Looks to me like all you need is to learn how to write shaders. Add good shaders for blocks and "block-based" will fit your personal need perfectly. It's easy. Believe me. Just try it.
Countless times 3DGS's shader programming has been cited as one of its biggest strengths. I've written deferred shader chains (100 dynamic lights on-screen at the same time? No problem) with god-rays, soft particles, fur shaders, multi-texture shaders, fast shadow mapping, fire and water, sub-surface scattering, atmospheric scattering... and what's my training? The 3DGS shader workshops. And I'm far from being the most prolific shader programmer in this community. In the end, I find shader programming the easiest part of game development. I've never used the built-in shaders.
Jibb
While i do know that this is true, however it does increase dev time if i have to be start looking at something else rather than working on the game itself, which is why having someone dedicated to shader programming is a huge asset, i mean, even with what i just listed, i am doing quite nicely with my project, graphically
One of the major selling points you see for most engines is: "focus on your actual game and let 'engine name' do the heavy lifting for you"
so it really increases devtime when you have to be at the core of things even though this does give you the ability to write exactly what you need, maybe i'll look into shader programming after i've released our current game, even thinking of learning now would increase the devtime too much which is the concern.
I dont really blame the engine for much, most times i can see my inability to accomplish certain tasks and yes i do see alot of cool little features for A8 but the topic of this thread is about gs dying not about if upgrading to A8 made sense... and to be honest, from a NEW PERSONS point of view, theres not alot to attract them to the engine...
the sad reality is and it applies to games, movies: MOST people come for the eyecandy and stay for the content
GS doesnt have enough eyecandy to attract the majority, thats how i see it
