I rather like this idea. (It's not that it would be *tremendously*
easier than writing Inform source; you'd obviously have to write
source code pretty soon anyhow. It'd be just a nice way to diddle
around and test things. Especially on slower machines which have long
Inform compile times. Like mine.)
The hard parts: the Z-machine doesn't have dynamic object creation,
and its file-handling capabilities are very limited. (I reject
out-of-hand the idea of writing this builder in anything other than
Inform. Demands of elegance.)
Now let's see... write this up as a Inform program which contains a
hundred featureless objects (with lots of properties each, containing
zeroes.) Implementing the commands you describe is no trickier than
any other Inform program.
For output, you turn on scripting and output the desired source
code... :-)
Input is trickier; I'm not sure you can do it. But fear not; all is
incremental! The source code that is output starts with
Include "builder.inf"
and of course builder.inf is the source to the builder program, so you
compile it and have a game containing everything you just created plus
the builder commands and a hundred featureless objects...
All right, there are flaws. Fortunately I don't have time to write it
anyway, so somebody else can deal.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."