Quoting tanafres, reply 93As Tridus mentioned, we were talking about AI, not the graphics. My point was that while similar logic has been written before, since the AI is very engine-specific in what it has to deal with, my impression is that you still start more or less from scratch each time with a new engine (or your first game on a licensed engine). So to duplicate the AI of that game, would take about as much time from a standing start, since they probably only had 1 AI coder, and FE seems to have 1 also. The developments that have advanced other areas seem not to apply well to the AI.
"Parts" of the AI can be reused if written properly; however that requires more work (the big diffrence in writing code in C++ and Basic as I know it is C++ focuses more on making it possible to reuse old code rather than make it easy to write new code*). However since AI has to wait till the game is pretty much finished I would suppose that making the code reusable is of low priority compared to finishing it on time and having it work.
* Or so it is intended. Oppinions may vary on which is easier to write in.
There has been a big drift in the (sub-)discussion here - the post I replied to gave the impression of 'omg, they managed to write a good AI for a game with many of these features way back then in BASIC! It should be so easy now!'. Specifically:
Did I mention that it was programmed with QuickBasic over 22 years ago? It can't possible be that hard to program and have the AI handle it well. Now.
That's simply not true. The fact that someone managed something a long time ago doesn't automatically make it any easier today, regardless of speed of execution benefits of one language over another. Or even (theoretical) reuse capabilities, since game AI is going to always (for the forseeable future, anyway) be very game-specific and engine-specific.
