Nitrosharp

About

Chaos;Head is a 2008 science fiction visual novel by 5pb. and Nitroplus, the first game in the Science Adventure series; its enhanced version, Chaos;Head Noah, was first released for Xbox 360 in 2009. NitroSharp is an open-source black-box reimplementation of N2System, the visual novel engine used by several Nitroplus games, built on .NET. Its main goal is making Chaos;Head Noah fully playable on Windows and Linux; it is close to feature-complete, but the developers warn to expect bugs and not to use it yet just to enjoy the game.

How it differs from the original

Several engine features are still missing, including a reliable save system, some graphical effects (motion blur, box blur, parts of the lens effect), fullscreen, auto mode and backlog voice replay, and the Linux version has no sound.

Getting started

Obtain the game files, extract the nss.npa archive with the nipa tool, point the contentRoot entry in the profiles configuration file at the game's assets, then run the executable. Building needs the .NET 7 SDK, with PowerShell 7 for AOT-compiled builds.

Known issues & limitations

• stability: Close to feature-complete but expect crashes; not a viable drop-in replacement yet.
• features: Missing features include proper save system, motion blur, lens effects, fullscreen mode, auto mode, backlog voice replay, and full controller support.
• audio: Linux version does not have sound.

Licensing & legal

• The code was written by observing the original engine's runtime behavior, no Nitroplus assets are included, and the project is not affiliated with Nitroplus or MAGES.

Additional notes

Codename

The project's codename is Project Hoppy.

Saves

Saves are not expected to survive engine upgrades or script modifications.