Hello everyone and welcome to our end of week devlog.

This will be a rather short devlog since this week has been more about beta testing for the new animated backgrounds. Adventure Creator did not originally support animated backgrounds until Unity 2018.3, however, the support for MovieTexture files was depreciated in Unity 2019. So support was only for a short time before it needed to be reintroduced into 2019.
We hope to have the animated backgrounds in place by next week, but this does give us some extra time to experiment with an alternate background that might work better. One of the advantages of pre-rendered backgrounds is that new backgrounds can be created simply by placing a new camera in the master model.

This was taken from the local untextured model we have in unity, one that we're using for reference for the master model to quickly test new angles.

Had I known how easy it is to move to 3D and pre-rendered fixed camera environments before. I would have made the transition long ago.
That's something I've been thinking about this week. Just how much progress we have made in such a short time thanks to the availability of new tools like Adventure Creator. Remember, Dead Heat just a year ago looked like this.

Now, Dead Heat has grown into something I believed it wouldn't be until we achieved funding.

So how did we get from Detective Fallout to Zombie Blade Runner?

The concept for Dead Heat matured from 2014 to 2016. The original idea for the game was a product of budgetary worries. I originally thought that 3D models were simply out of reach for most indies. This came from advice gained from other active insides at the time and looking at the market on steam. 2D seemed to be the best option. But as development went on, I started to wonder if this was the best direction for the game. I always imagined the game should look and control more like its biggest inspirations. Fear Effect, Resident Evil and Blade Runner. We discovered Adventure Creator in late 2018. And one of the most appealing aspects of the toolkit was its number of foundations for different kinds of adventure games, including 2.5D games. We wanted to move to Unity for more options anyway, and AC would provide a smooth transition from GM. So we took the opportunity to explore the option of moving to 2.5D and seeing the characters in 3D.

We are very lucky that we were able to find a team of talented artists and musicians who have been invaluable in bringing Dead Heat to where we are now. We've jumped light years in terms of visual progress. All thanks to our new team!

Thank you for reading our end of week devlog! We hope to see you next week!