Hello everyone!

It's been a long time since I sent out a devlog like this and given all the developments that have happened since last time it is HIGH TIME I let all you wonderful people know just what the hell is going on!

Let's start where I left off. The Haunted PS1 demo disc.

History

Dead Heat's demo for the HPS1 Demo Disc project is, frankly terrible. You know it, I know it. At the time, we were relatively new to gamedev, and the systems that we wrote were prototype quality and I just wasn't happy with it. The bugs made for an extremely poor introduction to us and the project. That is all on me.

Having said that, there were some who had some nice things to say about it, and could see the potential in what we were making.

So why the big silence?

Following the release of the demo disc, I frantically tried to mend what I could in as little time as possible. But the demo's issues couldn't be fixed in that amount of time. They were fundamentally built into the game. After three weeks, I was exhausted and accepting of the fact that opinions of Dead Heat were already set. All I could do was begin the slow process of fixing everything.

The first thing that went was Unity.

The majority of our team members were more familiar with UE4 rather than Unity, and have routinely found the engine lacking when compared to the former. Many features found in Unreal have to be bought from the Unity Asset Store to use within unity such as dynamic bones. Tools that are found for free and far more robust in Unreal. We were using Unreal for level editing in the past for the pre rendered backgrounds. It only make sense to both move the project to the same engine that is capable of better graphical quality and toolsets, but also to remove the barrier of using true pre-rendered backgrounds, instead going full 3D.

At first, the reason for going with pre rendered backgrounds was out of a desire to remain authentic to the style of the old PS1 horror and adventure games I played growing up. But soon, I realized that breaking away from pre rendered backgrounds held more control over gameplay and quality. The project's mechanics and world was designed around fixed perspectives, but not pre rendered backgrounds with scene sprites. A distinction I should have recognised sooner.

What worked stylistically, never worked mechanically. With characters clipping through walls with no easy fix that remained true to the past. It was during the work on the HPS1 demo that I started to question the direction of the project with pre rendered backgrounds. I knew it could be done with enough work, but would it be best for the project? Would it lend itself to what the rest of the game needed to be?

I won't bash Unity. It has been a great engine to work with, and I do miss the toolkits (Adventure Creator) and shaders (Xiexe Toon Shader) we worked with while in Unity to help bring Dead Heat to life. But even with those, we were fighting against them to get the results we wanted.

Since moving, I have never once regretted shifting to Unreal Engine 4. What would have taken us ages to do in Unity takes moments in UE4. It was absolutely the right call for us. A few weeks after the demo disc, I enlisted the help of Aiden to help with the programming side, since I was completely new to Unreal at the time. He was able to bring me and the project up to speed with what we needed. Soon after, we started to post content again on our twitter account and announced that we were working on a new and better demo for Dead Heat.

We soon enlisted the help of two new team members; Jay and Alessa.

Jay would be taking on the role of character artist to create new models for the demo. He is a talented artist who has demonstrated his abilities to meet our style through his new characters and environments; including the new Hell's Kitchen area.

Alessa would be our new Technical Artist; in charge of building and assuring the quality of all new tools for the project. She is an industry professional with years of experience to offer, and has already contributed greatly to the project through the refactoring process.

The Refactoring Process

The refactoring process is the most important part of any project, for those who do not know, refactoring is taking the prototyped core systems of a project and rewriting them to be as efficient as possible. Removing all bugs and ensure the game runs as smooth as possible.

When it comes to games development, the best gameplay and dynamics come from systems that have been planned and tested. In order for us to build on the world of Dead Heat and increase the amount of gameplay that we have, these systems need to be extendable. This required us to look at the code we had before and rewrite it to support this new methodology.

A lot of our develop was based on the player blueprint, however we realized that these things should be modularized into different systems as a whole. Because of how many systems this involved, this meant that nearly every current system has been brought to a point where we are happy with and we can extend in the future. This process took a couple of months overall, and is where we have spent most of our time.

The previous demo was held together with duct tape and prayers. This new one will be spot welded together.

The Patreon

There has been some major changes in terms of the project and of course, the world. We live in the real world just like everyone else, and so of course, we're going to be affected right along with everyone else. Up until now, I was supporting the project through my own real life work. Since the lockdown I have been let go by my job. I have enough to pay for what is already commissioned, but that is not counting our programmer and tech artist. They are effectively working for the same reason I am, for the passion alone, but that isn't fair. Not on them, not on anyone. They need to put food on their tables just as much as I do, and the work they are doing is exceptional, well deserving of compensation. We simply cannot afford to work for nothing anymore.

That is why I am deciding to restart the patreon on Oct 12th. 

You will be rewarded for these donations. We are currently working on remaking the patreon page to offer more balanced rewards for each of the tiers, including new discord and stream rewards!

We will also start livestreaming our game's development on twitch in the near future to give everyone an inside look into how we're making Dead Heat!

We will be releasing new information on our twitter feed running up to Oct 12th. We hope to see you there!