PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE LOST CROWN
ROLE
UI Engineer
DESCRIPTION
As part of my employment at Sprung Studios, I worked as a UI Engineer on the latest Prince of Persia franchise title. I contributed to in-game menus such as the map, point of interest system, amulets and Athra powers, Quests, merchants menus, some HUD elements and others.
YEAR
2024
PARTNERS
Sprung Studios x Ubisoft Montpellier
TOOLS
Unity Engine, C#
DEVELOPMENT KEYNOTES
TECHNOLOGIES
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown utilized Unity Engine as its main development environment alongside some in-house tools owned by Ubisoft. Part of my core responsibility was to learn and master all the tools to be able to integrate and deliver the work commissioned by Ubisoft Montpellier. I was already familiar with Unity Engine, but not so much with the MVVM design pattern which was the desired implementation for the UI. I worked closely with Andrew Eades, at the time Technical Director at Sprung Studios, who patiently taught and trained me how to use the MVVM approach. After a relatively short onboarding period, I was able to deliver consistently, hence my involvement in almost all existing menus in the game.
OPTIMIZATION
One of the hot topics of the implementation process was the optimization aspect. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is available on almost all platforms, including Switch, which is notoriously weak among other consoles. When I joined the team, the UI was in the prototyping stage and the implementation had to be done with the optimization aspect in mind, hence the MVVM requirement. We also took other measures as we progressed, such as texture grouping, canvas grouping, carefully picking the layouts and performance testing as part of the delivery Definition of Done.
CHALLENGES
One of the trickiest challenges to overcome was the fast delivery rate. The UI was, as mentioned before, in its very early stages when I joined the team, thus, the demand for menus to be updated/implemented was very high. In parallel with the delivery, we were also trying to move the existing UI system into a new one, adhering to the MVVM model. The MVVM architecture was not built - this being the first task me and Andy picked up. In just a few months we managed to not only establish a new workflow and UI System but also deliver 5-6 menus.
GROWTH TIP
Most AAA Game Studios aim for an MVC or MVVM design pattern for their UI systems. Learning how to implement and apply these to games UI would put you a step forward among other game devs. Unreal Engine even has a plugin for the MVVM pattern becoming increasingly popular.