Project Coldlight Interface Design

PhantomWire Games | UI/UX & Motion Designer (Solo) | July 2026 | HTML/CSS/JS Prototype — Target: Unreal Engine 5 (UMG/CommonUI)

Project Coldlight Interface Design screenshot

Summary

COLDLIGHT is a short, linear single-player stealth game (Splinter Cell-style) currently in development in Unreal Engine 5. This project is an interactive HUD concept exploring a fully diegetic, Blacklist-inspired interface built from monochrome line-work and projected typography.

What Is It?

The concept is built around a handful of interlocking systems:
- World-projected objective display: decode/scramble text animations with a layered information hierarchy - primary objective, secondary objective, and mission telemetry.
- Character-anchored readouts: tethered directly to the operative, surfacing ammo and equipment state.
- World-space markers: for the objective, exfil route, and contextual interaction prompts.
- Edge-of-frame hostile bearing indicators: for tracking threats outside the player's view.
- Radial equipment wheel: procedural segment layout with a rim that re-traces on every open.

The whole HUD re-themes through three awareness states - concealed, caution, and compromised - via a single palette swap, and every element can be toggled independently with its own reveal/hide animation. This doubles as a tool for testing how minimal the final HUD can go, and the whole thing is composited over in-engine-style gameplay framing to validate legibility against a real scene.

Try It

The prototype below is fully interactive - use the panel on the right (or keyboard shortcuts 1-5 for individual elements, O for the objective display, and Q for the equipment wheel) to switch between awareness states and toggle HUD elements on and off.

Interactive HUD concept (Splinter Cell: Blacklist gameplay used as background)

Engine, Date & Role

Built as an interactive HTML/CSS/JS motion prototype in 2026, as pre-production UI design for an Unreal Engine 5 project (UMG/CommonUI target, C++ and Blueprint on a GASP ALS base). Solo project under PhantomWire Games.

Skills Used

UI/UX design and engineering, motion design (draw-on line animations, text decode/scramble effects, orchestrated reveal/hide sequences), design systems thinking (state-driven theming through design tokens, mapping one-to-one to CommonUI style assets), procedural UI construction (radial menu geometry generated from data), interaction design for gamepad-first radial selection, and rapid interactive prototyping ahead of UMG implementation.

Skills

  • UI/UX Design & Interaction Design
  • Motion Design (draw-on line-work, decode/scramble text FX)
  • Design Systems (state-driven theming via design tokens)
  • Procedural UI Construction (data-driven radial geometry)
  • Gamepad-First Radial Interaction Design
  • Rapid Interactive Prototyping ahead of UMG implementation