If we wanted something open-ended, then we could go back to C/C++ or .NET these days with full DX9 and a wealth of free and license based SDKs.
...and I bet you'd still find something to complain about... If Mark would of wrote Blitz3D v2, with DX9 (shaders) support, added the OOP, kept the sound engine in, and hopefully fixed the IDE - I can almost guarantee that it would of sold
You can't guarantee anything of the sort. The only thing you can guarantee is that YOU would have paid for it.I've been around here for six years almost and the number of incomplete/abandoned projects I've seen in that time outweighs the completed ones a hundred times over. You seriously think that would have been any different if Blitz3D had DX9 support? All those projects didn't fail because of Blitz3D, DirectX, Mark, George effing Bush or anything else - they fail because people got bored.
And you know what? They'd STILL have got bored with DX9, and spend 99% of their time on this very forum, blaming the lack of something else for their unbounded failure. The majority of people managed just fine with Blitz3D/DX7.