Oh, I see I got my own thread
PS. in my post i ment "SDL" instead of "GPL"
The reason to choose Irrlicht as the engine was for me just because the original plan was to make it a 3D version of the game. When I had finished some playable battlescape; it had a character running around(pathfinding) a map (map generation), it could shoot wooden fences that are destructable (collision detection, 2 models per object:normal and destructed).
However then I realised I had to depend on modellers to create all this graphical stuff to make the game look any good.
At that time (I think it was 2005) there was no real "close to the original" remake in public. So I decided to do that instead (and make it OpenXCOM later on, like OpenTTD did). It is easier in a way, because your goal is very clear and I did not have to bother with graphics - they're done. Because I already knew Irrlicht, and it can do 2D as well, it was my obvious choice to use that instead of learning another engine. And would I ever want to go back 3D - the engine is ready for it.
At the same time I was also contributing to the opensource project UFO2000 (which uses Allegro as engine), so parts of the tactical code also comes from there (they will be properly credited when something goes public ofc).
I want to stay as close to the original as possible, although under the hood I have updated some file formats that are more common today:
- the tilesheets are all converted to PNG files and doubled in resolution, which is a much opener format so a graphical upgrade like UFO:the two sides is easely implemented by replacing old tilesheets with new ones.
- the midi music files are replaced with mp3 music files.
Some background info about myself:
I'm based in Belgium, Europe. I'm working as a software engineer for a big American software company for almost 10 years.
