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by zavandor 3526 days ago
Any bets how long it'll take for a cease-and-desist letter from Blizzard for this one?
2 comments

It's just an engine - you have to get the content from Blizzard. OpenMW is doing the same with Bethesda.
You don't have to get consent from anyone without reusing, redistributing, or modifying their copyrighted materials.

A cleanroom reverse engineering is perfectly legal, without any "permission", in most countries.

Yes, but distributing the copyrighted art with your clean-room reverse-engineered engine is not legal. Hence, no art is available for this engine, and you have to procure your own copy of the art, presumably from the CD you purchased, in order to use the engine.
That's what FreeCraft folks thought too
That was a dispute over the name; rather than fight it they changed the project name to Stratagus[0] and released Wargus[1].

0: https://launchpad.net/stratagus

1: https://launchpad.net/wargus

As their "Recent News" goes back to 2014, I don't think we need to hold our breath.