About Me

Black and white photo of ben from a long time ago

Hi, I'm ben.

After growing up in the UK, I've lived and worked in the video games industry in Tokyo, Paris and Vancouver. I have over 8 years' experience as an Unreal Engine UI programmer, as well as experience with Unity and custom C++ engines.

I'm passionate about creating amazing user experiences not only for players but also for fellow devs; effortless workflows that let designers and artists create freely and make them love their jobs.

I'm currently a UI Programmer at Epic Games. I was previously UI Programmer on city builder Industries of Titan and action-RPG Vampyr. For more see my Portfolio.

I love sharing what I learn about Unreal Engine through tutorials, documentation, tips and links, and running an Unreal UI Discord. I've been lucky to be able to open-source code that I wrote for Brace Yourself Games as plugins on GitHub. For the full list see Code below.

I also try to give back to the community that helped me by mentoring people and giving talks for university gamedev courses. I've given talks for the University of British Columbia and Birmingham City University. In 2023 I organized the relaunch of the #notGDC Non-conference.

Thank you.

Contact

Games

Code

Name Description
πŸ’¨ UI Tweener Animate UI widgets from C++.
πŸ‘Ύ Cheat Manager Add custom cheat shortcuts like enemy.hp.set 50.
βœ… Asset Validator Check texture size, category, import path.
🎟 YouTrack Ticket Filler Open a browser and pre-fill information.
πŸ”  Localization CSV-based fan-translation-friendly alternative localization system.
🎨 Rich Text Supports Markdown-like formatting, inline images, and tooltips.
πŸ”’ Cross-Branch Lock Warn if assets are locked in another branch.
πŸ“ƒ ImGui Logger Display logs in-game using ImGui.
πŸ—£ Text to Speech Use Windows built-in TTS to speak text.

About the Site

I started benui.ca in 2017 as a place to write down things I learned as I was getting to grips with Unreal Engine. Information about building user interfaces in Unreal Engine was scattered around the web in forum posts and Unreal Wiki entries, so I wanted to collate it into a single place, for the selfish reason that it would make it easier for me to find the information again in the future.

Since then, it's grown into a popular resource for developers making UIs in Unreal Engine. I've received messages from university educators and people making private courses that they mention benui.ca as a useful source of information for students.

As of January 2023 it gets over 18k unique visitors and 38k page views per month.

In January 2022 I created the benui Discord server as a place to discuss UI-related issues. It has attracted many professional developers who contribute to discussions on implementing in UMG and Slate, UI materials, localization and more. We hit 1000 users in June 2022!

benui.ca is built using Jekyll, using the Minimal Mistakes theme. It is hosted on GitHub.

If you find any bugs on the site, please report them on the GitHub Issues Page.

100% Organic

This site is 100% produced by me, a human, with no AI used.

License

The contents of this site are licensed under a modified MIT License that prohibits its use in any AI or machine learning system.

MIT No AI License

Copyright (c) 2024 Ben Humphreys

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person, and not artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) system, obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. The Software is NOT used in or by GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT or as training data or as suggested code in any similar AI or ML-based code suggestion system. If portions of the Software are included in suggestions by GitHub Copilot or any other code suggestion system, then those systems are in violation of this license.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.