DaVince scripting tutorial/About
From Spheriki
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About this tutorial
Ah, Sphere... An awesome and flexible RPG-creation program... It includes a fully-fledged editor to make your own RPGs (or other kinds of games!), and a flexible, extensive scripting language. But how do you start learning and using this scripting language, and how does it work inside Sphere? This tutorial will help you on your way.
Some of the tutorial's chapters are based on other, older and sometimes fairly well-known tutorials, but I tried to make sure that they are easier to understand for newbies. Also, examples were added to these chapters. Next to those, there are chapters that I completely wrote myself. The tests are also original.
Well, I hope my tutorial will be useful! Have a good Sphere experience! :)
Questions? Suggestions? Other feedback? My email address is VincentBeers@gmail[Dot]com. You can also of course contact me on the Spherical forums.
--DaVince
About Sphere
Sphere is a program designed to create RPGs in the style of early Final Fantasy games without too much effort. However, you'll be able to create almost any other kind of 2D game you can imagine if you're skilled enough. It uses a scripting language (JavaScript, which is NOT JAVA!) that "makes everything happen". This, of course, means that you will have to learn this scripting language in order to be able to create a game in Sphere. Scripting isn't always easy, especially for programming/scripting newbies, so I'll try to keep things simple and clear.
Where can I find the latest version of Sphere?
Sphere and its editor can be downloaded from Sphere:Latest. The latest versions can always be found there.
The versions of Sphere used when this tutorial was first written are versions 1.10989, 1.11, and 1.13 (1.5 during the rewrite of this tutorial). If some things don't work (correctly), download the latest version of Sphere and these problems will usually disappear. If you already have the latest version and you still encounter problems, there might just be something wrong with your code (or you may have found a bug inside Sphere itself).
DO NOT use Sphere 1.1 of lower! They're horribly outdated and you'll be missing a lot of new goodness! A lot of people used to start out with Sphere 1.0 or 1.1, so I'm really pressing this matter. Get the latest version!
Get used to the editor first!
If you want to be able to follow this scripting tutorial well, you will have to get used to the editor's interface a bit first and learn how to use it. If not, AT LEAST get used to the file formats and structure that Sphere games use. Tutorials on how to use the editor's interface can be found in Sphere's default docs. Radnen's Using Sphere tutorial and Sphere/Guide to Sphere are pretty good.
