Team Size: 6 Programmers, 4 Designers, 1 Audio Designer
Time Constraint: 28 Weeks

P.U.P.P.I.T. is a First Person Shooter set in a sleeping child's bedroom. You play as a lone puppet protecting the child from other toy creatures trying to disturb their slumber.
P.U.P.P.I.T. is my first project inside of a commercial engine and offered up its own set benefits and challenges. My knowledge of utilizing Unreal's tools, such as Particle Emitters, Animation Blueprints, Animation Blend spaces, and Behavior Trees has drastically improved.

As a producer, I am constantly juggling my own work with organizing the team’s progress. Trello, an online work tracking tool, is used to help keep everyone on task. The team has weekly meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page and doesn't burn out. I also meet with the team leads weekly to make sure all our milestone requirements are met on time. As the clock keeps ticking towards submission new opportunities and challenges always arise. Multiple parts of the project have been rescoped due to the loss of our Audio Designer and the addition of an A.I. specialist.

During the first 14 weeks of development, my programming role was creating the base systems for the weapons and objectives. The weapons all pull from a base C++ class that handles equipping, reloading, firing, and de-equipping using a simple state machine. The base objective code is also a very simple state machine that handles damage and an objective timer while in the Running state.

Since we did not have artists on the team, I volunteered to help create and implement simple weapon animations. The Animation Blueprint for our players first person mesh has been reconstructed multiple times, each adding a new level of complexity or polish. Currently, our arms blend between 4 different state machines based on the attached weapon. This animation is then passed to an aim offset that uses the current rotation speed of the camera to give the weapon extra movement. The weapons are attached to individual sockets on the players hands, so they sit comfortably throughout every animation.