   Engine Question
  I don't really know where to put this, so I'll put it here.There's this programming language that I use, called BYOND (www.byond.com), if anyone is heard of it, then you would know what I'm talking about.  See, the programming language was made simply on a system for making games, and that's it basically.  It was made for people to begin coding I guess, and it's where I started coding myself.The problem I have is simple.  I know the language very well, I can do very much with it, but there's not much special about it.  The engine is pretty bad, and is exclusivly online only.  I was wondering if somehow I, or someone else could get a hand on the compiler (legally of course because it's copyrighted and all), and if I could or anyone could, if it was possible to transfer it into a more compatible engine, or something of that sort.  Like, running that language on an OpenGL engine or something.  If what I'm asking is really stupid, or something, just tell me and I'll understand.Thanks in advance for whatever you can say about this.   
  Perhaps you should consider learning another language? C++ is a popular choice these days.  Or if you do not want that yet, Python is awesome.   ;  Wouldn't hurt to talk to them, see if they would sell it to you, or for free under certain terms, such as not releasing it all over the net and other things.   ;  See if you can find a guide for the language, and re-implement an interpreter for it on top of a GL context.I don't know anything about the language so I can't speak for the difficulty of this task.   ;Quote:Original post by RavuyaSee if you can find a guide for the language, and re-implement an interpreter for it on top of a GL context.I don't know anything about the language so I can't speak for the difficulty of this task.I cannot really think of a language where that would be a trivial task.   ;Quote:Original post by WitchcravenQuote:Original post by RavuyaSee if you can find a guide for the language, and re-implement an interpreter for it on top of a GL context.I don't know anything about the language so I can't speak for the difficulty of this task.I cannot really think of a language where that would be a trivial task.Well, neither is overhauling existing code, which is easier than reverse engineering and then overhauling existing code. [wink]Or you could just learn Python.   ;  Yes, I'm working on doing that every free second I get.  But the problem is that the games I have made with and on BYOND are several, and fans are in the high 20s to low 100s, and it wouldn't be a smart thing to just drop all of that and just switch.  Hense the point of this topic.  If I could get my games transfered into another engine, but 10x better, I could make my games all that better, plus without having to learn anything new right away.  Of course, when the time comes, I will learn other languages, but I'd rather not just instantly abandon this one unless I have to.EDIT:  Sorry, this was supposed to go right after the first reply, but it wouldn't postAlso, where can I get a guide of some sort for Python so I can try and learn that?Another thing is that overhauling it to another language would be annoyingly hard with over 100,000 lines of code >_>Ravuya:  What do you mean by Guide for it?  I've never really used OpenGL so I wouldn't know how to do that.  In terms of getting the Compiler though, I don't know about that, it might be an open file anyone can use and they (the makers) wouldn't really care.  I think I asked about that one time or another on their forums.   ;Quote:Original post by PolantarisAlso, where can I get a guide of some sort for Python so I can try and learn that?Python is very well documented on the internet. You should try the python tutorial at python.org. You might also wanna check out dive into python, a free online book. And since games are your thing, I'd check out pygame (seems to be down right now. very unusual as it's been up for several years), an enhanced SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) wrapper for python, as well as ogre3d, a professional quality 3D engine which has a great binding to python.Also, do you have a link to your games on BYOND? I've checked it out before. I didn't find much worthwhile on there, but maybe I didn't see your games.   ;  Realistically, your best option is to learn Python and Pygame. The BYOND DM language is very heavily based on Python, so this shouldn't be too hard for you. Then if you need something more you should be able to pick up the basics of C++/C#/OCaml quite easily after learning Python.You aren't going to be able to reimplement BYOND, and it would be a waste of time and effort anyway. The code isn't open source and you'd need to already know a language you could use to implement it in from scratch.Porting the code will take much less time.   ;Quote:Original post by PolantarisYes, I'm working on doing that every free second I get.  But the problem is that the games I have made with and on BYOND are several, and fans are in the high 20s to low 100s, and it wouldn't be a smart thing to just drop all of that and just switch.  Hense the point of this topic.  If I could get my games transfered into another engine, but 10x better, I could make my games all that better, plus without having to learn anything new right away.  Of course, when the time comes, I will learn other languages, but I'd rather not just instantly abandon this one unless I have to.EDIT:  Sorry, this was supposed to go right after the first reply, but it wouldn't postAlso, where can I get a guide of some sort for Python so I can try and learn that?Another thing is that overhauling it to another language would be annoyingly hard with over 100,000 lines of code >_>Ravuya:  What do you mean by Guide for it?  I've never really used OpenGL so I wouldn't know how to do that.  In terms of getting the Compiler though, I don't know about that, it might be an open file anyone can use and they (the makers) wouldn't really care.  I think I asked about that one time or another on their forums.You have 100K lines of code?  Wow, can I see your game?  That must  be a hell of a game for a crappy engine.As for learning python, python.org and google should be sufficient.   