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

This week has been a particularly busy and interesting week for us. We released our WIP demo last Sunday and have been constantly updating the demo all week to get it into a stable state. In hindsight, we should have waited much longer before releasing the WIP demo, but we wanted to get it out there to stop delaying and get it into your hands as soon as possible.
As of now, the demo is in very bare-bones, but a playable state. There may still be a few bugs that we are yet to find, but we are always updating the demo and fixing any errors we find.

If you find any errors during gameplay, please let us know so we can get to them sooner.
Updates we have made to the demo over the week include major bug fixes to evidence gathering, inspection screens, evidence, and controls.
The update to the controls includes moving the Badge Menu button from the B key to the Tab Key. This would both allow for full use of alphabetic keys for name entry in places such as the Badge Menu, as well as an added benefit to the keyboard control ease as it is closer to the WASD keys than the B key. Though, ultimately, you will be the judge. If you do not like the new Badge key, let us know!
We had some issues with Leon's computer in 0.1 and 0.2. Using the computer was buggy and often trapped the player inside a menu or failed to load the next page properly. We have since been able to get it fully working, providing a safe way to get the email evidence and download Leon's file from T.A.N.D.A using the Q-NET connection.

Once the information input in both the badge and the computer were working. I got to work putting together a new Database menu out of old assets. We don't have the funds to hire a new UI artist right now, so we are working with assets from previous UI artists such as Steve to put together temporary menus.

The Database menu is now in the current build. We will be making alterations to how the menu functions in the future, but the layout will most likely remain the same.

All throughout next week, we will be making changes to the interaction screen for direct movement, moving the icons to the top or bottom of the screen so as not to block any of the environment. We're also experimenting with an optional black cinematic border that could be configured to be either vertical or horizontal to add verticality to each scene. 

These borders will only be available for direct control methods as they may not work well with Point & Click, though we will test it out and see if it is not too disruptive.

We will, of course, keep everyone posted on Twitter as usual. We hope everyone here gives the demo a try. It's still under construction but is in a stable enough place to be playable.
Leave us a message on our itch page if you would like to see something altered, found a bug or would like to see a new feature added.
Thank you for reading our devlog! We hope to see you next time!