The goal of this solo project was simple - we had to create a basic environment, showcase camera changes, make a functional AI, ray casting, have a working health and ammo counter system, and more. I added regeneration for both and added some other various extras for fun. Everything here was created in the UNREAL Engine using C++.

The project originally needed only some basic features and content, so I went back and did some adjustments and improvements which can be seen in the video.

A few of the improvements I made were making the player character visible when viewing through the separate camera, I gave the player arms a custom texture and I added a sphere to the player location for easy viewing, I added an indicator to the HUD (heads up display) to visually see when the gun was ready to fire, I added a simple flashlight system to light up whatever is in front of the player, and a few other things.

This was the first project in which I learned how to use the animation system shown above. I made it so that when the player took damage (from stepping in the fire), the screen would flash red for 2 seconds and then return to normal. During that time, the screen would set the red's alpha value higher, then lower, then higher once more before turning off completely so it gave a smooth effect.

I have decided to include this artifact in my portfolio because I think it demonstrates some key abilities to use the engine and C++ instead of just resorting to the common blueprints. Almost everything here was done in raw code with C++.

Originally, I couldn't see the player character when viewing from the other camera, so I made everything viewable not only by the owner (the player character) so I could view where the pawn was and what it was doing.

The project was a bit difficult in terms of coming up with unique ideas for this testing area. Since it wasn't meant to be a game and it was only meant to be used for testing, it didn't have to be coherently unified, but I did want it to be somewhat unique. The other issue was making everything work in C++ when I had only ever done this kind of work using UNREAL's blueprint system.

One of the unique features I decided to add to the project to make mine unique was a regeneration system for health and the ammo (typed as magic in the code) and I made the gun material change appearance if the player didn't have enough at the time to fire.

Since it was meant for testing, I incorporated an automated runtime display to print on screen every 5 seconds as well. I was using it to test how long it took the AI orb to move around to the various waypoints.

This testing project helped broaden my skillset in teaching me some advanced features with C++ in the UNREAL Engine. It was also a great way to test different things such as the pain causing volume.