Hello all.

We've come to the end of another year and another update cycle. This time we have updated a significant amount of the demo to bring the foundation mechanics up to working order.

Major Improvements

Improvements to the Inventory Menu UI: The UI is now laid out in a clearer and more user-friendly way that allows for each evidence type to have more screen space to display its details.

Saving and Loading: Saving and loading have been updated to now save the positions of the NPCs, Enemies and the state of all movable items in a level.

New Tutorial Levels: Added three new Tutorial levels to teach the mechanics of Dead Heat. The former Tutorial level will now act as a final examination for all mechanics with a mock investigation. Includes new meshes for the suspects and witnesses.

Remade animations: All anims have now been recreated for a single skeleton to help streamline animation creation while allowing for each character to have their unique anims.

Precise Aiming Laser: New mechanic for precisely aiming at enemies was added. Holding down the left shift key while aiming will now create a red laser to help target enemies from far away or target certain body parts.

Minor improvements

>Removed HUD clock.

>Added ammo counter to ammo boxes and weapons in the inventory. Ammo will now be taken from ammo boxes from latest added to oldest. Ammo boxes marked as evidence will not be taken from to avoid contamination.

Summary

We have had a long and busy year getting these improvements implemented but now our foundation is stronger than ever. From here, we can shift our focus to building up our art department and get some of the new environments we have had planned built. In 2024 we hope to have the Harlem level, Hells Kitchen Police Station, and some smaller levels we will need to finish the first Disc. We are also working on something special we hope to have ready by this time next year!

Conversation animations which link in with our dialogue system may also be getting a modification to allow for animation sequences to be played alongside and directed by the dialogue. This will let us present our dialogue similarly to Fear Effect, with unique and beautifully animated cutscenes.

I want to thank the entire team for their work on the project this year. They have all been amazing and have gone above and beyond for Dead Heat; something I will not forget in the new year. 

Thank you all for reading this devlog. We hope updates to DH will be more frequent than they have been this year, and we can keep in touch more with the fanbase.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.