I'm getting into JavaScript, but wanted to participate in the monthly competitions... I wanted to know if it was okay for me to use the Copperlicht renderer instead?
wuzzat? Javascript bindings for irrlicht? (also I suppose if you really wanted you could just generate irrlicht to javascript bindings using something like SWIG, there's plenty of automagic tools that can do that, although exposing the required methods yourself is pretty easy anyway)
No, Copperlicht is written from the original Irrlicht author, but it's a different project (maybe it has some similarities to Irrlicht under the hood). They have their own forums at http://www.ambiera.com/forum.php
Unfortunately no Javascript binding for Irrlicht yet. Maybe after we merge the ogl-es branch I find some time to play around with emscripten (which creates asm.js for c++ code, but needs ogl-es for 3d).
emscripten isn't javascript bindings, it's transpiling C++ to JS (very neat but not bindings), I was more thinking binding JS as a scripting language which is pretty easy, although no idea why anyone would lua/C++ is a more natural combo.
Since copperlicht is a separate engine then I'd guess it's probably not allowed in the compo but it's not my call to make, I just make the threads... and on the topic...
No, I don't think it makes sense to use screenshots from another engine for Irrlicht competitions. Copperlicht isn't an Irrlicht spinoff, it's a complete own engine.