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Hi! And finally, all pending tasks and missing parts have been completed! Now it’s on to bringing it all together, testing and improving everything as required. First, I’ll be playing through the full game to assess and test if everything’s working as it should, and if anything feels lacking and needs more work. At the same time I’ll start planning out the sound and music design. I’ll also assess what moments need sprucing up with cutscenes like this one:  Then the rest of November will be spent optimizing and polishing the game’s visuals. See you next time! Armaan
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Hi! These past few weeks I’ve spent most of my time creating the diary system and adding notes for it, but the most exciting news are the new speech bubbles!  The biggest complaint with the demo was that at times it was hard to tell who was the speaker of which dialogue, as the old speech bubbles were just boxes on top of multiple characters’ heads. I always wanted to add comic style speech bubbles with arrows pointing to the speakers heads, but I wasn’t sure how to make that work dynamically. The solution was surprisingly simple and only took me a few minutes to implement. All I had to do was make an arrow shaped sprite show up right above the speaking character’s head, disconnected from the dialog box itself. This allows the arrow to follow the character to the edge of the screen while the dialog box remains static - giving it that dynamic look I wanted!  Also updated, the conversation options box’s design. What do you think? Would a more solid, black box with red/ blue color text (like in the speech bubbles) work better? I've also been testing different color combinations for the interaction wheel UI. After a lot of testing and asking for opinions, I've settled on C. What do you think?  Lastly, the diary system. This has probably been one of the most time consuming features of all, but it’s hard to imagine a Detective game without a notepad, right? As a result, this feature has been reduced in scope and is a very simplistic record of the Detective’s observations (rather than a multi-tabbed compendium as planned earlier)  I think it does the job all the same! It’s still a work in progress, and there are some issues to be sorted out still. It’ll also contain the map, which I don’t want to reveal yet :) Another cool feature: A lockpicking minigame!  A couple more UI and diary improvements to come during the rest of the month, and a bit of work on polishing the dialogues.
See you next time! Armaan Hi! These updates have become slightly less frequent, but that’s mostly because development work has me completely absorbed + there’s been a lot of non - show-able work done over the past month. Here’s a shot of one of the new areas from Pineview:  And here’s a wip preview of the diary.  I’m still figuring out the best way to make this feature work!
New NPCs have also been added to populate the new (and old) areas. Some of them will be fully fleshed out characters like the ones in the demo, while others will just speak their thoughts when you walk past them (as seen in the screenshot above) This is something I love from the Witcher games and decided to implement here :) I’ll spend the coming week working on the diary and the rest of the UI. Then it’s a bit more work on fleshing out the town, the npcs and making sure the game is complete - all to be done during October. Then I’ll get on to the polishing phase, adding music and more cinematic transitions and cutscenes! -Armaan Hello! Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve managed to finish up the remaining dialogues and scenes, and the core of the game is now essentially complete! As promised in the last devlog, I’ve since begun work on adding new areas to the town named Pineview. Here’s a glimpse of one of those new areas: Aspen Street!  These areas will also be populated with NPCs to talk to, and will have observable objects that add to the lore, history and myths of Pineview. Another couple of days and the new areas will be finished, after which I’ll begin connecting them to the rest of the game. After that, I’ll work on adding the diary/ journal mechanic and improving the UI! See you next time! -Armaan Hi! Been a LONG time since the last devlog, hasn’t it? After the Indiegogo campaign ended, it took me a while to reorient myself and get back to my old daily schedule of actually developing the game. As mentioned earlier, I shall be moving in with my friends. This is actually great, as the work of game dev can often get lonely and a little maddening when working all alone - so being around should help keep my spirits up as we head into the final months of development! Expect pictures of the new work space! (if it ends up looking good, that is  This isn’t my new bedroom. I don’t live in the 90s. But the game’s characters sure do! Recognize anything? :) During the past weeks, after wrapping up campaign related work, I dived head first into finishing up the remaining scenes so as to bring the core of the game to a 100% completion state. I’ve been able to keep a good pace, and the 100% should be achieved in the next 4-5 days! Then it’s on to the new, exciting parts!  Here’s the updated sprite for fan favorite “Grandpa”!
Exciting parts include - Adding the diary mechanic, improving speech bubbles/ UI (woo!), expanding the town hub “open world” and filling it with life/ NPCs/ dialogs/ things to see, connecting the hub with all the existing scenes so that the player can play through it accordingly. I hope to have this done between Sept-Oct. (Huge trouble if I don’t, so wish me luck!) That’s a lot of extremely important work, after which I shall get on to polishing, adding/ improving cutscenes, weather effects, and trying to bring everything together in a cinematic manner so the whole experience “flows” cohesively. That’s it for this update. Just a few more months to go. Just a little more (hah) work to do! Thanks for coming along on this journey <3 -Armaan  Hey everyone! Exciting news - physical rewards tiers are now available for the Indiegogo campaign! These include stickers, posters, mugs and T-shirts! Check out the campaign here: https://igg.me/at/rainswept/x/19050938 Want to have a chance at getting these for free? Check out this giveaway contest! https://www.destructoid.com/contest-get-swept-up-in-this-rainswept-prize-pack-515994.phtml Hi everyone! I’m really excited to announce that the Indiegogo campaign for Rainswept is now live! Please consider supporting the game by following this link: https://igg.me/at/rainswept/x/19050938 Also, here’s the new trailer: What do you think? Let me know!
Armaan Hi! This week I’ve got something cool to show you - the process that I’ve used for creating a couple of short cutscenes so far for Rainswept. Check it out!  As you can see, the scene is created by animating separate images for the eyes, nose/ eyebrows, face, body and the hands. The process is pretty simple, a lot of fun and also very satisfying! You can see the component parts here:  These are the kind of cinematic and dramatic and moments I want to provide in Rainswept, and I’ll try to add a few more detailed shots of this kind to complement the simplistic style of the rest of the game.
-Armaan Hi there! I decided to record me painting a cloud that'll be used in Rainswept. Also, I love painting clouds. Here's a couple of new screenshots from the game. Can't say much more without giving away spoilers!  Hi! It's been a while since the last devlog, mainly because I've been working on the final scenes of the game. I wouldn't want to show anything related to the climax! Something I can show is the new artwork for the interrogation/ interview room. The original art was basically a conference room being used for interviews, but it didn't suit the atmosphere of the game. It was too... clean, and I wasn't satisfied with it. The perspective type view also didn't fit very well:  You might have read that the game is, in part, inspired by Korean thriller/ murder films, the biggest influence being Memories of Murders (which is also my all time favorite film) One of the things these films have influenced is the atmosphere. And I feel the new interrogation room (which is a store room being used for interviews) fits this influence, and the atmosphere of the game a lot better. The color palette is also very inspired by what is usually seen in those films, especially when it comes to scenes in police stations. I'm also happy with how damp, grungy and cluttered it looks.  I feel this blends well with the rest of the art style of the game as well, and I'm quite satisfied with it! You can see a lot of those elements in this shot from the opening minutes of Memories of Murders:  -Armaan
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AuthorHi, I'm Armaan, the creator of Rainswept. On this blog, I post weekly updates about the game's development (or as often as possible!) Archives
September 2020
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