I think what user137 said about using given assets sounds like a good idea. Something like "heres a resource pack - go make" or "heres some code/script/thing - integrate/implement" could be quite fun as we'd get a lot of very similar but very different entries. As far as a community engine, I wouldn't be a main contributor (due to lack of skill and experience more than time) but would definitely be willing to help out.

As for my experience in pascal - I learnt in pascal and sort of stuck with it and its derivatives ever since unless a project almost explicity required some other language (and I couldn't just write a .dll loader for a pascal program ).