Hello everyone and welcome to our end of week update for Dead Heat!

It's been a while since we have had an update, I'm afraid. Personal reasons and responsibilities, as well as the finances for further development of the demo, took time to sort out before we could continue. However, we have been making good progress this past week and we're here to talk about it. Remember that you can always get in on the development side more by joining our discord!

https://discord.gg/Gqn5UB4

Dialogue Tree Issues

This week began with a clear view of what the guts of the demo looked like in unity and cross-referencing it with our design document. There were still a few things that needed to be added into the demo to be ready on time. But the current state of the projects dialogue logic would never have done. The dialogue was still structured haphazardly from its initial testing and development phase. Hard to read and hard to add new dialogue to or change existing dialogue. It simply needed to be sorted better. So we began the process of restructuring the dialogue trees to be far more compartmentalised. AC(Adventure Creator) uses action lists; similar to UE4s blueprints for game logic and dialogue when overridden. We were initially using one list for all dialogue between two characters in a scene, which simply was not efficient and way too much for one list for the game we were making. I could foresee a tone of problems coming from not having a solid foundation that makes it easy to add new dialogue too. Now before talking with one character, the current randomisation seed, reputation choice and current player will be checked beforehand before the conversation will be chosen. Making adding conversations for other seeds or choices much easier for the future.

Narration

Dead Heat is planned to be fully voice acted, including all item descriptions and future dialogue interrupts. We always wanted to add in narration to add to the Noir feel and provide some first-person backstory to the events happening, but the main dialogue for the demo took president. It would be a sorely missed opportunity for us not to have a film noir narration, though some classic noir never had them, they do add buckets of style and charm to those that opted to have them. We don't currently have voice actors for Sonja and Lilith (we are looking for some) but we have now added in the Noir narration subtitles into the demo so everyone can get to know Sonja and Lilith a little bit better and how your choice in reputation can change them!

And a little bit about their boss as well.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1188230137009057792

Glen Bishop

After the dialogue was restructured, we then turned our attention to the next character to be given a shiny new 3D model. Glen Bishop. With all respects to our first artist; Katherine Osika, the original design for Glen Bishop was a bit of a stopgap for future development, however, that never came to be. Now with our new team and new perspective, we can give Glen the attention he doesn't want but certainly needs.

His old design was a jumping-off point for the new look, we laid out how he looked and used it as the template for the base of his new 3D model.

After which, we began adding some personality to his design. Glen's old design made it look like he hadn't exactly lived. He seemed too clean and too untouched by the new ways of life people live in the near future. I plotted out his life up until the point of the game, his background first, then the hazards of his occupation and the effects other events in the world's past had on him. After that, I built up his personality. One addition to his design from his past is a cybernetic eye to replace one that was gouged out by a feral zombie, cementing a deep hatred for them in future. Something Lilith will undoubtedly verbally prod at.

His design is currently here. With a new white coat to better symbolise his profession and station in the NYPD and a shiny new cybernetic eye releasing him of his old coke bottle glasses. His 3D model will be coming up soon, along with a new range of facial expressions for Glen, Sonja and Lilith. So stay tuned!

Thank you for reading our devlog! If you like the project, please consider joining our discord and sharing the project around!