Hello,
looks like you have acquired source code for Shades. So, how to compile?

(Assuming you are not a noob, but rather a very experienced noob...)

First, you need some additional libraries. Every unit lists them in header.
These are:

  Graphics32 - a great library for bitmap operations. Main advantage is that it
    always uses internally the same format, 32bpp/ARGB which allows for some
    fast coding (and mind, code as well). Next is extensive support for alpha
    channel and lots of other stuff. The listed two are however primary reasons.
    Get it at http://www.graphics32.org/wiki/

  PNGImage - the only *real* PNG library in known space for Pascal/Delphi.
    Supports all the internal stuff and interfaces it to something akin of
    TBitmap, but lets you play with the format's guts as well.
    Get at http://pngdelphi.sourceforge.net
	
	Update - acquired by CodeGear and taken off the net; it is still somewhere
	out there, but you will have to search a lot more.

  StatusBarPro - what it says, only can contain other components without hacks.
    Get at http://www.delphiarea.com/products/delphi-components/sbpro/
    or in folder Components.

  My units - a bunch of general utility stuff, all named with the U at end.
    Get at ... well, dunno. Not released yet...

I hope you know how to install them, set up and everything. It really isn't
hard, just read some info somewhere ... guess how *I* learned how to do that?
Hint - most larger projects ship a file with installation instructions :D

Next, you need the compiler of course. I suggest Delphi 7, but 6 could do,
too, and newer versions are likely to work with some effort as well. But - I
didn't try.

Then, if you want to play with i18n, you need Python to run some helper
utilities - best version 2.5, that is what I run them on. And gettext utils as
well, namely msgmerge.

For a feature-complete build, the code includes generated files; you can skip
that (see build_control.txt). Otherwise also "svnversion" (from command-line
version of Subversion) is needed as well as "gdate" from GnuWin32 (coreutils).
The whole suite is generally useful, so the few hundred kBs to download are
definitely worth it.

The TOOLS folder has some stuff, most of it general and not directly related to
building process. Two exceptions are INCLSTR and EXTRACT-TRANSLATION. The latter
is for i18n, former for preparing include files. The code has two includes for
svn revision and build time; these are just plain .txts, generated on the fly
with utilities SVNVERSION (part of svn package) and GDATE; however, due to weak
preprocessor their outputs need to be further tweaked to be useful. So, this is
what INCLSTR is for. It crunches its input, adds pascal string quotes (' #39)
around and removes line ends. In a nutshell, you can't build without these
includes, and to get them, you must have compiled INCLSTR first to generate
them. Just leave the exe sitting in its folder, all should work that way. Also
copy VERSION.BAT from there to top folder - that is the thing to run, not any
of the mentioned programs! It calls them and then inclstr on their output, so
that it is usable. And, if you want i18n, copy UPDATE-TRANS.BAT to root as well.

Folder RESOURCES. Mostly random junk related to GUI and icon (oh woe!). Compile
ADDONS.RC to get the resource file needed for ... well, everything. The batch
file MAKE RESOURCES in tools should give you some heads up - you surely have the
res compiler, as it is part of Delphi.

USER-UTILS contains some tools to be distributed along with Shades. If you
compile yourself, you do not need them at all.

DOC - well, you're reading this, so you already looked! Some very scarce
documentation, it seems ;-)

And well, now, all should be prepared! So, open the project file and compile.

If something does not work, first make sure you have installed all the
libraries properly and they work, best with your own standalone testing
programs.

Then check global include dirs - "could not find blah.dcu" is exactly this.
