Iron Man
From character systems to combat resources. Gameplay prototyping during my internship at EA Motive.
Building the systems behind the suit
During an eight-month internship at EA Motive in 2022, I worked as a gameplay programmer on the Iron Man project. I prototyped gameplay features in both Unreal Engine 5 and Frostbite, working closely with the gameplay design team.
My contribution
- Character and combat systems: implemented character status and combat resources using Unreal Engine’s Gameplay Ability System, C++, and Blueprint.
- Frostbite gameplay: built hit detection and skill-resource features using the engine’s Entity Component System, C++, and Schematics 2.
- UI and tooling: created UI for gameplay information and helped integrate ImGui.
- Team documentation: documented features in Confluence to help other programmers use and extend them.
What I took away
Working across two engines gave me experience with different approaches to gameplay architecture, from ability-based prototyping to a large ECS codebase. It was also my first opportunity to contribute to an AAA game alongside experienced designers and programmers.