Ori, Ochi, Onoe.

[DaFool]

Nice

hir, thank you so much for taking the time to trackback and clarify your comments, this was a much welcome surprise.

I'm pretty sure most of us are considering porting games to Japanese, in fact I think a few are being developed with JP localization in mind.

Now I think I know what strengths we can develop for the English Visual Novel community. After all, most VN players are bishoujo gamers, so it just makes sense to tap into that community.

* anime-style with very complete likeness to current bishoujo games
* making the stories the best they can be, so they can truly be classified as literature.

[mrsulu]

Mikey, you made a good thing here. Your works always remind me of the original hypertext novels, like Michael Joyce's "Afternoon". (I still have an aging copy of that on my shelf in 3.5" format.)

http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Afternoon.html

(Eastgate is a very interesting publisher for someone like you.)

The art is stellar, the music engaging and really well-used, and the tech so solid it reminds me that my stuff has to start getting more attractive. The story feels like a Hitchcock tale, only with more emphasis on love and less on Jimmy Stewart in a wheelchair. Your narrative tricks are electronic William Faulkner-y.

And, like others have said before me, I recognized situations and emotions here from my own life.

My only important critique is that your script here is...really wordy. Reading this makes me think if you had done maybe a 10-15% reduction you would have been able to give your game more impact. Just tightening dialog (like Y's conversation with Onoe about grocery stores---one line would have done where there were many) can help, or depend on your art more (the description of Y's new apartment was sort of extraneous since we saw the exterior and interior of it).

Anyway, sorry about the wordy digression on wordiness. This VN is a clearly a quantum leap for both the community here and for you. I played it MUCH later than I should have and am all sleepy today!

[mikey]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm also glad that even though this game has our highest "production values", you can still identify it as an ATP game. Interesting link... I should finally try to read a book again anyway. Though I don't know about publishing. I once thought that it may feel great to get something like that published, but now I've kind of given up on it.

Wordiness, that may be true, that specific conversation you mentioned I included to show that with Onoe, Yoshiyuki is always in a non-spectacular position, and that he most enjoys (and remembers) their simple conversations. But you're right, the intro could have been a lot shorter and it probably wouldn't hurt the game. Of course, if you look at the dev pictures (the last set of unlockables in the gallery), there were a lot of explanations underlined with maps and map zooms in the first draft, the first tests which weren't in Ren'Py had a sort of free-walk intro, you were going to Shinrin by yourself, without any help, just clicking on direction arrows and so. And after that was scrapped, some of the legacy script stayed - I probably could have rewritten that part... but I didn't. And now it's too late.

[monele]

I'm *finally* taking some time to replay through O3. Arg, dreaded 7th ending (3 times dammit XDDD). Anyway, I just noticed something a bit strange, Ren'Py related : I activated the auto skip with Tab. And when I reached unseen lines, instead of displaying characters one by one, as per my text speed setting, it displayed them screen by screen. I noticed FFWD was still engaged and when I pressed Tab again, it went back to normal.
Is this intended behaviour ?

[PyTom]

It was a behavior I hadn't considered before. I've modified Ren'Py so that unseen text is displayed slowly, when Ren'Py is skipping only seen text.

[Langknow]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to VN . The first time I went to Ren'Py was through a link through google, from a site that had a list of game making software.

My first exposure to VN was Planetarian, the trial version.

I just completed ending number 6, then one with Ori.

I just have to say that your Ori, Ochi, Onoe has inspired me to make my own VN.

It was a very great experience.

[Langknow]

Actually, I meant I got the ending with Onoe, the girl that the main protagonist works with on the first try.

Hi,

I'm fairly new to VN . The first time I went to Ren'Py was through a link through google, from a site that had a list of game making software.

My first exposure to VN was Planetarian, the trial version.

I just completed ending number 6, then one with Ori.

I just have to say that your Ori, Ochi, Onoe has inspired me to make my own VN.

It was a very great experience.

[mikey]

I just completed ending number 6, then one with Ori.
Actually, I meant I got the ending with Onoe, the girl that the main protagonist works with on the first try.

