Rise: Battle Lines

Creating & implementing the UI for Rise.

I worked with The Secret Games Co. on Rise: Battle Lines from 2013 to 2016 to create, implement and script some of the functions of the game’s user interface. During this time I worked closely with the game’s Designer and Programmer to achieve our various goals for the UI.

Roles
  • User Interface design
  • User Interface implementation
  • Advertisement & other media design
Engine
  • Unity 3D
Team Size
  • 8
Selecting units to draft at the game’s start

With Rise being an indie game, we all worked from home and many of the teammates had other jobs. Most of the members were in the UK while I’m in Canada, so written communication became key for me in this project. Usually I would try to have a package of concepts ready for them in the morning that’d also preconsider potential issues and alternate versions. My hope was that one idea of the selection would be the ideal version, which worked better than going back and forth with one single idea for approval.

Scripting in the UI took a similar approach, we used a SVN and would all commit our changes to the game. I got to work with the programmer’s C# code in Unity and learned many things about proper programming just by going through his code. I scripted in various UI functions, like connecting events that trigger from button links and set up / tweaked the layout of the UI in the engine.

I’d make my additions have clear comments, descriptive change-log documentation and also mimic his way of programming to keep things uniform and organized. This made it much easier to see what I did and reduced the chances of having to email me and wait for answers.

As the game got closer to release my work changed to create achievement icons, trading cards, banners and advertisements for the game.

Box art image I put together for the game release