Chad Austin Brian Robb Spherical (http://www.spheredev.org/) 2008.01.08
Sphere is a 2D RPG creation system designed to facilitate creation of games in the style of Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star.
Read the index.txt files in each directory in docs/ for a description of the files contained within them.
== Minimum system requirements ==
- Pentium 200 MHz
- 64 MB of RAM
- Video card with 2MB VRAM
- Sound card for audio
- Windows 95, 98, NT4, 2000, or later OR Linux
- DirectX 8 for fullscreen video drivers
- OpenGL-accelerated video card for hardware acceleration (sphere_gl)
== Features ==
- unlimited map layers
- parallax and automatic layer scrolling
- flexible video driver subsystem
- supports any screen resolution
- 32-bit color and 256 levels of translucency
- 8-directional movement
- animated and reflective tiles
- plays Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, MOD, S3M, XM, IT, and uncompressed WAV
- graphical editing environment
- keyboard, mouse, and joystick support
- portable, cross-platform game development
== Included video drivers ==
- standard32.dll - 32-bit color (default)
- standard16.dll - 16-bit color (faster on 16-bit desktops)
- standard8.dll - 8-bit color (fast, but ugly)
- greyscale.dll - 8-bit greyscale (as fast as standard8, but completely in greyscale)
- interpolate32.dll - same as standard32, but resolution is doubled for some smoothing effects (2xSaI)
- interpolate16.dll - same as standard16, but resolution is doubled for some smoothing effects (including 2xSaI! Check it out!)
- sphere_gl.dll - hardware acceleration using OpenGL (can be VERY fast)
- sphere_dx8.dll - experimental DirectX 8.0 graphics driver
== Known Issues ==
- sphere_dx8.dll has some major issues. Avoid using it if possible.
- sphere_gl.dll has some problems with drawing and capturing primitives. This can cause some graphical glitches. It performs very poorly when games create and use many surfaces.
- Visit the Spherical forums for bug reports and feature requests. http://www.spheredev.org/smforums/
== Executable listing for Windows ==
- engine.exe - Sphere engine
- editor.exe - Sphere editor (a.k.a. the IDE)
- config.exe - Sphere configuration utility
== Binaries listing for Linux ==
- engine - Sphere engine
- wxeditor - wxWidgets-based editor (poor quality)
You'll have to edit engine.ini manually under Linux to change settings. Use your favourite text editor.
== Credits ==
=== Code ===
- Chad Austin (AegisKnight)
- Theo Reed (rizen)
- Brandon Mechtley (malis)
- Jacky Chong (Darklich)
- Brian Robb (Flik)
- rjt
- aaulia/L_O_J
- Tung Nguyen (tung)
=== Documentation / Maintenance ===
- Alex Rosario (NEO)
- Andrew Helenius (Radnen)
- Vincent Beers (DaVince)
=== Startup Game ===
- Tung Nguyen (tunginobi)
Please send all suggestions and bug reports to: http://www.spheredev.org/smforums/ OR the Sourceforge bug reports page.