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The mighty sorceress, Ogiwara Ryoko, has long been researching a way to make contact with the spirits. She has found two differing methods of doing this. She calls upon her apprentice to gather the materials for both methods. As her apprentice leaves, she finds herself beginning to doubt the wisdom of that action.

With Okiku, Star Apprentice, players take the role of Okiku, a wizards apprentice whose task is to seek out various spell components for her master. However, Okiku is not particularly serious about her job. Or much of anything else, for that matter.


Personal background:
At first, I wanted to have a shooting system in place for possible puzzle-solving shenanigans. After many frustrations in failure, that idea was abandoned. However, I still had a face-set, a character sprite, and maybe I could still do something with them. This is that something.
As something of a forewarning, this is a game whose humor is aimed toward those who find it's kind of humor funny. Just a friendly heads-up.


Other links of interest:
This game's game-thread on RPG Maker Web.

Latest Blog

RTP-less download available!

I've just finished uploading a version of the game that does not require the RTP! Get it via the downloads tab; it's the one labeled "Okiku, Star Apprentice (Full)"!


At least, I THINK it doesn't require the RTP.


Let's back up a bit, and explain things.


While I was making this game, I made a list of which files from the RTP I used. I used that list to copy-paste over files to make this newer download.


However, I can't help but to think that I overlooked something.


Anyway, if anybody gets an error message about missing files from the "full" version, this is the place to let me know about it!


As to who NEEDS the "full" version...


If you have no idea what an "RTP" is, then, you probably want to download the full version!


If you know what it is, but don't have it (or don't want to mess with getting it), then the "full" version is also for you!


Happy gaming!

  • Completed
  • Marrend
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • Adventure
  • 11/30/2013 02:35 PM
  • 08/30/2023 07:49 PM
  • 04/19/2014
  • 151909
  • 26
  • 1696

Posts

Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Oh, hey, it's up! Welcome aboard, potential subscribers/commentators/players!

Now to get myself off my butt enough to have more than just Ryoko's tower...

*Edit:
Also, if these kinds of posts are waaaay too annoying, don't hesitate to leave a comment!

I think it adds flavor, myself, but that's just me!
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I think its cute! :D
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781

Glad to hear it!

In other news, the first town is in the process of being worked on.

It's going a little slow. Like, a building a day, if that.

There's only one building left to make, so there is that. Also, I haven't done a bloody thing with encounters. I want to do something a taaaaad different with creature balance than what I've done in the past, and see if I can't use a similar method in, say,Konae's Investigations.

The idea has crossed my mind to release a small demo with an amusing barrier in front of the first dungeon. Perhaps not as silly as the "But we're right over it" commentary that was in the initial demos ofArbiters From Another World, should one recall that, but, along those lines!
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Finished the demo. It's pretty bare-bones, as you said. But the main character is definitely cute and interesting.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Now on haitus because iiiiit's event time!

Wait. Is that such a good thing?
Hmm i downloaded the demo without reading the comments above first.

So i started exploring what little was out there to explore and well that's about it.

At first i thought i did àoverlook something cuz there weren't any battles.

But now that i actually the comments above i understand the situation.

Too bad there wasn't a first dungeon to explore that kind off ruins the mood!

But the main character looks interesting with little touch of humor in it.


Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Yeah, maybe I should have held off the demo until I had a dungeon? Then again, I don't have any spectacular-awesome scripts going on with battles, and the Wand of Blasting being implemented as a "tool" (think Wild Arms, or Legend of Zelda) fell apart at the seems.

But, hey, thanks for trying this mess!
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Guess what's back in business!


Against my better judgement, I have decided to make another attempt to make the Wand of Blasting a "tool".


I was doing it a bit backwards last time. Concentrating on what would happen when a switch was hit, rather than how a switch would be hit to begin with.


I'll probably start sometime tomorrow on this. Which is totally not coinciding with a certain two-day challenge that Liberty set forth.


And if you believe that last bit, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can sell you.

unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Ba-da-boom! Ba-da-boom! Ba-da-boom!
Good luck!
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
That reminds me! I wanted to make sure my Waiso nomination for best quote of 2013 had the right explanation!


Thanks, unity!
I'm playing the demo 'cuz why not and I have a question: what's the world map theme from? It sounds insanely familiar!
Is it from Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or 4?

Also that Wand of Blasting Mechanic is really cool, though judging from the blog post on it, it sounds really tough to event... I wish you luck in that!

Edit: Also, I really want to see if the Wand of Blasting mechanic can be done properly, so I'm subscribing to this!
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
That overworld map? That's the Heroes 4 dirt theme. I figured I could use it, since, like nobody on RMN seems to play any M&M games of any kind.

Geeze, an I the only person who looks in the Music directory around here? That information is TOTALLY THERE! It's in the file name!

