I think such a thing would be semi-feasible, but the most interesting part of such a project would be some kind of simple parsed language. If you developed something to read your own meta-language, you could release that as a library such that the language would be usable in RPGs and other kinds of games that want extensibility without having to do a whole version upgrade.

Lummox JR

Lummox JR wrote:

I think such a thing would be semi-feasible, but the most interesting part of such a project would be some kind of simple parsed language. If you developed something to read your own meta-language, you could release that as a library such that the language would be usable in RPGs and other kinds of games that want extensibility without having to do a whole version upgrade.

I had at one point considered doing something along these lines. The order of complexity for it, though, put it in a time-frame that I am admittedly bad with consistency-wise. My idea was to create a simple bytecode language using hexadecimal strings (i.e. "0A1342FD" might have some meaning). This would be simplest to program something to execute the commands. From there, I imagined, it might be possible for others to create "higher-level" scripts that they could parse into this bytecode and run the generic execution routines.

But of course, I neither have the intention nor desire to take on this project, nor would I have the commitment to follow through with it after, say, a day of working on it. If someone else wants to take the idea and run with it, go for it.

I did this in my game so people can create their own world while using my pre-made engine. However, it's a Pokémon-specific language and would not cater to the masses, nor is it going to be publicly released right away to prevent abuse.

Anyways, it's definitely plausible and possible, and I've gotten it to work pretty well.

KodeNerd wrote:

You went to large for a starter project.

If you mean me, I've been programming with DM for 6 years, so I couldn't call that a starter project. If not me, I'll refer you to [link]. ;)

I would actually try to emulate the Zilog 80m chip (commonly found in the TI-83+) as that is pretty simple.

I haven't looked at any specs for this chip, but one reason I came to hex-strings ("00" to represent 0, rather than simply using a NUL-byte), is because BYOND has difficulty managing the NUL-character, since strings are NUL-terminated. I imagine that Zilog has a regular use of these NUL-bytes.

Anything you try emulating will use null bytes, which is one issue right now. Why else we can't make binary files still? XD

Binary file reading would be very nice though.

Response to KodeNerd: Yeah, if you refer to Kuraudo, he really isn't new. Hint is, he's been here longer than myself if you look at my date and his other key. :P

Worse - he's a Pokemon fan. <code><font size=0.1 color=#2a4680>joke</font></code>

Ah yes, I've heard of that library. I was tempted to build a DLL file using binary capabilities. Still working on one (with no purpose still) involving dynamic memory access.