mnakamura

Well, as for me - it *does not* work right now. I can't read my favorite VNs on my iPad / Android phone while commuting. I can't read them on my Macs / Linux boxes either. That alone is enough reason for me.

Yeah, something like that. I have several converters that basically extract all the assets, disassemble the script, convert it and assemble everything back in a JSON-based format. Technically, you end up with a folder that has all the assets in usable formats (i.e. PNG, Ogg/Vorbis, etc) JSON file with a script HTML+JS source of the engine Then you just load that HTML in any browser, in any OS, and voilà. It's easy to translate JSON scripts, I've already been contacted by 2 teams that translate Noratoto and Otoboku using my method. From the legal point of view, obviously, it would be illegal to distribute converted, ready-to-run packages.

Hi there, fellow VN fans, I always had a thought: why do we have so many proprietary and semi-proprietary VN engines? There are *many* defiencies in having a closed source engine (and kinda inaccessible VN content): there are problems with running it on many platforms (like 95% of modern VNs are released for Windows, good luck trying to read them on your Android / iOS device), there are these infamous problems with "Japanese locale required", sooner or later platforms become inaccessible (good luck trying to run some less popular games of Windows 95-98 era - they won't run on modern Windows 7/8/10 in any of the compatibility modes). If one wants to grab text for translation, one has to resort to really ugly API hooking hacks. Etc, etc. So, why not just convert VNs to some easier, more universal, accessible format? I've followed the pattern of ScummVM project (a universal engine that runs adventure games) and thought - why not? There are 2 projects close to what I thought: that is VNDS, which is, unfortunately, dead, and Asenheim, which is, unfortunately, not free/open source and I can't participate in it. Today I'd like to share some of my progress, proof-of-concepts and ideas. I've studied several VN engines, namely: Kirikiri2 (AKA TVP) NScripter BGI (Buriko General Interpreter) Whale Caramelbox SysAdv Ren'Py Tyrano Yuka VNDS Asenheim What do I have now: An understanding of some common baseline capabilities that all these engines have A project of JSON-based format (basically, some metainformation plus an array of simple instructions like "show text", "show graphics", "play sound", etc) A proof-of-concept engine written in HTML5+JavaScript (well, actually CoffeeScript) Most important: some working converters for several games that can be used on original games' data to make a "port" that my engine will be able to run A list of VNs I currently support and working on: Koisuru Shimai no Sextet - https://vndb.org/v13353 (Yuka) Zutto Tsukushite Ageru no! - https://vndb.org/v8439 (Yuka) Moshimo Ashita ga Harenaraba - https://vndb.org/v100 (SysAdv) Sakura Swim Club - https://vndb.org/v18261 (Ren'Py) Edelweiss Eiden Fantasia - https://vndb.org/v2093 (BGI) Koneko Doumei - https://vndb.org/v153 (BGI) Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart - https://vndb.org/v18148 (Whale) Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru - https://vndb.org/v195 (Caramelbox) Here's how it looks like: A few nice things that I already have is full customizability (like using any skin for every VN for UI), support for multiple simultaneous languages (like showing original Japanese + English translation for the sake of learning Japanese from it), support for annotated Japanese (i.e. adding furigana and/or hovering tooltips with word translations), etc. It's very easy to run HTML5 engine on Android and iOS (tried both), thus enabling one to enjoy reading VNs on the go. I want to ask if anyone would be interested to take a look and possibly join me in developing / using such a concept? I'm almost ready to publish it all as open source software - actually, I just need a good name for the engine Any ideas? If anyone wants to try translating any of mentioned games using my engine - please contact me too. Anyone who wants to participate in any way (i.e. checking out demos, porting more games, playtesting, etc) - also feel free to contact. UPDATE: The engine is released in public and available to download at https://github.com/mnakamura1337/mikan_engine

There's no universal way to extract scripts from an arbitrary engine: assets (including the script files) could be compressed, obfuscated, encrypted, etc. One usually has to deal with it on per-game basis. Usually it's not very hard, but requires some basic computing skills. There's an excellent tool named Kaitai Struct which can be used to aid reverse engineering of both container files and script files. I'm currently extensively using it to investigate formats of many visual novels. Feel free to ask me to get down to a particular VN, if you'd like a script from that.