Hmmm, Ending 6 "Return To Mizukagami City" is the ending with Onoe.

One more thing, have you reached Part II? That's the part that takes place after the date with Ori or the party with Onoe. Onoe's good ending ends "only" in 2/3 of the game. Oh well, it doesn't matter, thanks for playing, I'm happy you liked it.

And welcome to the forums!

[langknow]

Hi,

I've read this whole discussion for ways to get to Part II, but haven't found it.

Can somebody show me the way to Part II,

Thanks,

Langknow

[Guest]

Hi,

I just finished ending 4 and got the complete ending.

I had a feeling that Ori was Ochi, especially when you went into the past and saw that Ori was crying and scraching her eyes.

When I got to part II when Ochi started the whole drama. My feelings towards her is this:

Wow, she is totally messed up. I think Yoshikuya could have had a choice of , go in to therapy, because I believe he needed therapy and so did Ochi. Talk about the emotional abuse that he had to endure all those years.

Because it was 7 years, I could believe that he acted that way. And the part about the strawberries, that made me so angry, I would have yelled at Ochi for being crazy, thats just horrifying and sad and crazy.

I just couldn't believe the way that Yoshikuya acted. I think the he acted that way because of the abuse that Ochi gave him for 7 years. Ochi just seems to be a spoil b*&*&.

What if Ochi was ugly and had an ugly body? Would Yoshikuya endure that pain for 7 years?

Probably not.

Anyways, I really like this Visual Novel , my second one. I just love stuff that puts you on an emotional ride. This reminds me of Kimi Ga Nozuma Eien anime, specifically the main character in the anime, very similar to Yoshikuya.

- Langknow

(Edited by PyTom, as per mikey's request.)

[mikey]

Thanks for playing. It's always nice to see that the the game has somehow had an emotional impact - often the only valid emotion is sadness or despair, but a lot of people found the whole Yoshiyuki-Ochi relationship very frustrating, and that's also an emotion, IMO.

Anyway, back on topic, I'm happy that the strawberry scene had that effect. When we started discussing what CGs were to be made for the game, I only had this single one as a true requirement. It turned out to be more afterwards, but then again, the game as such has changed in terms of production effort later on.

What if Ochi was ugly and had an ugly body? Would Yoshikuya endure that pain for 7 years?

Their relationship was based a lot on physical attraction, so I'd say no. Although I'd probably phrase it "unattractive for Yoshiyuki" - ugly is somewhat subjective. But of course, this has a lot to do with the point of the story, attraction and love.

I had a feeling that ...

Maybe the admin can put this into spoiler quotes? It's really a big one, and it's not possible to edit posts when you're not registered

But, congratulations on the observation! I put one or two more hints into the script, such as the library opening hours, but this one was probably the most direct.

[Tom Bombadil]

Downloading. ^_^

*looks at progress bar*

*Slowly* downloading. ;;>_>

[Foton]

OMG

I daresay this is a pro production. The music, the blur, the color tone, the mood...


...perfect.

I just can't get the easter eggs and the endings other than Redux, Eyes, Mizukagami, and No Subsitute.... T_T


and I must've sucked a lot since I've read the entire thread...

...anyways, kudos to all of the people here.

[musical74]

OK mikey here goes nothing...

Gonna take close to 6 hours but I'm downloading it now. I've been wrestling with whether I should go ahead and DL it - even thoughi t's gonna take 6 hours (curses dialup) - or not...but everyone's saying it's such a wonderful game, I just HAVE to download it...and when it's downloaded, I'll give ya a thorough report of my feelings of it and see if I can find those easter eggs!

[mikey]

Foton >> Thanks a lot for playing, I'm glad you liked it - if you really need something specific, e-mail me or PM, I'll try to help. From the endings you have, it looks like there is an entire third part of the game still ahead (called Part II in the saves). So good luck with it, and with 4/9, and thanks for taking the time to post.

musical 74 >> Wow, thanks for such faith in the game, I hope your download goes smoothly, hopefully you have a dowlnload manager, so everything goes well. I hope it meets the expectations though, there were several critical points made as well, so just take it as any normal game, please.