to controller buttons that you can't see. I recommended that we allow the player to attach each object and have a moment to learn how to use it.

I worked with the level designer and gameplay engineer to build this intro sequence and the 20+ tutorials spread across this level.

The inventory pouch was extra tricky, with a lot of back and forth on where it should be. It's on the chest, so we emphasize it in the beginning, reinforcing the action of picking up an item and stashing it in the pouch.

The Gauntlet

The gauntlet held 3 main play features: Holocalls, Scanning, and Compass.

The gauntlet was initially really difficult to use, but we weren’t going to re-design it before launch. I improved usability with small adjustments, making it more ergonomic and the buttons more obvious.

Compass Navigation

"Where do I go next?" Just hit the compass button. Simple concept, yet this feature proved extra tricky as a diagetic VR element.

Challenges:

A 3D arrow mounted to your wrist is way more complicated than a 2D element on a flat screen.

Our levels have a lot of winding paths and ‘doglegs’ due to rendering and level streaming requirements. No long clear sight lines.

It had to work across every single mission across multiple different levels, and switch between different missions

Shipping It:

Condensed a wide range of ideas from different game designers.

Removed competing features and made an objective marker that is located in world space at a target point.

Audited all the missions and set best practices for level designers to get it all working.

Pause Menu

The workhorse UI that holds averything together.

I architected the mission progression system, allowing the player to set the active mission, switch between story paths, and unlock special Tales.

Conceived the map feature to allow fast travel between levels.

Owned the Journals feature, managing content development and edits.

Took ownership of the Challenges feature, making recommendations for level designers.

Built directly in UMG and managed engineering tasks. Localized to 6 languages.

Settings...the most essential menu feature!

I made the settings easily accessible from both the main menu and the pause menu. Many settings have states dependent on other setting states, so keeping the design files well-documented saved a lot of engineering headache.

We shipped some highly requested settings in a patch after launch to appease experience VR players who expect much more detailed control over their play experience.