Hello everyone and welcome to our end of week devlog for Dead Heat.

This week and last we worked on giving Sonja's skirt cloth physics, Adding in Lilith as a companion, returning character switching and began preliminary work on Leon's computer.

Last week we didn't have a devlog as we were all swamped with RL work and responsibilities. This is an unfortunate reality of being a games developer, As much as I would love for this to be my full-time job, it simply is not the case and we need to take care of our real world obligations first, as it is with everyone. I would like to thank everyone for being patient with us during times of less content. We appreciate each and every one of you following this project immensely!

This week we have had much more time to work on the project and now have a working version of Sonja's skirt. There are still some things to polish up such as a little bit of clipping on the back and some adjustments to the behavior of the cloth, but it is now responding to how Sonja moves and is already adding so much to every scene she is in.

However, in these scenes we noticed that she just didn't look right without her partner Lilith on hand, so we re-implemented the follower system from the old 2D demo. Now, Lilith will follow Sonja around just like before. However, this time we don't need to worry about depth perception.

With Lilith now following the player, our next challenge was to allow the player to make Lilith take the lead and make a clean swap of control from Sonja to Lilith and back to Sonja from one button. In AC, this was handled by an action list hosted in a new input. The choice of the button was hard, as I wanted a button that is not already being used, but comfortable for the player to reach while using either directional or point and click movement. I chose the left shift button as it would always be within hands reach while comfortably using either arrow keys, WASD keys or the mouse. One tap of the button and you can easily switch characters. After a bit of tweaking, Sonja and Lilith transferred power smoothly, with Sonja now following Lilith.

While working on adding collision detection to the apartment, I decided to begin laying the groundwork for Leon's computer, which will be our next challenge. His computer will hold Emails, settings, a quantum link to the internet and to New York's central quantum computer.
The technology and society in Dead Heat are molded by the needs and mindsets of people who lived during the zombie apocalypse. The computers look bulky and built to last, and their software is designed to be easily repaired and maintained as well, which means it will be simplistic in style but the capabilities of the software inside is more advanced than what we have today.

Though this utilitarian design is slowly fading out. More intricate and stylish features make their way into clothes, computers and buildings.

Our next steps will, of course, be to give Lilith her skin, build Leon's computer, add in animated backgrounds into the apartment, and finish with all collision implementation.

As always, we will keep you all posted on Twitter. Thank you for reading our devlog!

Until next time!