Jump to content

NScripter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Polarem (talk | contribs) at 04:53, 8 January 2011 (Categorize, link, minor cleanup). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

NScripter is a software engine that is used for the creation of visual novels, written by Naoki Takahashi. Due to its simplicity and its liberal license (while it is not open source, royalty-free commercial use is permitted), it quickly became popular in Japan, and was used for a number of high-profile commercial and dōjin titles, such as HaniHani and Tsukihime.

Clones

Since the original NScripter is only available for Microsoft Windows, a number of clones have been written.

ONScripter

The best-known[citation needed] NScripter clone is the free software implementation ONScripter. It is based on the Simple Directmedia Layer library, and can thus be used to play NScripter games on a number of other platforms, from Mac OS X, Linux, and Dreamcast to handhelds such as the PlayStation Portable and the Apple iPhone.

ONScripter, in turn, has itself also been modified to support English text, and as such has been used in a number of translations, such as the English versions of Narcissu and Tsukihime.

Proportional ONScripter

PONScripter (abbreviation for "Proportional-OnScripter") is a fork of ONScripter. The main feature of this fork is Unicode support, which adds support of many languages.

PONScripter was originally maintained by Peter "Haeleth" Jolly. Since September 2009, the it is maintained by Mion of Sonozaki Futago-tachi, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Visual Novel translation group[1].

Unlike ONScripter, PONScripter successfully support native UTF-8 encoded script files, and there are no requirements to the nature of the fonts used (they need not be TrueType, Japanese, monospaced, etc.), which makes it possible to translate most of NScripter-based visual novels into any language other than English (for example, Cyrillic text in "normal" ONScripter looks broken and may crash the game when calling Backlog).

Also, PONScripter introduces text style tags, including "bold", "italic", "underline", "struck out", string color changing, size, kerning, etc.

WinKiller Studio, an Russian visual novel translation group released Tokoyo no Hoshizora and Natsu no Hi no Resonance translations powered by PONScripter, and unofficial Saya no Uta port from its original Nitro+ Engine.

Known English-translated visual novels that use PONScripter are:

References

  1. ^ Mion releases first alpha build. Checked 2009/09/26
  2. ^ A mini-demo powered by PONScripter was available at Haeleth's Narcissu Side 2nd page, currently removed.
  3. ^ Unofficial port incorporating TLWiki English localisation

Outdated / inactive:

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NScripter&oldid=406626850"