Why is it called "Angel"?

Because the original team lived in Los Angeles. It's a whole city of angels.

Could you make it run on Linux?

It shouldn't be too hard to get running, but not a current priority. If someone were to put together a patch, we'd be interested in it. (There are rumors of it running on the iPhone, but you didn't hear it from me.)

Why did you set up {X} that way? Don't know you it's faster to do it...

Take a look at the main page and the goals we lay out there — Angel is designed to be easy, not hyper-efficient.

You said the code was supposed to be easy to read, but some parts of it are really ugly. What gives?

As we got closer to the day of the Jam, we got a little sloppy, and there are some definite duct-tape-chewing-gum-toothpick areas in there. Cleanup is ongoing.

Why make your own engine instead of using {MyFavoriteEngine3D}?

We explored lots of options, but couldn't find anything lightweight enough, focused on 2D, and in C++. As a bonus, it's kind of fun to make an engine.

Why C++? {C#/Python/D/Haskell} is the way of the future!

We wanted a language that our jammers would be most likely to be ninjas in. When you only have a weekend to make a game, you don't want to be forced to have the language reference open in another window. With a little more time (even a week), things like C# become learnable, but in these kinds of timeframes, we need something that our programmers already have mastered. At our studio, as is the case at many game studios across the industry, that language continues to be C++.

Is Angel still being developed?

Yes, but a bit more slowly. (We're all full-time developers with real projects to support.) There are lots of features we want to add, but we also want to keep the entire core as simple and understandable as possible.

Can I contribute to Angel?

The best way to help right now is to try and make a game with it! Find the bugs, the missing features, the ones that need examples or documentation. Then let us know. If you want to actually contribute code, let's talk. We could also use some help getting the documentation up to snuff. Go to the Google Group for any discussion along these lines.