Build Notes

The Mappy Virtual Machine actually consists of two seperate parts:

• The Core: The actual implementation of the virtual machine
• The User Interface: A user-friendly interface with useful tools and viewers, interacting with the core to get things done behind the scenes.

Both the Mappy VM core and user interface were designed and tested using Delphi 5 Pro under Windows 2000 SP2. The core will likely compile under Delphi 4 or above, but the Mappy VM user interface relies on some units that have changed names starting in Delphi 6, so it will require at least superficial modifications.

The Mappy VM core relies only on the Delphi VCL, however, the Mappy VM user interface requires three additional components and some header files:

• SynEdit, a VCL based source code editing component with syntax highlighting. It is used for the C source level debugger and the output log display.
• TfisFileNotification from First Internet Software House, used to implement automatic file reloads when an external application changes them (i.e. an automatic reload after a make is done in another window)
• TKeyEdit by Carlos Barbosa, used for the key configuration dialogs
• DirectX headers from Microsoft, converted by the Delphi Jedi, used as the API for sound output.

SynEdit is released under the Mozilla Public License, and the other two components are freeware.

Although the Mappy VM user interface requires DirectInput.pas to compile, it can run on a machine without the correct version installed, with sound output disabled.

In addition, a couple of other tools are important if not essential:

• UPX: the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
• Some sort of resource compiler. Both Delphi and MS Visual Studio come with one.
• An icon editor, again both Delphi and MS Visual Studio come with one, but Microsoft wins this round, the Image Editor in Delphi is practically worthless.

Check out http://www.bottledlight.com/ for the latest information on Mappy VM.

Copyright (C) 2003 Bottled Light, Inc.