Weekly report. "Nanomachines, son” edition.

Hello, guys! It was a pretty tough week, let's check out the main points:

Tech-wise, I spent most of my time expanding the crafting system beyond the scope of the first release. All tech will be divided into 3 quality “tiers”. The first one will be close to modern manufacturing capabilities while the third one uses nanites to enhance gear’s capabilities. Senator would be proud ^^

Some of you may be alarmed by nanites based on other games like MGS: Revengeance. Indeed, these tiny bots made magic real there. In Ouro’s case, it’s like first steps towards the real miracles like you can see in MGS. Almost no direct organic-nanite interaction, non-organic uses based on existing prototypes and ideas. As an example, check out integrity sustain module’s description from the game: 

Guided by danger detection sensors, integrity response nanites help mitigate threats by providing an automated, immediate application of sealants to any detected impact, pressure or fracture points on surfaces they “patrol”. 

While you probably won’t be surprised by a monster girl conjuring a fireball in a fantasy game, I try to use close to an immediate future designs as a base for Ouro’s tech. 

Closer to Ouro’s late game, players will be able to make their own implants using lab equipment based on their playstyle and decisions prior to that point. Ultimately, these will improve your favorite stats and will be a final polish on your playstyle.

As for the eyecandy bits, I started updating Patreon page with fresh decorative elements for Ouro’s release. You can check out an example of an animated plate for ”Magus” tier to get the idea of what I’m talking about. At least 2 more tiers will get similar decor. What do you think?

There’s also a troubling bit of news about the animation. Both I and the artist who worked on the second (Cherry’s scene) encountered weird glitches with our respective animation projects. In my case, some of the graphical layers vanished after a successful and uninterrupted save process.

The artist reported an even weirder situation where the project refused to load up for animation until she reduced the animation detail level by deleting movement parameters. One can only imagine how fun it is to delete your work only to redo it again.

So far, I can’t pinpoint the cause of such strange behavior. As far as the official site goes, we are using the last version of Live2D v3. Their FAQs don’t have anything on this, and the support looks as puzzled as I am. These issues happen randomly with no obvious logic behind and no correlation with time spent working on the project. 

For now, it’s a mystery. Not casting doom & gloom but I decided to share this with you since it can affect scene preparation time. Just like it happened in the case with the second scene.

As always, stay tuned for upcoming updates and previews!