ONScripter-EN

           An enhanced portable open-source NScripter clone


  HISTORY

Naoki Takahashi's `NScripter' is a popular Japanese game engine used
for both commercial and free visual novels.  It attained popularity
due to its liberal terms of use and relative simplicity.  However, it
is closed source software and only available for Windows.

A number of cross-platform clones exist, and Ogapee's `ONScripter' is
the most popular of these.  Due to the ease with which it can be
modified to support languages other than Japanese, ONScripter has been
adopted by the visual novel localisation community as the engine of
choice for translated NScripter games; the patch to support English
even made it into the main ONScripter source code.

Nevertheless, the English-language community has found it convenient
to maintain its own branch of the code, and to enhance it in ways best
suited to the use we make of it.

ONScripter-EN is that branch.


  PLAYING GAMES

Playing an existing game with ONScripter-EN requires two additional
files to be added to the game directory:

- `default.ttf', a TrueType font.  The free font Sazanami Gothic is
  known to work.

- Optionally, `game.id', a text file containing simply the name of the
  game.  This is used to identify a separate directory where saved
  data is stored; unlike the original ONScripter, which places saved
  games in the game directory, ONScripter-EN does not require games to
  be kept in a world-writable location.

- Optionally, `ons.cfg', a text file that allows you to set command-line
  options without having to use the command line.

This done, the game can be played either by dropping the `onscripter'
executable into the game directory and running it, or by running it
with the `-r' command-line option to identify the desired game.

The saved game location behaviour can be overridden with the `-s'
command-line option if you wish for some reason to restore the default
ONScripter behaviour or to place saves somewhere else.

Please run `onscripter --help' for details of other command-line
options.  (Note that on Windows systems, these details and all other
console output will be placed in files `stdout.txt' and `stderr.txt'
in the folder %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\ONScripter-EN.)


  PACKAGING GAMES

ONScripter-EN includes some features designed to make packaging new
games or translations in a platform-appropriate fashion easier and
neater.

Firstly, `game.id' can be replaced by a line

  ;gameid Your Title Here

at the start of the script, or immediately after the modeline if
present.

Secondly, the saved-game location behavior described above means that
you do not have to worry about installing to a world-writable
location; this should simplify matters considerably on Vista and on
Unix-type platforms.

In the latter case, the recommended approach is to store game data
somewhere appropriate (e.g. /usr/local/share/<title>) and to create a
shell script in an appropriate place (e.g. /usr/local/bin/<title>)
that launches the onscripter executable with a suitable argument to
-r.  Since there is no convenient way to distribute binaries that will
work even on multiple Linux distributions, let alone other Unix
platforms, it is recommended that packages instead depend on the user
supplying a separate ONScripter-EN binary, either built from source or
from an OS/distro-specific package.

MacOS X is an exception to all this, as it's only Unix from the waist
down.  OS X applications are typically distributed as bundles, and
ONScripter-EN includes special code to make this possible for
NScripter games.  Simply place the files that would normally go in the
game directory (script, data archives, default.ttf, etc) in
$GAME.app/Contents/Resources, and everything should Just Work; you'll
have a native-looking OS X game that can be drag-installed and deleted
to uninstall.  (Well, you'll have to fiddle with plists and add an
icon and so on, but that's all standard OS X development stuff.)


  BUILD REQUIREMENTS

ONScripter is based on SDL, and should run on any platform for which
SDL is available.  The original version has been successfully compiled
on platforms as diverse as the Dreamcast, the PSP, and the iPod.

ONScripter-EN has slightly more strict requirements, however.  Since
ONScripter's original build system is extremely difficult to use
(requiring the creation of a custom makefile for every minor platform
variation), it has been replaced in this branch with a more
conventional configure-build system; this depends on a POSIX-like
environment with GNU make.  The code has been tested primarily with
the GNU C++ compiler; Intel C++ 10 has also been tried successfully.

Mion's build/test environment is MinGW on Windows XP (i386), with Roto
providing build/test environments for Mac OS X, GNU/Linux (i386),
and GNU/Linux (x86_64).  Assuming standard build tools are
installed, the full-source distribution is likely to compile
out-of-the-box or with only minimal changes on these and any other
POSIX-conformant platform.  You may need to tweak the final link line
if using static libraries -- see the configure script for examples of
incantations that work on FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris.

Building on Windows requires the MinGW distribution of g++, and the
MSYS environment.  Windows users unfamiliar with the GNU build
environment might prefer to stick with the binary distribution,
which should work everywhere.

Please see INSTALL in the source distribution for specific build
instructions.


  LOCALIZATION

While ONScripter proper, and previous versions of ONScripter-EN,
require English or Japanese settings to be selected at compile-time,
this version can be run in both English and Japanese modes.

In Japanese mode, numbers are printed using full-width characters,
and line-breaking decisions are based on Japanese rules
(breaks are allowed in the middle of words, but not before or after
certain special characters).

In English mode, numbers are printed using half-width characters,
and line-breaking decisions are based on English rules
(breaks are only allowed between words).

You can select a mode within a script by using the commands
  language english
and
  language japanese

It is recommended that you just set the language once at startup, but
you can switch between them during the game if you need to.

You can also use the command-line option "--english" or "--japanese"
to specify the default mode.

The default system-menu messages are in English, but you can set them to
Japanese with the command-line option "--japanese-menu", or you can have
option "--english-menu" to definitively use English messages.


  CONTACT INFORMATION

The author of ONScripter itself is Ogapee, who can be reached by email
at the address

  ogapee@aqua.dti2.ne.jp

The maintainer of this branch (as of July 2009) is "Uncle" Mion Sonozaki,
who can be reached by email at

  UncleMion@gmail.com

The previous maintainer of ONScripter-EN, Haeleth, may be reached
by email at the address

  haeleth@haeleth.net

Correspondence regarding issues related to ONScripter-EN should be
directed to Uncle Mion, as it contains a number of customizations
that have nothing to do with Ogapee, and Haeleth is no longer
actively maintaining ONScripter-EN.

You may also visit the project site for ONScripter-EN at
<http://unclemion.com/dev/projects/onscripter-en> to report issues
and find the latest releases.


  LICENSE

ONScripter and ONScripter-EN are distributed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License.  See COPYING for details.