I was just thinking about the EVO Map Editor, and what a nice piece of software it is. This got me thinking about the most annoying part of making a plug-in: the necessity to launch EV/O, try the plug, quit, make changes, launch EV/O, etc.
Would it be feasible to make a virtual EVironment? What I mean is, you can see how a particular part of your plugin looks/behaves without having to lauch EV/O. I'm not really sure how such a thing would work, but I suppose it would need the basic EV/O data files, and could load and unload your plugin resources to/from memory. It wouldn't be a game, as it would only simulate what you specify. Example, you tell it to show you a syst. That includes dudes, spobs, flets, etc. Maybe you want to see how two ships do against one another in a battle? What I'm saying is that there wouldn't be a "player" present. It would be more of a EV simulator that would give the plug maker a fairly good idea of how things work, while he's developing them.
Alt, if EV/O could be made to load and unload resources, that would work just as well.
Just a thought.
-STH
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