Hello! I want to make video games, but I'm not really sure how to! I'll probably figure it out eventually. Maybe... I have absolutely no programming experience whatsoever, but we'll see how it goes.

I want to make an RPG! I have designed tabletop games in the past, I am an okay artist, and a competent musician; but as I have said before, I know nothing at all about programming. It all seems like magic to me. So yeah, there's that.

P.S.
Sooo...are there like some tutorials I could read or something?

Welcome to Spherical! I'd normally point you to the wiki, which is a great resource to get started... but it's still broken for some reason. (Get on that, N E O! )

So uhh. Yeah, that complicates things a bit for the time being. It doesn't help that you don't have any programming experience at all; that would've helped since looking at the docs included with Sphere and the available games would've helped you in that case.

Oh, looks like you can use the Wayback Machine to get an archived copy, though it's not pretty. My own tutorial is pretty extensive and written exactly for beginners, so check it out. Getting Started also contains some useful info.

But yeah, welcome!

Thank you! One more thing: will I be able to do anything with this on a mac? 

Hey UncertaintyLich! Welcome to the community!

Yes, you can use Sphere on a Mac. The easiest option I guess is to download the windows version and use it along with Wine. Another option is to get one of the several Mac builds of it. If the wiki were up I'd happily point you the way. It depends on what Mac you are running. I'm sure N E O will point you a good link to use.

Anyways, Sphere is a great tool to begin making games. As with anything programming it'll take time and willingness to do it, it's not quite so easy as writing a novel, but it can be very rewarding. That said Sphere has always been easy to learn, difficult to master. So I hope the learning curve won't be too hard. My best advice: pace yourself. Don't delve into anything epic just yet, learn the small things. Most games are built of interconnected pieces. Build those pieces first and understand them before moving on. The pieces are menus, items, inventory, walking around, talking, talking with choices. In fact you could create a talking-only "game" since that can comprise of a large portion of your games story and gameplay outside of combat.

Combat is the hardest to program and there's no shortage of help we can confuse you with. So, start small, work up.

Hey UncertaintyLich! Welcome to the community!

Yes, you can use Sphere on a Mac. The easiest option I guess is to download the windows version and use it along with Wine. Another option is to get one of the several Mac builds of it. If the wiki were up I'd happily point you the way. It depends on what Mac you are running. I'm sure N E O will point you a good link to use.

An issue here is that the official builds are a little janky, and Wine on OS X is a bit...difficult...

If you can get Wine on OS X working, then you are home free.

I should really get the build I have working on non-developer machines!

As with anything programming it'll take time and willingness to do it, it's not quite so easy as writing a novel, but it can be very rewarding.

This reminded me that back when I discovered Sphere as a kid, I thought "scripts" were going to be similar to writing a movie script to have the engine do what you want, haha. The truth turned out pretty different, yet I do see why they're called 'scripts'. You "set the scene" by defining a function, you "make the actors perform their roles" by calling functions and methods, and you have "props" (variables) that are in the scene and the actors can use.

Okay, I think I downloaded the engine or something and I got it to work once, but it said I didn't have any games. I tried to open it again and it wouldn't work for some reason. I don't know about the editor. Those are separate things, right? I've just been downloading stuff from the google drive. I guess I'll try wine now? I'm not really sure what's happening 

Although I'm not really sure what wine is either XD. I googled "wine mac" and found something that looks computer-y

Things are a bit in a transitioning phase right now. All the original 1.5, 1.6 etc. versions are getting pretty old and are based on old code. New versions (TurboSphere, Sphere SFML) are much better but currently still in development, so not fully usable yet. And the editor stuff has always been most easily accessible on Windows, so that's an additional hurdle for you.

Wine is a program that allows you to run Windows software on OSX and Linux. So you'd get Wine, and then the Windows version of Sphere to run under Wine. It works quite well.

Also, yeah, there are the engine and the editor. If you get a Windows release it'll be quite obvious (engine.exe, editor.exe). OSX natively supports only the engine, because the included editor (which is pretty old by now, by the way) was written for Windows only. Once again, that program works pretty well in Wine, though there are a few people here (like me) who really wish a cross-platform solution would exist already.