Intense Gameplay
Final Rush has a reputation for being intense and hard, with additional options to increase or scale-back the difficulty, you’ll be blasting through waves of hundreds of robots like a pro in no time!
5th January 2015
Final Rush | UI Design & Development
It has been 300 years since the “Apocalypse” destroyed the modern world in a wash of ice and fire Humanity has rebuilt itself from the ashes of global calamity triggered by catastrophic world war. In this new era, technology has redeveloped and advanced further than ever before; bringing wonderful and terrifying advancements to human society, science, education, and everyday living.
In this era of super technologies, a single mistake or wrong scientific advancement can potentially endanger the entire world. Scientists and geniuses – regardless of their intentions – are capable of creating forces of extreme destruction. This point was illustrated when a brilliant scientist, pioneering a new source of clean energy, disregarded all warnings and activated a flawed experimental reactor. The reactor detonated in an enormous chain reaction that atomized everything with a 33 kilometre radius of the reactor – consuming most of the urban metropolis of “South City”, and killing several million people.
In response to this catastrophe, the Ministry of Scientific Order was created to protect humanity from the dangerous side of Technology and “dark science”. The Ministry is a force of military trained specialists and operatives, who are deployed to situations involving volatile technologies. These operatives destroy or extract the dangerous technology, and lock its secrets into a vault containing unfathomable power, known only as the Mausoleum.
You are one of these operatives. You are the first and last line of defence against an unknown and ever changing enemy.
It is your duty to protect the world… from itself.
I worked on Final Rush for two occasions. Initially pre-launch, the developers at Strike Games had a UI and HUD already designed & the first version I developed was based upon that design. It was functional and served the initial purpose, but the design no longer seemed to fit with the level environments or the specific Sci-Fi tone set with the in game design.
After launch and with a substantial update already in the works. Strike Games decided a fresh design was needed for both the HUD and User Interface, which would launch alongside the additional features.
The groundwork of the new layout had already been put into place, and I was provided with rough concepts of how they wanted the layout to look. It was my task to take the rough concepts, develop them into a clean production ready design. After design approval, I could move straight into Scaleform, adding the transitions, control effects, and skinned components that could be used to extend the UI further.
Core features that had already been implemented into the game code were covered, but future updates would allow for the Interface to be expanded to cover the Story UI, Combat Profile & Social aspects that were scheduled for subsequent updates.
The HUD was also revitalized. Original concepts for the released HUD showed a wealth of features that were due to be implemented, but upon first release it was important that the clarity of the core components were prioritised. AS3 scripts were developed for the timer, health depletion/regen, shield depletion/regen, wave & sprint meters and damage overlay. The crosshairs also required AS3 scripts to switch between the varied crosshair designs, with low ammo indicators, accuracy indicators and hit markers added to the mix.
Final Rush is without doubt a visually stunning game, the core gameplay is classic survival FPS with high octane combat, and Strike Games are constantly updating the game based upon player feedback. Already a further update has been launched by the developers with Online Co-op Multiplayer, adding the previously mentioned Story Interface, Credits Screen, Combat Profile and in game scoreboard to the updated UI.
Available now on PC via Steam & GamersGate for a very reasonable £6.99
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!