v1.5, 17 July 2008
Sphere:Latest
From Spherical
The latest official version of the Sphere RPG engine and editor can be downloaded here.
Latest Version
Contents
Version 1.5
Sphere 1.5 is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X (PPC and Intel).
Sphere 1.5 boasts a number of improvements over Sphere 1.4, such as:
- Extended player controls: A, B, X and Y buttons.
- Fully working Mac OS X subsystem (PPC and Intel).
- OpenGL video driver now also available for Linux and Mac OS X.
- Highly improved software video drivers.
- New multilingual Config tool available for all platforms.
- API now features the powerful SoundEffect object.
- GetPersonOffset and SetPersonOffset allow now for new possibilities in sprite animation.
- Text controls for scripts in the editor are now resizable.
- Many other bug fixes and additions to the editor and the engine.
Send comments and bug reports to the Sphere 1.5 release candidate forum topic.
Windows
Download Sphere Installer: Setup (3.4 MB)
Sphere 1.5 is also available as a ZIP archive:
- Download Sphere engine + editor ZIP (Windows): Binaries (2.3 MB) | DLLs (957 KB)
- Download the binaries and the DLLs.
- Unpack all the files to a new folder.
- Move all the *.dll files into the sphere-binaries folder.
NB: Do not extract binaries or DLLs over existing Sphere installations.
Configuration problems under Vista
A normal install of Sphere under Vista will not allow editing of configuration files via config.exe, due to permission problems.
Vista users should download the ZIP archive above, and extract to a user folder, such as My Documents.
Mac OS X
Download Sphere from Rhuan's mirror: Sphere (7.2 MB ZIP archive)
Single archive, just stick the expanded folder anywhere and it should work; frameworks are now located in the same folder as the sphere application.
NeoLogiX's mirror: application (3.3 MB ZIP archive) | frameworks (3.3 MB ZIP archive)
Neo's mirror is now a Universal Build as well. Both frameworks mirrors are UB using Rhuan's work.
- Both frameworks and application are Universal Builds, and therefore different to all previous releases
- Running application from Neo's mirror will need the frameworks installed (put contents of unzipped folder in /Library/Frameworks or ~/Library/Frameworks)
Linux
Version 1.6 and older versions
If for whatever reason you are interested in older versions of the engine, they can be found here, along with a mirror of the current version and the somewhat less stable version 1.6:
- http://davince.tengudev.com/sphere/sphere-engine/ (unofficial mirror)
Getting games
The best way to try out Sphere is to get some games for it.
- Games is the best place to start - all games that have a wiki article are showcased there.
- The Downloads Repository is the next best place to check out games - it aims at collecting all Sphere games and related files ever created.
- Flikky's old Sphere site has quite a few demos and games to try out.
- The Game Development sub-forum of the Spherical Forums contains many games currently being worked on.
Put games in the games/ sub-folder of your Sphere installation, e.g. under Windows it's C:\Program Files\Sphere\games\ if you used the Sphere installer and installed it to the default directory.
Making games
Getting started with Sphere is the first place to go for people interested in making games. An off-line version can be found installed with Sphere at docs/development/tutorial.txt.
This wiki contains a Tutorials section, covering a wide range of topics of how to make games with Sphere.
The Spherical Forums is the most active hub for Sphere talk and support. Drop in for help, to see games in progress, or if you just want to say "hi".
Sphere from source
You can obtain the source code of Sphere 1.5 via CVS on SourceForge. If you're using the official CVS client, type this:
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@sphere.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/sphere co -r sphere_1_5 -P sphere
This will create a subdirectory called sphere, containing the Sphere source, including the engine, editor and utility source files and resources.
You can also download Sphere's source from GitHub.
See also: Compiling Sphere, which also includes instructions for getting and building the bleeding edge version of Sphere.
