Characteristics

The script is executed by the engine in an interpreter. The syntax is very simple, similar to the BASIC language. The functions needed to create visual novels and sound novels, such as displaying text, sprites and CG, playing music and handling choices, are built into the engine as a basic API. As a result, game creation is simplified by the ability to write a script that calls these functions directly.

In order to meet specific needs, it is possible to use a method called 'system customisation' which modifies the behaviour of the engine itself in order to add features such as a save system, complex effects not provided in the basic API, or video management. To do this, external DLLs can be used. These functions can be used to create simulation games, etc.

On the other hand, before version 2.92, object-oriented elements were not incorporated into the software and NScripter did not handle parallelism at all. The defsub statement was used to try to do structured programming within NScripter. Overall, NScripter specialises in the development of visual novels and sound novels, and the creation of these types of games is simplified.

In version 2.82, NScripter was given support for 1-byte characters - this allows writing in the core Latin alphabet and the English alphabet for English locutors.

Extension via Lua

Since version 2.93 released in 1 April 2009, it is possible to extend the capabilities of NScripter by using Lua.

Lua is implemented as a DLL and is launched by NScripter itself. It is possible to call any function of this language from a conventional NScripter script and call an NScripter function on the Lua side which allows to transfer almost completely the game script itself to Lua. In addition to complex numerical operations that were not possible with conventional NScripter, this language provides full functionality typical of script languages such as file operations, block scoping, array methods and module libraries. Lua allows NScripter to support parallelism, which now makes it possible to manipulate every element of the game simultaneously and in parallel; for example, when an animation is played, NScripter does nothing else at the same time. This language greatly improves and simplifies the description of the various extensions, which were previously done using a method called 'system customisation', and offers the possibility to modify the behaviour of the engine itself, for example to change the behaviour at the end of the game. However, the use of Lua is not mandatory and the old system customisation method is still available.

Documentation

NScripter has official documentation in electronic format and four official books dating from 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively. The books are now only available as second hand copies. There are also unofficial electronic documentations like senzogawa's.

License

Regarding the license, non-commercial use of the software is allowed, any non-commercial game can then be distributed without paying a royalty.

In 2013, the terms of use were simplified and participants in games and other contests can now use the software free of charge, regardless of whether they receive a cash prize and regardless of the form of distribution of the winning work. In addition, as long as they are distributed for free, they can be used regardless of the distinction between business and individual users and the method of distribution. Even if a work is included in a magazine supplement as freeware or shareware, it can be used for free.

However, in order to sell a work commercially, a royalty must be paid once a game is rated by a rating body such as the EOCS. Even in the case of amateur games and open source software/games, once a royalty reaches 400 000 yen or more, it will be treated as a commercial work and will be taken care of if there are any problems with the engine. In this case, if the developer wants to add a feature - such as an extension or obfuscation treatment for each work - it will be taken care of as part of the royalty.

It is possible to negotiate or even not pay the fee; NScripter's developer is especially supportive of game developers who are not looking to make a profit and those who are struggling to do so because of the royalty.

Creating a DLL extension and redistributing it under the GPL is disallowed, however the LGPL is considered acceptable.

Popularity

This engine was very popular in Japan in the 2000s due to its simplicity and because it was free for amateur video game creators.

Examples of scripts

The following examples use ONScripter-EN's variant of the NScript script language.

Simple script

This simple script defines some basic parameters and displays a text.

Script

Result with French-language text.

;mode800
;Defines the game resolution to 800x600 pixels. ';' is necessary and must be the first line of the script file.
;gameid Example
;Defines the game name for the engine to for example name save data. ';' is necessary and must be the second line of the script file.

*define ;Block defining the game parameters. Must be named '*define'.

caption "Example" ;Name of the graphical window
versionstr "Example"," version 1.0-en" ;Defines the string of text used to describe the game version in the About menu.

savename `Save`,`Load`,`File ` ;Defines the titles of the save and load menus as well as the text string designating a save file in
;the right-click menu - the default one being the Japanese 'しおり' - to change or translate it, here changed to « File ».
savenumber 15 ;Defines the maximum saves number.
rmenu `Save`,save,`Load`,load,`Erase window`,windowerase,`Quit`,end ;Names the buttons of the menu appearing when the user right-clicks.

game ;Closes the block defining all of the game parameters and begins the game.

*start ;Block defining the game content.

`An example text...@ then a text that appears after user interaction.\ And finally another page of text.\
;An example text. The character '`' is used to use one-byte characters (sufficient for the core Latin alphabet and the English alphabet, but not sufficient for Japanese characters).
;'@' and '\' expect user interaction. '@' scrolls the rest of the text after interaction while '\' deletes the current text
;and moves to the next line if the line is finished. There is no need for a space after the '`'. Reads any character after the command including comments.

end ;Exits from the game.

Script with choice and background image

Any visual novel that is not linear or called 'kinetic novel' has choices. This script also contains the instructions used to display a background image and, in addition to that, with a fade-in effect per pixel.

Script

Result with French-language text.

