NScripter

NScripter (エヌスクリプター, Enusukuriputā), officially abbreviated as Nscr, also known under its production title Scripter4, is a game engine developed by Naoki Takahashi between 1999 and 2018 functioning with its own script language which facilitates the creation of both visual and sound novels.

Additionally, there are forks available to extend NScripter's capabilities to display characters from another language, run a game on other platforms, etc.

NScripter's development ranged from 1999 to 2018; it was first called by its production title Scripter4 because it was the successor to Scripter3, Naoki Takahashi's previous engine.

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.

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.

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.

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

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'.

Fundamentally, the same licensing terms as NScripter apply, i.e. the engine is free for amateur games and non-commercial works.

Scripter3 (スクリプタースリー, sukuriputāsurī), officially abbreviated as Scr3 is a free proprietary game engine developed by Naoki Takahashi between 1998 and 1999 functioning with its own script language which facilitates the creation of both visual and sound novels.

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.

ONScripter relies on the SDL software library, which makes it compatible with a wide range of platforms.

... 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.

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.

ONScripter-RU is compatible with the following platforms: (alphabetical order) PONScripter is a fork of ONScripter that was previously developed by Uncle "Mion" Sonozaki in 2011, providing proportional font and Unicode support.

It highlights the security that PNaCl technology offers, the user can play without worrying about malware potentially present in a game.

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.

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.

Support and software updates were stopped on 18 October 2004 with version 0.8.24, the author proposed to users to migrate to ONScripter.

Another strong competitor is KiriKiri; this engine is libre, has open source code and was for example chosen by Type-Moon for the production of their game Fate/stay night.