SPHERE

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Description

Sphere is a cross platform, open source computer program designed primarily to make role-playing games (RPGs) similar to those found on the SNES and Sega Genesis consoles. Most things are scripted using the JavaScript language (though very early versions used its own Spherescript language) with special functions and objects for maps, spritesets, images and other resources.

Though Sphere was designed to make RPGs, because of the flexibility of a scripting language it can be used to make almost any other type of game such as platformers, puzzle games, strategy games, and arcade games. Although the program is open source and cross-platform, most support is geared towards developing under the Windows operating system.

Latest Bulletin

State of the Sphere Community

Sphere's site, spheredev.org had about 10 active members December of last year. But in late December, spheredev.org went silent. Due to an error by the VPS company that owns the server spheredev was hosted on, the server was wiped. The last available backups, from late 2011, where found to be lost as well. Spheredev.org was the last surviving Sphere-dedicated site, hosting the engine's wiki and forums. Although spheredev.org will return eventually, there is currently no site for Sphere. Some of the long time users have banded together on Google+ and Facebook, as official Sphere pages were made on both before the fall of spheredev.

Sphere, as used currently, is old. The last stable version, 1.5, is from 2008. After that, all development of the original engine ceased. An update to the original engine, Sphere 1.7 was recently being developed, which contained the newest version of Spidermonkey (the JavaScript engine Sphere uses) and replaces several old libraries Sphere relied with new replacements. Development of 1.7 has been on hiatus since mid 2011, and may or may not be finished.

In addition, a mostly-compatible rewrite, TurboSphere (http://sourceforge.net/projects/turbosphere/) has been in active development since early 2011, and can currently run some original Sphere games.

Although the newest stable release is 5 years old, there is still life in the engine. There remains a close knit community of users, ready to answer any questions one might have. Even though spheredev.org is down right now, this is a temporary problem, and the community can still be found on Facebook and Google+, and can help with any questions you have. Even with 1.7 and TurboSphere pushing development forward, Sphere likely will not be what it was ten years ago. But reports of Sphere's death are at least somewhat exaggerated.

Engine Details

Posts

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Would this be a good engine for a pokemon game?
Yes, yes it would.

Back in the old days, that was the 'cool' thing to do with Sphere.
Do you need sphere in order to run its games without errors?
author=MKnance
Do you need sphere in order to run its games without errors?
What do you mean? Why wouldn't you?
Whoa, this place could use a major update, especially since miniSphere and the new website and stuff.

@MKnance: A Sphere (1.x) game looks like a game.sgm file plus a bunch of related folders and files, so yes, you need Sphere in order to run that sgm file. However, a lot of the games here are distributed with Sphere included, so running engine.exe just runs the game itself without any hassle.
Pages: 1