[…] (see the *define block from the previous example)
/!\ Code line added to the define block *define /!\
effect 2,10,1000 ;Defines effect number 2 (effects 0 and 1 are reserved for not displaying a transition), which is a fade-in per pixel.
;As defined here, the effect comes from the tenth set of effects included in the engine and lasts 1000 milliseconds, i.e. 1 second.

game ;Closes the block defining all of the game parameters and begins the game.

*start ;Block defining the game content.

bg "background-image.png",2 ;Transition to make 'background-image.png' appear with the effect number 2.

`[Character 1]
`So...@ do you prefer reading or watching films?@
;An example text. The character '`' is used to use one-byte characters (sufficient for the core Latin alphabet and the English alphabet, but not sufficient for Japanese characters).
;'@' and '\' expect user interaction. '@' scrolls the rest of the text after interaction while '\' deletes the current text
;and moves to the next line if the line is finished. There is no need for a space after the '`'. Reads any character after the command including comments.

br ;Line break to make space between the choices and the question

select "Reading", *choice1, "Watching films", *choice2 ;Displays 2 possibles choices

*choice1 ;Block initiated if the player makes choice number 1
`[Character 2]
`I prefer reading.@
`[Character 1]
`Me too! What's your favourite book?@
br ;Line break
`And the conversation went on for another 2-3 hours...\
end ;Exits from the game.

*choix2 ;Block initiated if the player makes choice number 2
`[Character 2]
`I prefer watching films.@
`[Character 1]
`Me too! What's your favourite film?@
br ;Line break
`And the conversation went on for another 2-3 hours...\
end ;Exits from the game.

Notable games using NScripter

Most of the games running on NScripter are amateur video games, so few NScripter games are notable. Most of the notable games below are commercial games and therefore commercial successes.

• Tsukihime; although Type-Moon used NScripter for Tsukihime, the company later switched to KiriKiri for their next game, Fate/stay night.
• 07th Expansion's sound novels - the When They Cry series, etc.; many people discovered NScripter and its derivatives through the 07th Expansion games, including many amateur translators.
• The Narcissu series; the Narcissu series is probably the most popular free kinetic novels series running on NScripter.

Development and release

In September 2009, the prototype version of the engine was released under the name Sunday Game Engine. Since then, development has continued and the official beta version of the engine was made available on 31 August 2012.

Characteristics

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User's guide

As of June 2022, NScripter2 was still at the stage where only the engine itself and minimal documentation have been released. The developer intended to update and simplify it but the engine has not been updated since 2017.

Syntax

The syntax differs from NScripter although it is still inspired by the BASIC language - more precisely Visual Basic and QuickBasic - ; for example, the functions no longer start with an asterisk (*) but with an at symbol (@), the beginning function is no longer '*define' but '@start' and, another example, in order to be more coherent with Lua, the command to leave the program is no longer 'end' - the command that ends an 'if' condition in Lua - as it is in BASIC but 'quit'.

There is an unofficial extension for the libre text editor Atom that facilitates the development of scripts for NScripter2.

License

Fundamentally, the same licensing terms as NScripter apply, i.e. the engine is free for amateur games and non-commercial works. It is possible to use NScripter2 to develop commercial works, but a royalty must be paid.

Characteristics

Scripter3 reads script files in plain text format with Shift-JIS encoding and TXT extension, the engine will read in order first the 0.txt file up to the 99.txt file, but can also read obfuscated scripts with .scp extension - equivalent to nscript.dat for NScripter -; priority is however given to plain text files. It is possible to display characters from the core Latin alphabet and the English alphabet, or misc. characters such as French quotation marks, but these must be full-width characters.

Scripter3 handles the text but does not handle the rest of the graphic part of the text boxes, which is essential for any visual novel to establish a contrast between decor and text. Developers have to incorporate the text box graphics directly into each background image, so there is often a copy of a background image without a text box and another with one. As a result, if the player right-clicks to hide the text, the text box remains displayed, because it is integrated into the background image.

The engine is able to read audio CDs, this allowed especially the creators of amateur video games to read audio CDs of other productions, often commercial, for example for parodies, etc.

Its successor, NScripter, has kept more or less the same instructions, so the two engines are relatively compatible with each other; for example, some instructions remain unchanged like the text instructions such as @, \, etc., we also find in both engines the *start label, the caption instruction, etc., while some instructions change like the bp command which is renamed to background in NScripter.

Popularity

Scripter3 was very popular during the years when Naoki Takahashi was still developing it, however, the engine has almost disappeared from the Internet and everything related to it is now only available on archive websites. Many users assisted each other on the official forum, the developer himself was present, watching day after day as his program became popular. According to the little information still online, when Scripter3 was in its golden age, it was more popular than the competing engine KiriKiri. After the last version of Scripter3 was released on 27 November 1999 and the developer recommended to switch to NScripter, the community behind Scripter3 switched to NScripter, which was available since 6 September 1999.

ONScripter

ONScripter's Logo.

ONScripter Snake clone.

