Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

Unreal Engine, C++, Blueprints, Python

Overview

I joined the Boltgun team as a Principal Programmer during the Pre-Production cycle. At this stage, we were focusing on understanding the retro shooter genre as fully as we could, and a lot of my work was spent collaborating with the then Lead Programmer and Lead Designer as the studio.

This was Auroch Digital’s first attempt at a first-person shooter, and we spent a lot of time refining what we wanted the game to be, and ensuring we were paying due respect to the titles that came before us.

Due to other project needs, I then left the project before returning shortly before release as the Technical Director of the Studio, where I worked to try to ensure a smooth release of the game. This role continued on into the Forges of Corruption DLC we released to expand the base game, where I helped to resource and plan the team to ensure we were able to complete the work on time and at a satisfactory level of quality.

Primary Duties

Responsible for defining the rendering approach for the 2D sprites of enemies, as well as the weapons – this included working with Art to define the approach used for baking the sprites from animations and capturing Normal, AO, and Emissive channels.
Implementation of tooling systems to support Art’s development pipeline and reduce friction, using a combination of Unreal Engine’s Python support and Editor Blueprint Widgets to create provide an interface for artists.
Responsible for the creation of the save system that made use of the SaveGame flag to define which properties on an Actor were serialised and deserialised during save and load.
Refined our approach to AI, and developed an “Arenas and Zones” system alongside a “Ticketing” system. These two were used in conjunction to manage AI attack behaviour, as well as ensuring that AI were positioning themselves appropriately when we didn’t want them to be attacking the player.
Developed and prototyped gameplay features for both the player and enemies.

Platforms

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2005010/Warhammer_40000_Boltgun/
Xbox: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/warhammer-40000-boltgun/9NP77PLZ7B3R
PlayStation: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10004833
Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/warhammer-40-000-boltgun-switch/