Inspections on the syntax for "Cherry Blessing" script

Abstract #

"Cherry Blessing" is the name of a game developed by "Blessing Software", a fictional game studio in "Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata" ("Saenai" for short). By analyzing the syntax of their code onscreen, we find that the game is very likely to be developed with Kirikiri.

Information We Get #

At 13:37 of the "Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata" episode 11 ^[1]

Analysis #

Clues we got #

From the image we saw some feature of this type of syntax:

1. All lines start with a @.
2. Some special keywords we found are (in 240% scale of this image, by human eyes):
   • @endmacro (line 24)
   • @backlay (line 10)
   • @wt (line 13, 16)

By searching these words on Google, we found:

1. A file in a game project with similar syntax[3]
   kyouryuukunn. CGMode. Fetched at https://github.com/kyouryuukunn/CGMode/blob/master/cg_mode.ks
   . The file had an extension of .ks. However, GitHub failed to recognize the file type, and the README in this project didn't give good clues.
2. A forum post on site nvlmaker.net about the game maker called "NVLMaker for Kirikiri"[4]
   OpenFileLab.com. "How to Open .KS File Extension?". Fetched at http://www.openfilelab.com/how-to-open-ks-file-extension.html
   .

Further analysis #

We searched this extension name on Google and failed to get a satisfying result. OpenFileLab.com said it's "SOF Game File Log"^[5]

The documentation of "The NVLMaker"^[6]

However, code on the KAG3 documentation is like this^[8]

[wait time=200]
*start|开始
[cm]
你好。

which is, obviously, different from what we got on "Saenai". In the beginning, we thought that the "Saenai" code was an earlier version of KAG (like KAG2 or KAG1). However, another sample of KAG2 doesn't seem to be like, either ^[9]

[wait time=200]
[loadplugin module=wuvorbis.dll]
*start
[startanchor]
[cm]
[rclick enabled=false]
[clickskip enabled=false]
[history output=false enabled=false]

So would it be possible that the code starting with @ is another style of KAG3? Interestingly, we can find some keywords of the "Saenai" sample on KAG3 keyword table^[10]

Conclusion #

The code we saw for "Cherry Blessing" is in the format of KAG3. Therefore, "Cherry Blessing" is very likely to be a game made with Kirikiri. Since the code was too blurred, we didn't attempt to recover the code, as done in the "Maidragon" web.py case^[15]

Acknowledgements #

The success of this study required the help of various individuals. Without them, we were not able to meet our objectives in this study. We want to express our gratitude to the following people for their invaluable help and support:

To DuckDuckGo and Google, our main information source. It was DuckDuckGo and Google that guided us researchers to the information we need.

To gaming software makers, since they produced great software for producers to build what they desired.

To the staff of "Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata", who came out with an interesting topic for us to research.

And lastly, to Tomoya Aki and other members of the Blessing Software team. Without them, we couldn't see such an interesting, attractive and moving teen romantic comedy.

We would like to extend our deepest gratitude.

References and footnotes #