Irrlicht Engine for 2D Game?

[just4phun]

I am leaning towards using the Irrlicht Engine for a 2D game. The game will consist mostly of GUI elements, its really a simulation/RTS (SimCity'ish). I looked at SDL, Torque and a few other SDK/tools but the Irrlicht Engine is very impressive. I know it is total overkill for what I need but I think it will be great to add 3D elements to the game in the future.

Has anyone used this engine for 2D GUI-based game/sim? Is there a GUI SDK or GUI extension for Irrlicht that someone has written? I would be nice to just have to skin rather than develop the GUI. Am I crazy for choosing this engine for my game?

Thanks.

[jankoM]

I think irrlicht allready has a GUI and it also has a 2D library made by some user on forums... I think its called "magic"-something.... It was pretty active a while ago that I looked at it.

[Backov]

If you're considering Irrlicht for this, also consider Ogre.. It not only has a standard GUI library (CEGUI), it has 4 or 5 others, all written in a "lighter" fashion.

It also has the "magic" 2d library, the guy that wrote it switched to Ogre and ported it.

[just4phun]

Thanks I will definitely check it out.

[KG_Brad]

I'm using Irrlicht for my FPS game, but for 2D games, I wouldn't recommend it. IMO, the code for 2D Irrlicht games seams a bit too high level, making it really hard to code certain features. This is just my opinion, but I prefer libraries like Allegro and SDL. If you wanted to add 3D elements to your game, SDL can do that via OpenGL. Allegro gives you more control over input, sound, etc...

For fully 3D games, Irrlicht is pretty good. I've seen a bunch of good projects (mostly shooters) come out of the Irrlicht community.

[IPv6]

Has anyone used this engine for 2D GUI-based game/sim?
i`m using Irrlicht for my 2d casual game. From my expirience, Irrlicht hardly usable for 2d games out-of-the-box, but slight modifications makes it perfect for this type of games, i can say!
Default GUI/2D API in irrlicht is somewhat useless because of
- built-in resolution dependancy
- 2d drawing is not using hardware smoothing by default
- poor alpha support (you can not have alpha channel in texture and "fade" value on single sprite at the same time)
- poor font support (no support for antialiased/colored fonts by default)

But this things are easily fixed (as any other things in irrlicht). I finished with rewriting font-related features using billboards and completely ripped away 2d part of the irrlicht. After adding those missing functionality everything goes smooth and nice. And i can make 2d/3d games using the same engine from now (not to say about build-in Mac/linux support), which pleases me a lot (i`m not planning to do porting, but it easier with irrlicht).
but anyway... irrlicht is cool! ;)