Profiles

From Spheriki

Introduction

Over the years, Sphere has seen its share of users come and go. Some only fiddle with Sphere, seeing what it can do and likely quitting because "it's too hard." Some stick around for a while, their presence known in the Sphere community, but producing little to no public content. Then, there are those Sphere users considered...legendary. It is the goal of this page to catalogue such users, as well as those Sphere community members who are on their ways to becoming "legendary." Think of this listing as a "Sphere Hall of Fame" of sorts...

Contents 1 Introduction 2 The Creator 3 The Maintainers 4 The Experimentalists 5 The Scripters 6 The Artists 7 Gone but not forgotten...

The Creator

AegisKnight (aka Aegis)

Chad Austin was the original creator of Sphere. As the story goes, he originally tried to create a game in C (or C++, can't remember which at the moment) and needed an editor for its resources, as well as its original custom scripting language "Spherescript." This game was "Sphere" and after he saw how useful this editor could be, he turned Sphere from a standalone game into a game engine. Somewhere down the line (maybe within a year of its first public release) Javascript was chosen to replace the custom Spherescript and thus began the evolution of Sphere as we know it today.

Chad has since left the project, moving on to bigger, better, (more) profitable things. You can always visit his site if you want to know more.

The Maintainers

Flikky (aka Flik)

Flikky was the number one guy for a long time. The project leader after Aegis left the project, Flikky was responsible for updating Sphere all the way until version 1.13, when it was taken over by Kyuu and tunginobi and promptly renamed 1.3. His most dubious accomplishment is having a release version of Sphere with the longest version number - 1.109896 (possibly even a few more digits after that).

Flikky has been inactive for a fairly long time, but he leaves behind a wealth of Sphere information on his site.

tunginobi

tunginobi has been a Sphere developer for quite some time. An active presence in the Sphere community, tunginobi is responsible for quite a few speed upgrades to the engine, as well as some very useful scripts which make Sphere game creation much easier. tunginobi is a proponent of Linux, and as such he has worked hard to bring the native Linux version of Sphere up to the level of the Windows version, with much success.

tunginobi makes his Sphere home here.

Kyuu

What can be said about Kyuu? He's almost single-handedly bringing Sphere into its golden age. Bugs have been hammered out of versions 1.3 on, new useful functions have been added, and he's even been so intrepid as to attempt a fork of Sphere where the normally procedural JS functions become object-oriented. He has created a new cross-platform configurator and expanded Sphere's target audience.

While Kyuu has webspace on Spherical, he does not have a website proper, instead choosing to use it to host Sphere-related downloads. He recently announced 1.5 is his last version of Sphere and he will no longer be advancing engine development.

Rhuan

Rhuan started out the way most Sphere users start - eager to learn, in awe of the tools available, and ready to dive into the world of game design and creation. He has since evolved into one of Sphere's power users - his data save/load script is so far the most advanced available and his Javascript knowledge has expanded by leaps and bounds. There exists one key difference between Rhuan and most other Sphere users: Rhuan owns a Mac. It is this one significant fact that has led him to research and attempt to compile the Sphere engine on Mac OS X. In 2008 those efforts proved fruitful, and thanks to help from Kyuu, Rhuan debuted working versions of the Sphere engine on Mac, first on PPC and eventually Universal Binary.

Rhuan makes his Sphere home here.

The Experimentalists

Beaker

Beaker has a degree in math and actually does advanced math...for fun. Seriously. He's been around the Sphere community for quite a long time and his code is notorious for using numerically indexed arrays instead of custom objects. His creations include the "tabletop" game "Warriors of the Sword" (a "Battle for Wesnoth" / risk like game), platformers like "Turbie," "Jack," and "Migget Chainsaw Hands," the topdown tactics-style rpgs "Larium" and "Resorsis," the short-lived "Hyper" project (a fork of Sphere w/OpenGL 3d functions, really basic AVI movie support, and the possible addition of Python as a scripting language option for Sphere), and the legendary and infamously unfinished "The Rainis Manuscript," a Final Fantasy Tactics-style rpg complete w/scripted fully 3d rotation and junk.

Beaker makes his home here.

WIP

More to come for WIP

WIP makes his home here.

DRosen

Dennis Rosenfeld is a legend in the Sphere community. He was the first to successfully complete a full-length RPG ("Trial and Error") AND the first to successfully create a fully functional Final Fantasy-style turn-based battle system in his game. He also created the original Sphere application icons (the ones with the orange/brown diamond plaque as a background). He's been rather inactive since completing version 4.0b of Trial and Error.

NeoLogiX (aka Neo)

Neo started out primarily as a Javascript programmer, having taught himself web scripting in 1997. The story goes that he discovered Sphere in late 2003 after being disappointed with the limitations of RPGMaker and, after seeing that Sphere's scripting language is Javascript, immediately jumped to Sphere. He has shamelessly ingratiated himself with the runnings of the Sphere community, being granted webmaster privileges on both the official Sphere project site and Spherical. It's not without merit, however; Neo is rather knowledgeable in PHP, has created many useful public resources for Sphere users. It is with Neo's testing that an Intel build of the Mac OS X version of Sphere was successfully created, and later an independent Universal Binary (which now mirrors Rhuan's UB compilation). Neo hopes to either build an existing Sphere editor on Mac or create one himself.

NeoLogiX makes his Sphere homes on Spherical and on Sourceforge, and his newly made general site here.

The Scripters

SDHawk

SDHawk here

FutureBoyNil (aka FBNil, FutureBoy)

FBNil stuff here

Steax

Steax here

engine #100

engine #100 here

The Artists

Radnen (aka FEEK)

Radnen stuff here

Gone but not forgotten...

caldimion

caldimion stuff here (the Bloodwings demo stuff)

DragoNumber7

DN7 here

Fenix

Fenix here

Malis

(Brandon Mechtley) Malis here

geno023

(Eric Duvic) geno here