________________________________________________________________________

    Saya no Uta - PONScripter Edition Version 2009/06/10 RC 1


              Original work (c) 2004 NitroPlus. All rights reserved.
             English localisation (c) 2008-2009 TLWiki team. Fansub.
                 PONScripter port (c) 2009 WinKiller Studio. Fansub.
________________________________________________________________________


 1. Introduction
_____________________________

  Hello from Russia!
  
  This patch is exactly what you expect from it to be - a complete
 conversion of Saya no Uta from it's original NitroPlus System engine to
 Proportional ONScripter.

  This work seek three purposes:
  
  * Make Saya no Uta support Unicode charset out of the box
  * Elminate word-wrapping issues of the original English localisation
  * Eventually, make Saya no Uta available for Linux ;)


 2. Novel introduction from TLWiki
_____________________________

  Saya no Uta is a fairy tale about "monsters" and "humans." 

  It is the story of one Sakisaka Fuminori, a man who received the curse
 of perceiving this world and its inhabitants as monstrous; it is the
 story of Saya, the single girl whom Fuminori recognized as human. It is
 a story about how Fuminori lost his humanity and how Saya gained hers.
 But, most importantly, it is a story about love - a love which defiles
 the world.


 3. A word from port project lead
_____________________________

  About half-month ago, Nikita asked me for help with Saya no Uta's
 hacking. The problem was usual - complete lack of 1-byte cyrillic
 symbols support. I honestly answered "it's simplier to port the whole
 VN to PONScripter than forcing the engine to correctly display cyrillic
 symbols".

  Well, I was joking back then. But, nevertheless, the idea of this port
 didn't came spontaneously -- I had some experience in partial port of
 X-Change Alternative (stalled at 15% of script and probably will never
 be completed). But before I could say "no", Nik said he likes the idea
 and wanted to try this port thing.

  We've discussed mostly every step and worked hand-in-hand (nice
 fellow, Nik is responsible for semi-automatic NitroPlus System ->
 PONScripter script converter tool. Without his PHP coding skills this
 work probably would never been completed), tried bunch of combinations,
 messed quite a lot with trial-and-error stuff.

  The more port became stable, the more challenges I met as scripter,
 GUI artist and programmer.

  First of all, since PONScripter is a multiplatform engine, there was
 no built-in configuration GUI. So, I was forced to create my own from
 scratch. But, the most hellish part actually was the "CG Gallery"
 subroutine -- it contains over 900(!) lines of code.

  Since nScripter API\SDK documentation is horribly incomplete, making
 working and feature-rich port was a real challenge. Unfortunately, a
 fancy-prototyped right-click in-game menu didn't worked as expected, so
 it was excluded from the current version (need some help here).

  And so, after 2 weeks of hard work, we're finally happy to present you
 the first public alpha. Regardless the alpha stage, it's playable from
 the beginning till the end.
 
  We hope, you'll enjoy this little masterpiece. :)
  
  WinKi-tyan, 2009/05/17

 P.S. Deep apologies to Mirror-Moon team, since I've borrowed parts of
 their ReadMe.txt from Tsukihime's English localisation.


 4. System Requirements
_____________________________

  PONScripter engine is designed to run on most modern computers today.
 The following is an indicative minimum:

    OS        Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
    CPU       Pentium 2 500MHz
    RAM       128MB
    Video     800x600x32bits
    DirectX   8.1 or higher
    HDD       350MB of free space

  Certain effects used in the game require a faster CPU to be displayed
 correctly, in the range of 1GHz or higher. This game has not been
 tested on Windows Vista.


 5. Installation
_____________________________

  Here comes the most troubling part of this port. ^^||| But, we hope
 you'll be okay somehow.
 
  First of all, you'll need CRASS or ExtractData, or any other tool
 which will be capable of Saya no Uta .pak archives extraction.

  --------. 
  Step 1 /
  ------'

  PLEASE NOTE: You must launch ExtractData either with AppLocale or
 under Japanese locale respectively, otherwise the whole thing WILL be
 broken.
 
  You'll need to extract the following archives, INCLUDING relative
 pathes:
  
  * data.pak
  * image.pak
  * sound.pak
  * voice.pak

  After extraction, you must have the following directory structure:

  Base directory
  + cg
  |-- menu
  |-- mode
  + data
  + mpeg
  + sound
  + voice
  |-- 2
  |-- 3
  ...etc, etc, etc...
  |-- 44
  |-- sys

  --------.
  Step 2 /
  ------'

  Drop all files from the current package into the base directory.
 Overwrite any existant files and directories.

