I know I'm putting up a "wanted ad" too early because we haven't made enough progress on S.A.D. to allow everyone to appreciate it fully.  However, this will give people plenty of time to consider, rather than saying "I need to know in a week" or that sort of thing.

Anyways, if you're looking for something to program for Windows or a cross-platform language, we're in need of someone (or two) to write up a GUI map designer and a GUI campaign designer for S.A.D.  If you're interested, let me know on this forum what language(s) you program in, and whether you'd like to work on a specific program or if you don't care which one. No ASM or graphics experience necessary, and I will provide necessary details.

I might be able to help.  Though I won't know until a few weeks after the start of next term whether I'll have enough free time (between school and my other projects) to work on this.  The only language I have experience in GUIs for is Python.

VB (preferably a newer version) and Phython are all fine.  But I think I should probably put up more details about the programs for those who need them for making their decision.

The map editor takes a picture with 16 x 16 tiles, and allows users to place them on a map of their choice of size.  It will also come with a tileset designer, where a user takes a bitmap with 16 x 16 tiles, and specifies information about each and every tile: which ones a solid, which ones are partially solid (meaning a unit can walk on some of it), which ones are solid but can have buildings placed on top, which ones are player starting positions, etc.  Once the tileset is saved, the user can use these tiles in the map editor.  The map editor compiles this information into a map (or a set of maps) that S.A.D. can use.  I imagine the map editor to be relatively easy to program.

The campaign editor is a little bit harder, but it mostly requires just time.  The campaign editor assumes that all required graphics were created by the player.  A user can design a campain and compile it into an application variable (or several application variables) that S.A.D. can read.

The main body of the campaign designer is a text window. Campaigns are designed so that instructions are read one after the other. There is no jumping, no if-thens, and no looping. (The asm code will take care of that) There is only one instruction added after another. These instructions are listed in English as a "Mission Script," meaning instructions come one after the other, such as "Big Text" or "Pause," etc.  These instructions can be edited manually using a built-in editor if needed. They are also added or edited using wizards, or step-by-step dialogs.

Example:

BigText(1, 1, "Hello") would display "Hello" on the Homescreen at x=1 and y=1.

As I said before, there are wizards to make this process easier.  Or, if a minor adjustment needs to be made, the text window can also be used.

The Campaign Editor will allow a person to test his script, except for mission objectives.

Here's some other things the Campaign Editor will allow a person to do, all with wizards or the text editor:

*Add a mission objective
*Add a sprite
*Add a map (Pre-made.  The campaign designer will not include a map-editor.)
*Add a Unit.  Custom units can be added to S.A.D., though there are strict limitations as to what you can add, and these custom units are only for the AI.  For buildings, you can only make similarities of the buildings already in the game.  For units, you can only provide range, air attack, ground attack, fire rate, weapon data, S.A.D. abilities, fuel and sephrane gas.  For this reason, I don't think implementation of this function will be as hard as it sounds.
*Add a faction, using only these custom units.
*Add a custom object for certain mission objectives.  This is really a bitmap with a few statistics.
*Display Big Text in the Campaign
*Display Small Text in the Campaign
*Display a Mission Breifing screen in the Campaign
*Display a Picture in the Campaign
*Add a cutscene.  Cutscenes only display sprites, move sprites, display maps, and display text.
*Edit AI: Edit the difficulty of the AI for the mission.
*Edit Mission Objectives
*Edit a Tech Tree
*Set a Mission as a Combat mission (More on that later, but it should be easy to code)

One thing to make sure is that the PC editor is not dependent on many dlls or ocx files, because it gets annoying when you need to download full of them to play certain games or use certain softwares

Well, I program in VB 2008 which is about as recent as it gets.   I agree the map editor would probably be pretty easy to make, so i can probably do that if you want, but 2 things first:
1. So then the maps and campaings are two different things completely then? Or am I missing something?
2. The campaign editor, would it translate the script into a custom format readable by an asm program on calc, would it translate it into regular asm code, but kind've shortened, meant to be read in sections by another program (not exactly sure how to phrase that one), or would it make a complete program as the campaign(like the second one, but running code included, kind of).  Depending on which one, I might be able to do that one too, if, like said above, you want me too.

Also, I was wondering something: If you plan to add a feature to the campaing editor like in Starcraft that permanently locks down/password protect a campaing you made (so no one can edit it), as a head up I would like to remind you such protection is not to be taken for granted. With Calcsys or disassemblers, I am pretty sure anyone who knows a bit of ASM could manage to unprotect the file, like how people managed to do so with Starcraft scenarios and map files using hacking tools.

yeah but still, when converted to 8xp/8xv format, can't people modify them from other tools? Again, I don't know much about that stuff so idk

The only motive I can think about is if someone made an awesome scenario/campaing and doesn't want anyone to modify it or even steal it.