![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
First off, this monsieurouxx's effort (resp. that of the team he is speaking for). If he wants to not use SVN or another VCS, or only wants to use one at a latter date, that is of course completely his/their choice! At most, we can give advice -- e.g. I think that even at this early stage, a VCS can be helpful, (at least a distributed one like git or mercurial). But maybe for them this doesn't work so well (e.g. if there are many newbies involved who don't know VCS' at all).
Next, I also find it a bit strange to implement all the logic in Lua, but it certainly is possible to implement a 99% accurate Dune reimplementation using Lua (as Lua is Turing complete, this isn't a big surprise
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
md5, you seem to implicitly assume that monsieurouxx's goal is to write an engine that is eventually meant to be included within ScummVM itself; he never said so.