Oh wow.
So recently I showed one of my co-workers Aquatis, because we talked about hobby projects. Today he came back to me and said: "Hey I checked out sphere, and your game is featured on the website!"
So I came back to spheredev and was surprised in what a good shape my old home still is. Nostalgia kicked in and I could not resist to create an account and give a big Hi to everyone here

In the past 5 years I was busy learning new technologies, tried several times to create new game projects in my freetime, but some of you might know that feeling when you don't seem to have so much time anymore has you had when you were younger ^^

I am now Unity developer in a game company and in order to compete in that business I have to stay up to date.

I can't find words how much I miss the times when I was active here. I never found a community like this one here again.
My mouse was hovering over that download button of miniSphere today... I might play around with it. Even if it is just to prototype some simple game ideas.

Hope you are all doing fine!

If you do decide to try miniSphere, there's a brand-new API (the old one still works of course):
https://github.com/fatcerberus/minisphere/blob/v4.8.6/docs/sphere2-core-api.txt

miniSphere is the first successful Sphere 2.0 engine.   And still under active development, it's even getting a brand-new JIT'd JS engine soon (ChakraCore) for fast performance.  We're really trying hard to make Sphere more than just the toy it started life as.

Oh, I forgot to mention: We also have a debugger now!  It's called SSj, because when you get angry enough about a glitch you go Super Saiyan to fix it!

Haha, amazing. Yes, I am still browsing through the forum and wiki to get a full picture about the changes here.

Hi, Metallix! Nice to see a familiar old face!

A lot's been going on the past months. I'm glad that the efforts to bring life back into Sphere and its community are actually paying off!

Welcome back. Here's to hoping for enough free time soon to add to Aquatis a bit
I play regularly almost three times a week, occasionally wanting to add in some quest lines
But do understand the pressure of work, glad to know you're doing well with an awesome job
Hope you'll keep us updated or let us know how we can follow any new projects

Hello again.  Any description of your game company, or the games they make?  A lot of the indies I know are using unity, and it's probably the most popular engine/framework for a team to use at game jams that I've seen.

I work at Wooga since over 6 years now already. They compete in the casual games market with relatively good success. I observed how that whole market moved from Facebook to mobile in a crazy speed. Unity is a solution to maintain a game over several platforms. We learned that the hard way. I even tried to do some private unity projects but they do feel too much like daily work for me and I loose interest very fast. Sphere is different enough to make my brain actually relax after work.

Your username looks familiar, were you ever on GamingW back in the day?    I thought sphere 1.5x was basically dead?  And new projects were just using the new minisphere?

Nice to see you again tho!

I thought sphere 1.5x was basically dead?  And new projects were just using the new minisphere?

It is, nobody maintains the old code anymore.  However to make migration easier almost the complete 1.5 API still works in miniSphere and coexists peacefully with the next-gen Sphere v2 stuff.

Your username looks familiar, were you ever on GamingW back in the day?

No, I think not. But it is not a very unique username.

I am also experimenting with minisphere. But I need some time to get warm with. I never really did much with newer javascript. So that whole new notation stuff is something I need to learn first^^