Sphere FAQ

General

Where can I find more docs/tutorials about sphere? http://sphere.sf.net/
http://sphere.sf.net/flik/docs/ and your very own sphere/docs folder. What should I read first? sphere/docs/sphere_tutorial.txt

Install

How do I install sphere? Download and unzip sphere from http://www.aegisknight.org/sphere I'm having problems running sphere, what can I do? Run config.exe and change to a different display driver. How do I install a sphere game? Place the game's main folder in: sphere/games/
So say you had a zip file called test.zip, you'd unzip it and place the main folder - the one containing the file game.sgm and place that in sphere/games/ so that the game.sgm would be at sphere/games/test/game.sgm How do I play a sphere game? Run engine.exe from sphere's main directory. Then choose a game from the list.

Distributing

Can you package your games into EXE files? No, if you wish to distribute your game as if it was an exe file, just make engine automatically execute your game. Then distribute the engine with your game. Can engine.exe automatically start my game? Yes.
Either put your game into the startup directory. (sphere/startup/) or edit the startup game script to say something like:-
ExecuteGame("yourgamedirectoryname");
If you only have one game in games sphere will automatically execute that game, so distributing sphere with only the one game works too.

Editor

Getting Started

How do I make my own sphere game? Open editor.exe and go to File->New->Project and start playing around.
Create a script and set it as the game script using Project->Game Settings.

Importing

How do you import graphics into Sphere? (Like sprites and stuff? Can you use ripped tiles and sprites?) You can import PNG, BMP and JPEG images. From the menu goto File->Import and then select what you want to import.

Images

What is alpha? Translucency - that is, partial transparency (or non-see-through-ness)
Images in sphere can have 256 levels of transparency, e.g. 255 = solid color and 0 = transparent
When editing an image the slider on screen that goes from 255 to 0 is the alpha slider, use it to add transparency to your game.

Spritesets

Are there any limits on the sizes of spritesets? Spritesets can be of any size, the default is 16 by 32 pixels. Also read: sphere-sprite-ed.html

Tilesets

How do I animate my tiles?
Right click on the Tileset Palette Window and choose Properties.
Then animate tile x to point to tile y and tile y to point to tile z and tile z to point to tile x (thus completing the sequence)
e.g. Tile 2 animates to tile 3 and tile 3 animates to tile 4 and tile 4 animates to tile 2.

WindowStyles

How do I edit the background image of the windowstyle? Open the windowstyle, then from the menu: WindowStyle->Edit->Background

Scripting

doc_functions.txt

People keep telling me to read doc_functions.txt, where is it? From the editor you can choose: Help->doc_functions.txt

That's all

Blame Flik for this FAQ...
Flik!