Article on the wiki: http://wiki.spheredev.org/Developing_a_Sphere-compatible_engine

This is a work-in-progress that I started with the intent of unifying as much reliable information as possible regarding the advancement of the Sphere Game Engine and development of other Sphere-compatible game engines.

Key points to consider:

• API compatibility - Sphere uses JavaScript and has quite a bit of custom functionality written into it; this API is primarily what makes Sphere Sphere.
  
• Handle input consistently - keyboard, mouse, joystick; those are the most common inputs a Sphere-compatible engine should be able to handle. Anything beyond is gravy but if it works please consider recommending it for inclusion in vanilla Sphere's input handling
  
• Handle output consistently - video: windowed and full-screen, hardware-accelerated and software-rendered; audio: as close to the sound of the original program that created it as possible.
  
• Handle formats consistently - Sphere loads custom bitmap fonts, window frames, spritesets, maps, and tilesets, among other formats; the resulting output should look and act the same across all engines and platforms.
  
• Handle everything reliably
  

Currently if you're not designated as a wiki editor and doing cleanup edits to it I'd much rather you leave the page alone unless you're one of the following users:

• Flying Jester
  
• Radnen
  
• casiotone
  
• metallix
  
• Eggbert
  

If you choose to contribute to one of the existing engine projects or make your own let us know and I'll add you to the list and encourage you to document things of significance in the article as well.

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Developing a Sphere-compatible game engine

July 18, 2013, 04:22:29 pm

Article on the wiki: http://wiki.spheredev.org/Developing_a_Sphere-compatible_engine

This is a work-in-progress that I started with the intent of unifying as much reliable information as possible regarding the advancement of the Sphere Game Engine and development of other Sphere-compatible game engines.

Key points to consider:

• API compatibility - Sphere uses JavaScript and has quite a bit of custom functionality written into it; this API is primarily what makes Sphere Sphere.
  
• Handle input consistently - keyboard, mouse, joystick; those are the most common inputs a Sphere-compatible engine should be able to handle. Anything beyond is gravy but if it works please consider recommending it for inclusion in vanilla Sphere's input handling
  
• Handle output consistently - video: windowed and full-screen, hardware-accelerated and software-rendered; audio: as close to the sound of the original program that created it as possible.
  
• Handle formats consistently - Sphere loads custom bitmap fonts, window frames, spritesets, maps, and tilesets, among other formats; the resulting output should look and act the same across all engines and platforms.
  
• Handle everything reliably
  

Currently if you're not designated as a wiki editor and doing cleanup edits to it I'd much rather you leave the page alone unless you're one of the following users:

• Flying Jester
  
• Radnen
  
• casiotone
  
• metallix
  
• Eggbert
  

If you choose to contribute to one of the existing engine projects or make your own let us know and I'll add you to the list and encourage you to document things of significance in the article as well.