What kind of error are you seeing when giving a non-integer radius?

...Okay, I don't understand why, but suddenly it IS accepting the value. I don't know what changed that made it work, but, well, if I encounter the specific error message again I'll let you know right away.

Also, thanks for the RNG tip! That seems a lot better. I'll use it right away. Seems to work great!

Speaking of the API doc - where does the deb drop this file, anyway? It doesn't seem to be in /usr/share/doc/minisphere/...

Hm... I'll have to check the makefile, it might not be installed on Linux.  In the meantime:
https://github.com/fatcerberus/minisphere/blob/master/docs/minisphere-api.txt

Thanks! I'm seeing some things I can replace my old code with already. (Like LoadSound.)

Gentlemen. I performed a fresh install of minisphere 3.0rc3 and Sphere Studio 1.2.1, but I get an error when trying to create a new project when it tries to find a directory that doesn't seem to exist "C:\Program Files\minisphere\assets\template"



Is this due to something I'm doing wrong? Hope it's not wrong of me to post this on this topic.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide. I'll probably continue to fkc around with settings.

Edit: Forgot a part of my problem, bolded it haha...

That might be a packaging bug on my part.  If so, my bad.  I'll fix it and post 3.0rc4, but in the meantime you can unzip this file into C:\Program Files\minisphere to hopefully make it work:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxPKLRqQOUSNalNkdml5R1YxdXc

Never feel bad about reporting bugs - I'm always willing to fix them and this is the reason it's a release candidate and not the final release yet.

@DaVince: I also recommend looking into using the S2GM format if you're going to commit to minisphere - Unlike normal game.sgm you can put arbitrary properties into it and access them using GetGameManifest().  Useful for keeping debug settings and such in a central location.

That might be a packaging bug on my part.  If so, my bad.  I'll fix it and post 3.0rc4, but in the meantime you can unzip this file into C:\Program Files\minisphere to hopefully make it work:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxPKLRqQOUSNalNkdml5R1YxdXc

Never feel bad about reporting bugs - I'm always willing to fix them and this is the reason it's a release candidate and not the final release yet.

Created project without it yelling at me, so... so far so good Thanks Lord English!!

Edit:
Trying to test project to see if it runs (I just left main.js to what it defaults to just to make sure it runs) and I receive the following lovely message in the Build Log:

Code: [Select]

processing Cellscript.js rule 'default'... 
  ERROR: no Cellscript rule named 'default'
================== Failed to build: Platscrol ==================

I look at Cellscript.js and nothing in there is referencing default, so I'm not sure where the disconnect is here

Yeah, that's a bug in the Cellscript template.  I fixed it in 3.0rc4 (which is up).  For the already-created project you can get it to work by changing $sphere to $default at the top of the file.

@DaVince: I also recommend looking into using the S2GM format if you're going to commit to minisphere - Unlike normal game.sgm you can put arbitrary properties into it and access them using GetGameManifest().  Useful for keeping debug settings and such in a central location.

Me using SGM or S2GM is actually just directly related to which editor I use since I just let it do the work. So I'm sure this will change in the future... For now, I'm good.

Ah, I guess you're still using the 1.5 editor.  I'll take another look at getting Sphere Studio to run on Linux once 3.0.0 is officially out the door.  That's really the definitive experience for minisphere development and it sucks that you have to miss out on it!

I uploaded 3.0rc4.  It installs the API docs in /usr/share/doc/minisphere now.  It turns out I never added those to the makefile because I didn't know the proper place to install them, so thanks for the tip on that.

I'm also hoping this is the last RC.  Thanks to my OCD I'm up to rc4 already, even Microsoft doesn't put out this many release candidates. (That doesn't excuse you from testing duty mind you! )

I'm also still interested in Sphere Studio on Linux/Unix!

I still tinker with Sphere-like engines from time to time, and I use a number of its formats in my other projects. I would be interested in helping debug/test it out, as well!

I've been using some new functions and object prototypes (new Font, new Color etc) and their methods and properties and it's all been working great so far.

One thing I did notice that's a thing to fix in a new minor version is that when I made a 1280x720 game it stretched in fullscreen without any regard to the aspect ratio on this 1280x1024 monitor. Result is the screenshot. (By the way, what's with the randomized filename for the screenshot? Game-name-timestamp-01.png would seem a lot more intuitive to me...)

The way minisphere's fullscreen scaling works (remember what I said about enlarged backbuffer and transformation matrices above?), it's actually a bit difficult to do letterboxing without ending up with weird artifacts where stuff gets drawn outside the screen, so I got lazy and just stretched it.  I do want to fix it eventually, but the 3.0 release is already quite big enough and I'm still busy fixing little bugs I find (SSJ's "help" command crashes in 3.0rc4, for instance), so yeah, that might have to wait till v3.1 or something.

As for the randomized screenshots, that was again due to laziness--I didn't feel like formatting a timestamp at the time so I just used RNG.string(), hehe.  I'll fix it before release.

Okay, I can get the aspect ratio thing. That sounds pretty troublesome! (Maybe an easy solution is to force drawing two black rectangles in the appropriate areas? In any case, future feature!)

I've started actually developing a full game now, and it will specifically target and use minisphere functions whenever appropriate. I'm sure I'll be using the debugger too. I probably won't encounter many problems while this RC is happening, but at the very least there'll probably be feedback I can give you at a later stage.

Edit: tried creating an s2gm file according to the API documentation, but I'm getting an error when trying to run the game:

Code: [Select]

minisphere was unable to load the game manifest or it was not found.  Check to make sure the directory above exists and contains a valid Sphere game.

My s2gm looks like this, which I'm guessing is probably out of date? It's directly copied and modified from minisphere-api.txt...

Code: [Select]

{
  name: "A Game",
  author: "DaVince & SarahB",
  summary: "Our description goes here",
  resolution: '1280x1024',
  script: 'scripts/main.js',

  minimumPlatform: {
    recommend: "minisphere 3.0 or later",
    apiVersion: 3.0,
    extensions: [
      "sphere-legacy-api", //By the way, do I need these?
      "sphere-obj-constructors",
      "sphere-obj-props",
      "sphere-map-engine",
      "sphere-rng-object",
      "sphere-s2gm",
      "sphere-spherefs",
    ]
  }
}

You only need the extensions you actually use, the engine will check them on startup to see if they're supported (minisphere-api.txt has the full list).  As for API version, that should be 2.0.  That refers to Sphere 2.0, not the specific engine.  I'll add a note in the documentation clarifying that.

The error message is wrong though (it should be something like unsupported engine), I'll look into that.