Owen Sims

Game Developer studying at University of Staffordshire

About Me

I am a final year Computer Games Development student at Staffordshire University. I have always had a passion for game development, and started programming in middle school. I am particularly experienced with Unreal Engine 5 development, and I specialise broadly within the following areas:

  • Tools Programming
  • UI Programming
  • Gameplay & Systems Programming

I am familiar with and commonly use the following softwares within my work:

Please feel free to get in touch with me with the links below - I'd love to talk about anything at all!

I am also learning aspects of web programming, and this website has been built as a part of this!

Projects

Dissertation Project: MWCST

MWCST (Modular Weapon Component System Tool) is a tool built in C++ for Unreal Engine 5. The tool contains a custom node graph among many other features, making it easy for developers to quickly prototype modular weapon systems. This tool will be developed further soon for a commercial release.

Rod & Ripple

Rod & Ripple is a fishing game developed in Unreal Engine 5. This game is the result of my Junior Collaborative Games Development Module. On this project, I worked on:

  • Input handling
  • Boat mechanics
    • Boat movement
    • Boat camera movement
    • Boat health
  • HUD and UI design, implementation and functionality
    • Boat HUD
    • Casting HUD
    • Shop UI
    • Menus
  • Hub area mechanics
  • Bait system

This project furthered my knowledge of Blueprinting and UI development in Unreal Engine 5. It also furthered my knowledge about team development, and of the use of GitHub for version control in large groups and collaboration.

Anti-Siege

Anti-Siege is a work-in-progress procedurally generated tower defence game developed solely by me. The game prototype current only contains a single type of tower to use, but I aim to expand and refine this in future ready for public release.

This project has taught me the importance of aspects of game feel, with audio, camera shake, VFX and animations being used to give the prototype juice.

Procedural Sci-Fi Weapon Tool

This tool was built for me to learn and utilise the Procedural Content Generation plugin within Unreal Engine 5.6. It provides a highly-customisable and layered object decoration system; especially designer for, but not limited to, weapons. The tool allows for the weapon base, tiles and pipes to all be customised with different PCG and colour settings.

As of now this project is a proof of concept, and will require a large overhaul to transform it into a developer-ready plugin, but I hope to be able to do this in future.

Railway System Tool

Railway System Tool is a tool developed by myself in Unreal Engine 5.4 for quickly and easily creating and managing railway systems.

This project has taught me about the use of splines, C++ and Editor Utility Widgets in Unreal Engine 5. I intend to update and continue development of this tool, adding more features and functionality to it. I will release this tool on the FAB Marketplace when it is ready.

Wasted Knight

Wasted Knight is a first person roguelike melee game developed by my team of 5 developers during the first year of my studies at the University of Staffordshire. From this, I learned about the whole games production process, and used agile development within a small team to produce an impressive result in 9 weeks.