https://store.steampowered.com/app/2502780/Rangers_Path_National_Park_Simulator
For a year over 2023-2024, my work at Skyhook Games was focused on the pre-production of a simulator game intended to be about being an American Park Ranger. This project was for the publisher Astragon Entertainment (https://www.astragon.com/)
I was involved in the initial research and technical confidence work as part of the studio’s pitch to work on the project. UE5 was relatively new during this period and involved, but not limited to, proving a contextual use case for Lumen and Nanite and the World Partition system in the project.
Once we were on the project, I operated in the capacity of a Technical Designer and Lead UI Programmer. I would work on multiple systems of the game, primarily spending my time on how the UI would interact with each one, as well as purely UI based elements like the frontend menus and game settings. An MVVM architecture was utilised, separating the UMG produced graphical UI elements from the core functionality of the systems it was displaying information from by obtaining relevant information from data structures linked to each compartmentalised system or mechanic’s implementation.
I worked closely with a UI artist and designer, as well as with other members of the studio in small feature teams to deliver features effectively and efficiently.
Systems my UI work touched upon included:
- Full frontend implementation for multiple save files, continuing a game from the most recent save and game settings
- Implementing UI based gamepad support
- Time-of-day linked sleeping system, akin to those found in Bethesda games
- A vehicle spawning menu
- In-game compass
Beyond UI work, I designed and implemented gameplay systems and mechanics:
- Ranger Vision, similar to Eagle Vision from Assassin’s Creed. Colours would be assigned to different types of relevant gameplay elements
- Teleporting/Fast Travel System
- World Streaming implementations and the World Partition System, setting appropriate elements such as the player or teleport points to be Streaming Components that would load areas of the game appropriately
Similarly to all my other works on this website, I produced high quality, professional documentation spanning technical and design works utilising Obsidian and Confluence to be provided to the team.
The foundations of all these elements can be seen in the final product developed by To-Go Games and the my name, as well as all of those at Skyhook who actively worked on the project, are listed as part of the credits of this game. The work I conducted on this project can be confirmed, via reference, by members of Skyhook Games upon request.
Aaron Swiss-Hamlett 