You don't need to code a compiler. Python has one built in.

Here's my vision:

A single MDI editor. Maps, CHRs, Fonts, you name it. All one app. The image editors would all essentially be the same code, simply derived as much as needed for specialization. What would make it really shine, though, is how the components would interact.

One particularly enticing idea is that of a map editor that, when you create a new zone, will open the script editor, allocate a new event script, and even fill it with a little template type thing. The cursor could be sitting at the exact spot it needs to be. Moreover, it could warn of syntax problems, and the whole whack. (don't know enough of the Python API to attempt that yet, but it'd be l33t ^_^)

One major thing that I need is for it to be cross platform, though. (win9x and Linux are the big two, but I'm sure several others will become possible once those two are in working order) I dunno if Delphi can handle that kind of thing. (up until now, I had been eyeing a C++ windowing API by the name of wxWindows)

However! Given that I already have my hands full, all of that is a tall order. So! If you want to write an IDE, then do it! C++ is preferred, since the rest of the engine is already coded in it, and you'd be able to use already written code for loading/saving files and such, thus avoiding nasty synching issues. However, you can do it in COBOL if you're happier doing it that way. (not to imply that Delphi is akin to COBOL, just that you can use any language you damn well please ;D)

You can snag source at http://verge-rpg.com/~tsb/files/v27src.zip . It's not as well documented as it could be (sorry about that) but I do try to write "clean" code, and you can glean file formats and such from it. (if you were using C++, I'd say simply include the common directory in your project and use the classes contained therein) As it happens, though, I'm designing new file formats as we speak. I'll try to get the map specs and code all laid out this week and get them online before you go.

And.. uh... don't put my name on it. It's tacky. ^_^

Now, I'm quite sure I've made some grammatical and logical errors in this post somewhere or other, but I'm tired, and I have to work early tomorrow. So maybe by tomorrow I'll have remembered all the things I forgot to detail and/or worded wrong.

Have fun!

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"I can't wait for this latest pile of melodrama to disappear, so that the VERGE community can once again concentrate on games rather than on itself." -- Joe Lee

Yeah, i think I read that somewhere, if it exists, I might have to either warez it, or sell some software to pay for it. Otherwise I'd probibally use there Linux RAD thingy.

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eh... stealing software to make software is kinda silly. ;)

Just use Delphi, and someone can port it to C++/wxWindows later.

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"I can't wait for this latest pile of melodrama to disappear, so that the VERGE community can once again concentrate on games rather than on itself." -- Joe Lee

euhm... there isn't a formal document for either. You'll have to wing it.

The file methods are pretty C like, so they usually pass a pointer, then the number of bytes to write.

f.Write(&nSomething,4);

Means that nSomething is being written, and it's four bytes long. Recently, I had some fun with templates and wrote an even more entertaining way to read/write stuff.

int nSomething;
f.Write(nSomething);

is how my newer code handles it. It simply writes the entire int to disk. Normal int varaibles are 4 bytes long, word variables are two, and bytes are one. (der!)

I'm in the process of changing that stuff to u8, u16 and u32, since it's a bit clearer in that regard.

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"I can't wait for this latest pile of melodrama to disappear, so that the VERGE community can once again concentrate on games rather than on itself." -- Joe Lee