i never said it only takes 15 minutes, but again, if you compare gstudios comm to the pro features of these games (actual capabilities, not hand holding, toggle generic dynmic shadow mapping on switches) you can do with gstudio all the effects that you have mentioned. all the post processing shaders have been done and packaged before several times, by both slin, phemox, and much much better, boh_havoc. sphere isnt useless, it just doesnt have any built in optimization, but thats something the designers should be doing by hand anyways (lod, setting up a portal system etc.) and as far as ssao, i have done it a couple of times just recently I rebuilt my old ssao shader so that it looks damn near the one in the torque demo. and for dynamic shadow mapping, hasnt been finished yet, Im working on one, slin made one (albiet needs work) boh_havoc is working on one, and chris_b is working on an advanced one using a custom plugin. so just because you cant do it doesnt mean it can be done or even that its all that hard. IT JUST MEANS YOU CANT DO IT. Btw, if you cant figure out how to do that stuff with a scripting language, how do you plan on ever making it to anything past these little indie games, you'll have to learn that stuff eventually if you want a full fledged in-house job at a game studio some day. That is unless you want to make indie games the rest of your life, which is ok for some people, but some people feel its stuff that needs to be known anyways.

again, no one claimed it was easy, its not, game design isnt easy ever. the sooner you learn that, the sooner you can make some real money, and stop screwing around with "a very impressive tech demo". Click together games suck.