nscripter.insani.org

[gp32]

We have just completed work on our support site for the Japanese industry-standard visual novel engine, NScripter -- this is the engine that powers games like "Mizuiro" and "Tsukihime". We are making available a complete translated command reference, translated documentation for the SDK, the SDK itself, and standalone runtime binaries for Win32, Mac OS X, and x86 Linux. These would be enough for anyone to start making his or her own games with NScripter (or alternatively, translating NScripter-based games); we also plan on adding short tutorials and example scripts later on down the line.

Interested? Check it out here.

[mikey]

Good job! And it's not a demo... Hmmm, the project would really need a test gamelet of some sort, where things would be explained, because then it's going to be a problem for people who don't understand programming/tagging languages and all that.

[gp32]

it's going to be a problem for people who don't understand programming/tagging languages and all that.

Oh, to be sure, that's a strictly secondary concern. I mainly put all this information up to encourage people to translate existing NScripter-based games, and I only posted here because I thought people might be interested in seeing some of the tools that Japanese gamemakers are known to use. I don't expect anyone here to use it ^_^

[gp32]

it's going to be a problem for people who don't understand programming/tagging languages and all that.

Oh, to be sure, that's a strictly secondary concern. I mainly put all this information up to encourage people to translate existing NScripter-based games, and I only posted here because I thought people might be interested in seeing some of the tools that Japanese gamemakers are known to use. I don't expect anyone here to use it ^_^

[rioka]

Indeed. A sample script or at least examples of the tags in use would be much appreciated. The commands look pretty simple and a determined person could probably infer what, where, and how to use all of them but if you want to reach a wider user-base (aside from programmers, that is), examples would be beneficial.

Anyways, NScriptor looks promising and maybe I'll bring out my upcoming game, Shadowfall, with it. =)

[PyTom]

Hm... Is the language defined in the command reference the language that nscripter is intended to be coded in, or is it closer to a dump of the bytecodes used internally? It strikes me that it's probably the latter, as a number of the things seem to be quite low-level to my tastes. (Notably, the math opcodes, the fact that variables are numbered rather than named, and some of the ways that images are handled.)

A funny thing is that Ren'Py

I have to say, the games that insani has translated have been major sources of inspiration for Ren'Py development. (For example, the new ImageDissolve effect class was directly inspired by hanihani.)

[gp32]

Oh no, it's the former. NScripter is very close in many ways to assembly language, which is where it derives both its power and its complexity from. This is why I noted earlier that I would *not* expect anyone here to use NScripter to write his or her own games -- you really have to know what you're doing (but on the other hand, if you *do* know what you're doing, you can synthesize just about any effect you want, you can customize your own text display modes, and do just about anything you've ever seen an visual novel engine do). Again -- I mainly translated the NScripter reference and documentation -- and I work on ONScripter -- to inspire others to start translation projects, not necessarily for others to write their own games using NScripter. For most people, something like Ren'Py or KiriKiri/KAG is going to be a much more logical choice.

[uchuusen]

This looks nice. I've played around with Nscripter for a couple years and it's definitely one of my favorite game engines. Nscripter is a very powerful game engine, but it still runs nicely on my old 200mhz Compaq Presario with Windows 95 (english version, with njwin running).

I haven't used ONscripter, but from what I understand, in addition to emulating Nscripter behavior, it also adds support for Non-Japanese text, which is something I would have liked to have known about before I gave up and just made my own game engine.

But one of my favorite feature of Nscripter (the official release, not ONscripter) is the ability to add functionality to it by using external plugins, in the form of an ordinary Windows DLL, which can be programmed in whatever language you please, just about. Of course with that, I assume that compatibility with ONscripter is lost. On my homepage, wherever it is, i have an example of such a plugin I made some months ago... It was basically an attempt to display English text in the Nscripter (normally it chokes up on single byte characters). I managed to get working okay, but never got to making it support branches ( the 'select' command). I have some other more interesting plugins on my harddrive, but there's just no use for them, I think (who's gonna care about playing music through an FM synthesis emulator.... )

Well sorry for a long pointless post, I just thought I'd add my thoughts on Nscripter here.