Anyway, I've got it in the back of my head to have an ICE COUNTRY kinda place with "Winter in Lanseal" as it's overland music. I'm not sure what the other place is going to be yet. About getting this bloody Wand to function...

...Darigaaz, was this crazy. Apparently, though...

...you missed the memo that said "Hey, I think I got this working, and you can totally try it out yourself!"
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Cool! A functional blast wand! Congrats! All your hard work payed off :D It goes a bit slow in my opinion, but that's just nitpicking.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I know it can be a bit sluggish, despite the fact that the speed of the bullet is "twice normal". It's also vaguely possible to press the button, turn, and have the bullet go in in a really weird direction, though you have to be pretty fast to see this. I suppose I could have the player's move route pause for, I dunno, 15 frames to correct this?

In any event, I largely suspect that the code for checking things is what's causing the slow-down. I might wanna see what happens when I bump it up to "four times normal".

*Edit:
Making the base speed of the bullet go "four times faster" causes the pausing over the water tiles to be more obvious. Whereas making the base speed of the bullet go "normal", well, the pauses are still observable, but it doesn't seem as bad.

Out of curiosity, I tried it at "half speed". I didn't notice any slow-down over water tiles, but, as one might guess, the bullet is too slow for my liking. There's also the odd possibility of players running into the bullet this way, so this seems like a terrible idea.

So, "normal" it will be!
For, you know, when I upload it next.

First, I want to code in Wand events on the maps that already exist, then map out a dungeon so that players can use the Wand on monsters.

I'm not exactly sure how I want to deal with monsters in respect to the Wand! Part of me wants to initialize a normal combat. Another part says to remove the enemy and have players grant EXP, but grant the least amount of EXP that is awarded for the encounters that are possible in the area.

I welcome any commentary on this, and any other possibilities!
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Did a quick play-test with Ryoko having an Erase Event on her Wand event. Erase Event is usually how I handle removing encounters on a map, so it seemed a logical move to research how the Wand might work on monsters. Should I choose that route. Sure, she was removed, but, there is one small problem!


She still "exists" as a trigger-able event, and the bullet stops in her space.


I'm pretty sure I can use $actions{x}.pop, maybe throw in a "through" flag as part of the move-route, to counter-act this...


Awwww yeeaaaaah!


Ahem. So, now that I figured out how to remove enemies from the map, and allowed the Wand to disregard such events (I needed to know how to do this anyway), the question now becomes what my intentions are.


Maybe I'll post a poll-blog?

I don't know if making it slower is a good idea. See, when I was messing around with it yesterday, I decided to see if I could get myself stuck by going on the bridge and hitting the switch with the wand. So I stood as far away from the switch as possible, launched a little firey orb thing at it with the wand, and ran over onto the bridge (I had already activated the switch once, so the bride was there). The switch got activated while I was on the bridge and the bridge disappeared, leaving me on top of a water tile, unable to move. So I had to restart. That's something that COULD happen to a player (if they were trying to break the game, like me), so y'know, you might want to find a way to fix that.

Edit: You ninja'd me.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Hrm. I guess players CAN get stuck, under certain circumstances, regardless. Since it's possible to move while the bullet moves. I suppose players could use the the Teleport Orb to get out of messes like that, but I should be careful about object placement so that it doesn't happen often, if at all.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Wand update time!

So, I was thinking...

...what if the player, you know, ACTUALLY STOOD STILL while the Wand was doing it's thing?

There may be an issue down the road with monsters running into the player later on, but I was a bit curious about this.

I figured that to prevent players from moving when the bullet moved, I would have to have use a move event on the player and... just use a wait command.

Maybe a bit OBVIOUS, but...

...there was some question as to how long the wait command would have to be.

After a bit of testing, I have come up with 20 frames of wait for each move the bullet does during collision processing ("Look at THIS!", "Look at THAT!", etc), with a 25 frame initial wait period.

There is also a 50 frame wait for the flame at the end, though movement during that period shouldn't be terribly relevant.

I prefer to consider it something of an extra saftey precaution.

With this, I'm fairly confident that I can move out of the training zone (so to speak), and get Wand events in the main game!

When I get around to it. For now...

...I kinda want to step back from this for a bit. A lot has been accomplished in a very brief period of time!

I thank Liberty for that.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Hooray!

*Victory theme tune! *
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
So much for taking a short break from this.


Well, folks, this is it! I've taken out the Wand training grounds map, and put in Wand events on each map that can be accessed.


Before I go terribly hard-core on activating the events that I put in, I want to check to see if the solution I have for Wand events in regards to the Teleport Orb works.


Here goes nothing!


Niiiice!


Okay, that works, and I finished setting up the NPCs to be more interactive. The only thing left to do is map out this mountain pass.


Well, okay. The rest of the game, if you want to be horribly technical about it.


I'm definitely tempted to upload this as-is, but...


...having at least one area with encounters sounds like a better move at this point.


Get yourselves to that blog-poll, peoples!