ONScripter is a libre software developed to be a free and compatible equivalent of NScripter. It has been developed by Studio O.G.A. since 6 February 2002 and its latest version was released on 16 August 2022. Although ONScripter can display single-byte characters for writing with the core Latin alphabet and the English alphabet, there are still many bugs; empty or incomplete lookback mode, etc. These problems have not been fixed. These problems were not fixed because the English-language branch of ONScripter, ONScripter-EN, fixed these problems and was therefore recommended to English-speaking translators. ONScripter relies on the SDL software library, which makes it compatible with a wide range of platforms.

Compatible platforms with ONScripter:

(alphabetical order)

• Android
• Brain (electronic dictionary under Windows CE 6.0)
• Classic Mac OS
• Dreamcast
• FreeBSD
• Linux
• Haiku
• iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)
• iPod (with iPod Linux installed)
• macOS
• NetBSD
• NetWalker (Ubuntu)
• Nintendo 3DS
• Nintendo Switch (the second is a port of ONScripter-EN [backwards compatible with ONScripter] version onscripter-20060724-insani with SDL2)
• OS/2
• PlayStation 3
• PSP (port of the Dreamcast port)
• Solaris
• Wii (port for ONScripter-EN, backwards compatible engine with ONScripter)
• Windows
• Zaurus

There is a Mandarin translation for ONScripter users of the 11 June 2005 English translation of Masato Sagara's 26 March 2002 NScripter documentation. This was started in 2011, abandoned and then resumed and completed in 2015. However, this translation is not considered to be particularly correct. The documentation is available online in both its original form and as blog posts.

ONScripter-EN

ONScripter-EN's logo; this logo comes from a play on words with the diminutive of the engine (ons-en, onsen) and the Japanese hot springs, called onsen in Japanese. This logo is the Japanese pictogram for hot springs (♨).

...

ONScripter-ANSI

ONScripter-ANSI is a fork of ONScripter-EN developed by Andy_Skull in early 2008 providing support for ANSI, which is a misnomer of the Windows-1252 character set. This version is used a lot by translators aiming at languages using the Cyrillic alphabet, it is notably stated that originally the software was mainly intended to be used for an aborted Russian translation of Umineko When They Cry. The last version was released on 10 October 2010, this version seems to be abandoned. ONScripter-ANSI is only available for computers running Windows with at least a 32-bit architecture.

ONScripter-RU

ONScripter-RU is a fork of ONScripter-EN developed from mid-2019 with the aim of supporting the Russian language. The only major use of ONScripter-RU is the 'Umineko PS3 project' - a new high definition PC version based on elements of the PS3 port. The engine is released under the GPLv2 and BSD licenses. ONScripter-RU uses its own engine 'hacks', useful for the previously mentioned project, so it is not compatible with other ONScripter forks. ONScripter-RU's documentation is very incomplete. ONScripter-RU is compatible with the following platforms:

(alphabetical order)

• Android
• GNU/Linux (64-bit) (Debian, Ubuntu [version 4.1 and higher])
• iOS (minimum version 8.0+)
• macOS (minimum version 10.6+)
• Windows (minimum version XP SP3+) (32 bits)

PONScripter

PONScripter is a fork of ONScripter that was previously developed by Uncle "Mion" Sonozaki in 2011, providing proportional font and Unicode support.^[3] This version isn't completely compatible with scripts made for ONScripter-EN, although this was one of the aims for the project. Proper developement has been stalled, being the Sekai Project's fork the most updated fork.^[4]

ONSlaught

Also known by its production title NONS, it is a clone of ONScripter designed by Víctor Manuel 'Helios_VMG' González in early 2009 to replace the latter completely - or at least be an alternative to it - with functionalities such as support for Unicode - UTF-8... - Shift-JIS, some of the functionalities of PONScripter - for example the ability to display text in italics or bold - or the ability to stretch a low-resolution image to full screen without changing the screen resolution itself. The developer has attempted to rapidly increase the portability of compatible games by accepting donations to purchase a PSP, however, this does not appear to have been successful. Although its goal is to be the most widely used NScripter engine, few visual novels designed for NScripter are compatible without some adaptation of the game scripts. The engine is used for the first time for the Spanish amateur translation of Tsukihime.

Like PONScripter and ONScripter-EN, ONSlaught comes with an executable; in these recent versions, however, it is only intended for computers running Windows with at least a 32-bit architecture. It is also provided with an archive containing its source code and the software libraries on which it depends.

After the version of the engine dated 26 November 2011, the project is inactive until July 2021 when the engine was updated.

CCScripter

CCScripter is a clone developed by toveta in M that allows its users to play and develop NScripter games on macOS. Support and software updates were stopped on 18 October 2004 with version 0.8.24, the author proposed to users to migrate to ONScripter.

KScripter

KScripter is a clone inspired by NScripter in ActionScript 3. KScripter can therefore run on any operating system as long as it is compatible with Flash. The extension of the executable of a software or game created with KScripter is therefore .SWF. The engine can interact with the Web via languages such as PHP, Ruby or JavaScript.

Comparison of clone engines

Chinese modified version

A modified version was, for example, used for the Mandarin translation of Narcissu.

Korean modified version

Korean internauts have published a modified version of NScripter 2.96 to support their language.

A modified version was, for example, used for the Korean translation of Higurashi When They Cry.