Developments over time

Well, as I said before it has been quite a few years since I did any coding in Delphi (my more recent works have been in Java while at University, and since graduation have been entirely in PHP), but during this time there have been some useful tools and classes released.
It could be my memory failing me, but I don't recall there being a TIniFile class (or associated methods) around back when I was learning Delphi the first time around, but currently it's a godsend.

Over the last few days I've been pondering the best way to store configuration data. Should I go and try to learn how to interface with the registry, or stick with the tried and tested ini-file.... but regardless of each, how would I manage the large amount of data associated with the concepts I want to run, like multiple installations/variations of each application with the various savegames / usernames and passwords / etc etc.

With the TIniFile class there'll be no need to worry about the headache of file-seeking or data searching. All I need to do is come up with a sensible naming convention to ensure that sections don't overlap..... e.g. [SE4Installation01] -> [SE4Installlation20]
That should do it I can't imagine *anyone* would have more than 20 installations of Space Empires 4..... would they?

I'll release the first version of my SEMultipass project as soon as it does more than just creating a blank ini-file.... something like when you can actually launch SE4 from it, even if it doesn't do much more beyond that.