Pick up your revolver, scrap some bots, add new bullets and take on the chamber!

Chamber is a barrel-building FPS set in a sci-fi/western gameshow. The player fights their way through a series of stages and gains a new bullet upgrade with each completed chamber and a unique modifier every 3 chambers. It was created as part of the Staffordshire University 1UP scheme, a 7-week paid internship through their internal studio Oatcake interactive. The scheme gives students access to a simulated work environment creating games from start to finish alongside other top students and lecturers in an industry setting.

I participated as part of the tech team, acting as the AI programmer for the project. This meant working closely with both the design and art teams to create a series of entertaining and engaging enemies! The enemies were created using a combination of both the Blueprint and C++ systems, leading to an easy to use set of actor blueprints which designers could inherit from, retaining all functionality and build ontop of while still remaining usable with our existing spawning system. The exposed functionality is tied to a series of data sheets to proper encapsulate the variables allowing for multiple teams to work on the various enemy balances at once.

With the finalised designs being added to the projects design documentation, the final selection of enemies were narrowed down to:

  • A fixed turret firing a piece of timed dynamite in an area close to the player, forcing them to stay mobile and avoid camping areas.
  • A flying drone firing quick projectiles before adjusting position.
  • A large melee robot that closes the distance between the player before swinging its wrecking ball arms. If they can’t reach the player, they’ll position themselves to launch them at the player instead!

You can see these throughout the trailer above!

Additionally, I was asked to stay on the project for an extra week as part of a smaller team. This was in a generalist role, mainly fixing bugs and applying final levels of polish in tandem with the design team to ensure a project that is ready to be presented to the public. While I personally can’t share the game publicly, you can play it at any Staffordshire University open day events or I can put you in contact with a member of the Staffordshire Games Institute for access.

As always, it’s a pleasure to work with extremely talented members of different disciplines on a project a little out of my comfort zone. I’m proud of the team for what we managed to create during this time, and I am very grateful for the opportunity and the new skills I’ve learned battling UE5!

Thank you to the chumblings who worked on the game, the Staffordshire Games Institute team and all the staff that assisted throughout! <3