Development of Modular User Interface Architecture for Unreal Engine Games using the Common UI Plugin-Framework
Main Article Content
Abstract
The paper is devoted to the development and experimental verification of a modular user interface architecture for game projects in Unreal Engine. The study identifies typical UI design antipatterns (monolithic widget structures, hard references, lack of abstraction, platform dependency) and provides an analysis of existing architectural approaches (Data-Driven UI, MVC, MVVM), demonstrating their limitations. The authors propose an architecture that integrates the Common UI framework, an asynchronous loading mechanism with soft references, the Gameplay Tags system, and a data registry for dynamic settings menu generation. The architecture is implemented as the AdvancedGameUserInterface plugin. Its experimental evaluation involving 12 developers and 5 UI designers confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed solution across three key metrics: maintainability, performance, and scalability. Based on the research results, practical recommendations are formulated for applying the developed architecture depending on the scale of the game project. The research findings can be used by developers to improve quality and reduce maintenance costs for user interfaces in game projects on Unreal Engine.
Article Details
References
2. Wojtaszczyk D. Unlocking Cross-Platform UI with Unreal's Common UI. 2025. URL: https://pixelantgames.com/blog/unlocking-cross-platform-ui-with-unreals-commonui/
3. Chen L. Architecting UI Systems for Design Fidelity and Platform Consistency // TechRxiv. 2025. URL: https://www.techrxiv.org/users/949700/articles/1322954-architecting-ui-systems-for-design-fidelity-and-platform-consistency
4. YawLighthouse. UMG Slate Compendium: A Compendium Information Guide for UMG and Slate in Unreal Engine. URL: https://github.com/YawLighthouse/UMG-Slate-Compendium/tree/main/languages/ru
5. Epic Games. Common UI Overview. URL: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/overview-of-advanced-multiplatform-user-interfaces-with-common-ui-for-unreal-engine
6. Unreal Engine. UMG Best Practices. 2019. URL: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/tech-blog/umg-best-practices
7. Ramač R., Mandić V., Taušan N., Rios N., Freire S., Pérez B., Castellanos C., Correal D., Pacheco A., Lopez G., Izurieta C., Seaman C., Spinola R. Prevalence, Common Causes and Effects of Technical Debt: Results from a Family of Surveys with the IT Industry // Journal of Systems and Software. 2022. Vol. 184, No. 111114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2021.111114
8. Nardone V., Muse B.A., Abidi M., Khomh F., Di Penta M. Video Game Bad Smells: What They Are and How Developers Perceive Them // ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. 2023. Vol. 32, No. 4 (88). P. 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563214
9. Agrahari V., Chimalakonda S. A Catalogue of Game-Specific Anti-Patterns // Proceedings of the 15th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference (ISEC 2022). 2022. P. 1–10. URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3511430.3511436
10. Bittner D., Hauser F., Engl F., Mottok J. Eye Movement Modelling Examples on Usability Heuristics // Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Software Engineering Education (ECSEE’25). ACM. 2025. P. 106–114. https://doi.org/10.1145/3723010.3723035
11. Olsson T., Toll D., Wingkvist A., Ericsson M. Evolution and Evaluation of the Model-View-Controller Architecture in Games // Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering (GAS 2015). IEEE. 2015. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7169463
12. Microsoft. The Model-View-ViewModel Pattern // .NET MAUI Documentation. 2024. URL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/maui/mvvm
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Presenting an article for publication in the Russian Digital Libraries Journal (RDLJ), the authors automatically give consent to grant a limited license to use the materials of the Kazan (Volga) Federal University (KFU) (of course, only if the article is accepted for publication). This means that KFU has the right to publish an article in the next issue of the journal (on the website or in printed form), as well as to reprint this article in the archives of RDLJ CDs or to include in a particular information system or database, produced by KFU.
All copyrighted materials are placed in RDLJ with the consent of the authors. In the event that any of the authors have objected to its publication of materials on this site, the material can be removed, subject to notification to the Editor in writing.
Documents published in RDLJ are protected by copyright and all rights are reserved by the authors. Authors independently monitor compliance with their rights to reproduce or translate their papers published in the journal. If the material is published in RDLJ, reprinted with permission by another publisher or translated into another language, a reference to the original publication.
By submitting an article for publication in RDLJ, authors should take into account that the publication on the Internet, on the one hand, provide unique opportunities for access to their content, but on the other hand, are a new form of information exchange in the global information society where authors and publishers is not always provided with protection against unauthorized copying or other use of materials protected by copyright.
RDLJ is copyrighted. When using materials from the log must indicate the URL: index.phtml page = elbib / rus / journal?. Any change, addition or editing of the author's text are not allowed. Copying individual fragments of articles from the journal is allowed for distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon article, even commercially, as long as they credit that article for the original creation.
Request for the right to reproduce or use any of the materials published in RDLJ should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief A.M. Elizarov at the following address: amelizarov@gmail.com.
The publishers of RDLJ is not responsible for the view, set out in the published opinion articles.
We suggest the authors of articles downloaded from this page, sign it and send it to the journal publisher's address by e-mail scan copyright agreements on the transfer of non-exclusive rights to use the work.