Oracle of Tao, 5th time's the charm? Options

[bulmabriefs144]

Game Title and Platform - Oracle of Tao, Rpg2003
Story and or Introduction - The game is set on a post-apocalyptic version of Earth. Just a heads-up, there are heavy religious overtones but it's sorta non-traditional (the major religions of this New Earth are Taoism, Miroku Buddhism (Miroku was the end-times Buddha), and a strange merged religion called Aiken). Most of the other religions had their members mysteriously disappear one night. The being believed behind the disappearance was an escape demon named Belial. God (who in this game suspiciously resembles a floating Triforce) saved the world by splitting it into existence and nothingness, or the New Earth and the Void. He then used angels to seal away the demon in a puzzle box (yea kinda cliche, but it works) so the New Earth could continue on as before. (Why didn't he simply destroy evil? Well, as the game is heavily Taoist, it would destroy balance to allow angels to act against their own kind, even on a fallen member) Millennia later, a young beggar girl who can't remember her real parents, is chosen to be the Oracle of Tao. But as is explained in some history books, the First Oracle also completed his training, but went strangely missing before he could confront Belial the first time.

Character Details -
Ambrosia Brahmin, the main character, is a spunky, somewhat hot-tempered, blue-haired beggar who gets her big break when she becomes part of the prophecy of the Oracle. She can't remember her real parents, as she was adopted by a wealthy family then had an extremely bad run of luck when they died, and on her journey will doubtless find out some shocking things about herself and the world she lives in. Nevras Fitzembor (don't ask me to spell it, I alternated between Fitzxembor and Fitzembor), is a rather metrosexual (but still very much into women) and slightly indecisive prince who undertook military training and somehow came out of it less assertive than before. Aqorm Flowless is a half-elf thief who rebelled against her parents to be a street musician (her parents are pretty weird too, but that's largely GamePlus). Next is a Elias, a shaman who practically grew up in a library (and it shows). Then there's Anideshi, a druid, who has a strange reincarnation cycle joined to another character, Azrael, the party's resident exorcist. Also, there's Yazim Jianne, a formerly-evil wizard who was helping to unchain the demon Belial. The other characters are not fully fleshed-out (largely because I'm either not done with them, or their plots come in GamePlus), but their names and titles are Michael (THAT Michael), a demon named Michael, and our GamePlus only character, Tamashii (I won't tell you who she is, as it's a pretty big spoiler) who is the party's Soulfire, sort of psychic/healer/pyrokineticist rolled into one.

Screen Shots -






Features -
A Seasons, Day/Night, and Time System (complete with a calendar). A Weather system, Banks (with multiple accounts), and alot of other functions. A Party Change system. A pretty big cast (about 9+ characters), and a Love system for alot of them (not finished yet, but programmed for the protagonist). About three endings, a Game Plus, and a final ending for the GamePlus (not totally done yet).

Download - Ummm, I'm usually in the habit of deleting and renewing the link, so I'll link instead to the download page:

RPGRevolution Download Page

Progress estimate - The patch number says it (0.48 is roughly 48%)
Gameplay Time - It's pretty long (anywhere from 8+ hours I'd say, I couldn't do it in one sitting, because the game actually requires some grind)
Known Errors - There are some unfinished sections of the game, the Trigrams command may occasionally auto-cast (that one I'm not fixing, as it involves hundreds of monsters and I've tried fixing it four times, so I figured an out with the glitch, just cancel to the main menu and then go to the attack mode again), and there are crufty parts (both in the code and some of the facesets, as there are old and new parts). There are some facesets errors since I had old and new facesets, and in some areas forgot to update for awhile. Also, there's probably some lag, as there's alot of code. Oh yea, and status effects don't work the same way for your party as they do for enemies (the worst example of this is that apparently you can't have enemies with Reflect on them, because it causes a sharing error. But you also have instances where the game is over if none of your party can move, but these rules don't apply to enemies).


Credits - I mainly was the only one working on this, but I borrowed pictures from alot of sources, and two games. Lemme see...
Lotsa music from vgmusic.com, along with several theme midis from movies and TV shows from various sites. I got alot of graphics from Charas Project resources. I think I may have also taken some graphics from other games , when I couldn't find them elsewhere, but most of them I probably can't keep straight from the other stuff (Azrael's Final Fantasy monsters and Badluck's AraFell puzzle graphics are the only ones that spring to mind, and I'm currently writing them into credits). I also got a Zelda rtp by download which looks suspiciously the same as the one Xfixium used in Zelda: Links Awakening, although I didn't get it from him (unless he made the rtp, so I'll credit him too). Some of this stuff actually was my work, such as the realistic looking pictures in the background section (which were actually converted photos) but these were made using the program Fireworks. I think I covered almost everything I could think of.

This post has been edited by bulmabriefs144: Mar 9 2011, 09:14 AM

[bulmabriefs144]

Done with voice acting for first game (and pretty much everything else). Now for the second game, working on the puzzle maps.

...Of course. No sooner do I submit a "finished" game, and test it, than I find out half the code conflicts with other code. In terms of plot and events, this is done, but in terms of bug testing, it's still far from what I'm proud of.

This post has been edited by bulmabriefs144: Jan 27 2012, 09:36 AM