Ah! So I need to use bump maps instead.
Ummm... maybe, but Blitz doesn't support them officially anyway. Bumps in Blitz is pretty hard to do, no matter what... but Tom's EMBM would be your best bet I think.
I wonder why BRL imlemented DOT3/normal stuff in the first place instead of EMBM - normal maps are so much harder to generate and use for the average Blitz coder compared to EMBM. And it does not help that BRL choose to support only world/object space normal maps (easier for them to code I guess) instead of tangent space ones. World/object space is pretty much useless format, we use only tangent at work. Tangent space is also the only format that works with changing geometry like boned characters. You can also mirror (save map space) tangent space geometry like left/right side of the character - impossible with world/object space version.
http://www.matrox.com/mga/theguide/contents/embm.cfm