  --------.
  Step 3 /
  ------'
  
  PLEASE NOTE: This step REQUIRES either using of AppLocale or Japanese
 locale. And yes, you must run .bat files under Japanese locale,
 otherwise it will not work.
  
  Execute !sound_rename.bat in order to rename sound files with japanese
 filenames.*
  
  Execute !sprite_rename.bat in order to rename character sprite files
 with japanese filenames.*

  * - See "Known Issues" for details.

  --------.
  Step 4 /
  ------'

  That's it, the installation is now complete. ^_^
  
  You can launch Saya no Uta - PONScripter Edition by clicking the
 "ponscr.exe".


 6. Playing the game
_____________________________

  Due to PONScripter's cross-platform design, the menus as found in the
 original Nitroplus System version of Saya no Uta, will not be available
 in this version. Instead, many of the built-in PONScripter options and
 settings can be accessed by using the keyboard. Here follows a list of
 keyboard shortcuts and their functions:

     Key  | Function
    ------+-------------------------------------------------
      0   | Switch between slow, normal and fast text speed
      1   | Set text speed to slow
      2   | Set text speed to normal
      3   | Set text speed to fast
          |
    h/left| Move the cursor up one option
    l/rght| Move the cursor down one option
    k/up  | Go back one page (log mode)
    j/down| Go forward one page (log mode)
          |
      f   | Switch between window mode and fullscreen mode
      o   | Display each page of text instantly
      s   | Fast-forward through the game until the key is
          |   pressed again
     CTRL | Fast-forward through the game until the key is
          |   released, also skipping all transitions
    ------+-------------------------------------------------

  You can advance the game text by pressing Enter, Space, Keypad Enter
 or the left mouse button. Pressing Escape or the right mouse button
 will display the in-game menu. From here you can save and load games,
 access extra in-game features or quit to the main menu.

  There are only one main route in Saya no Uta with two choice screens
 and three possible endings, so no walkthrough is required.


 7. Known Issues
_____________________________

  The savegames from the original version are not compatible with the
 PONScripter port version, since the engines are completely different.

  Volume control, as well as fadeout effects for background music
 encoded into OGG Vorbis do not work in the current build of
 Proportional ONScripter.

  PONScripter is known to crash if "Hide text window" option is used,
 so currently we didn't included it in the right-click menu.

 * PONScripter can't understand anything except latin names, that's why
 you are forced to rename several files either under Japanese locale
 or with using AppLocale, otherwise the character sprites and sound
 effects will be unavailable.


 8. Credits & contact
_____________________________

  Original game production

    Title: 沙耶の唄 (Saya no Uta; Saya's Song)
    Developer: Nitroplus
    Release Date: December 26th, 2003
    Written and Directed by: Urobuchi Gen
    Character Designs and Artwork: Chuuou Higashiguchi
    Music and Sound Production: ZIZZ Studio
    Official Website: http://www.nitroplus.co.jp/pc/lineup/pro_06.html


  Original English localisation team

    Translation: Makoto
    Translation Assistance: LoSs
    Engineering: ViruX
    Proofing/Insertion/Testing: Moogy
    Image Editing: Shu
    Release Date: 2009
    Group: TLWiki
    Project Webpage: http://tsukuru.info/tlwiki/index.php?title=Saya_no_Uta


  Proportional ONScripter port staff

    Programming/scripting/Image Editing: Dmitri "WinKi" Poguliayev
    Script conversion: Nikita "Nik" Voronov
    First alpha Release Date: 2009/05/17
    Group: WinKiller Studio
    Project Webpage: http://sl.criminalrussia.ru/dsp2003/saya_no_uta.htm


 9. Version history
_____________________________

 2009/06/10: WinKiller Studio's PONScripter port
             Release Candidate 1
             Fixed several page-wrapping bugs
             Fixed logical bugs with unopenable CGs and Sound Library
             Included "missing" files from TLWiki's translation

 2009/05/17: WinKiller Studio's PONScripter port
             Initial alpha release

 2009/02/24: TLWiki's original English translation
             Scripts overhauled; typos corrected and loading issue fixed. 

 2009/01/06: TLWiki's original English translation
             Initial release
