Gamechanger 2018 — 2024

Frame-accurate broadcast rendering, built inside Unreal.

Stepper turned chronological production logs into deterministic scenes, camera passes, edit timelines, and external jobs. I solely architected and built the platform for automated television production.

Role: System architect and sole developer
Stack: Unreal Engine, C++, Blueprints, FFmpeg

4 render
pipelines

14 Blueprint
API groups

100+ documented
C++ types

Stepper Job Planner showing production logs and Normal, Scatter, XML, and External camera actions — 01 / Job Planner Operators select logs and camera pipelines from one production queue.

Architecture

The game records what happened. Stepper rebuilds it.

During the show, the game software writes timestamped events to a chronological log. Stepper ingests that log and replays those events on their original frames to create production output.

01 / GAME SOFTWARE

The game records the moments production will need.

The live game already knows every answer, score change, and graphic trigger. It writes only the relevant events, with enough context for Stepper to reproduce them later.

LIVE GAME EVENT SelectAnswer

Timecode: 00:09:00:00
Event: SelectAnswer
JSON data: { "SelectedAnswerId": 1 }

Render pipelines

One job model, four kinds of output.

Camera type selects an orchestration strategy while the same parsed production data continues to drive scene state.

Normal

Replays a complete LogPacket from its first frame to its last, updating actors, widgets, cameras, media, and encoding on every step.

Full episode or continuous camera pass

Scattered

Scans for configured action tags, fast-forwards prior state immediately, then renders only the required window around each event.

Targeted pickup shots at exact show moments

XML

Builds FCPXML projects with bins, sequences, synchronized media, transitions, loops, and keyframed effects for editorial workflows.

Structured timelines ready for Premiere

External

Launches and monitors external processes, streams their output, captures exit codes, and folds completion back into the Stepper job lifecycle.

Automation beyond the Unreal process

Blueprint configuration selecting an action tag, duration, and offset for a scattered camera render — Scatter cameras declare which action starts a clip, its duration, and its time offset.

Extension layer

Production logic stays accessible to both C++ and Blueprint.

The core owns timing and orchestration. Project teams extend behavior through focused Unreal classes and overridable APIs.

Actors

Frame-driven scene behavior

StepperActor parses selected action types into active actions, then receives per-frame progress for deterministic animation.

Widgets

Timed graphics and animation

StepperWidget synchronizes UMG animation updates and event callbacks with the same stepping clock as the scene.

Components

Reusable ordered updates

StepperActorComponent packages reusable behavior with explicit init, reset, and pre- or post-actor frame update phases.

Media

Frame-by-frame playback

Media processes advance source files by frame rather than relying on real-time playback synchronization.

Blueprint

14 documented API groups

APIs cover stepping, logs, tags, math, file IO, JSON, external processes, scatter rendering, widgets, and XML construction.

C++

100+ documented types

Managers, data structures, workers, editor-facing objects, and runtime helpers expose the platform below the Blueprint layer.

Blueprint graph reading question text from logged JSON and playing a synchronized Stepper widget animation — A project Blueprint reads JSON from a logged event and drives a frame-synchronized widget animation.

Production outcomes

Built for repeatable output, not real-time playback.

Stepping decouples production time from wall-clock time. Complex scenes can render as slowly as needed while every action, animation, camera, and media frame remains aligned.

Integrated encoding 90+ FPS

Sustained at 4K in the offline FFmpeg pipeline, while the engine remained responsible for deterministic frame generation.

Selected production use

Beat The Grid 2020 · Unreleased Family Piggy Bank 2021 · Aired Bingo Blitz 2022 · Aired Tic Tac Dough 2024 · Aired

Premiere project panel with generated media folders, source file, nested timeline, and main timeline — 04 / Editorial handoff Generated XML builds the project hierarchy and places timed clips and transitions directly on the edit timeline.

Premiere timeline containing generated nested clips, a source clip, and a cross dissolve — 04 / Editorial handoff Generated XML builds the project hierarchy and places timed clips and transitions directly on the edit timeline.

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