Putting sarcasm aside for a second...
Ran, no one is forcing you to use a new version. Your A5 or A6 or which ever version you want is still as good and as stable as it's last patch. The fact that Conitec won't develop it further means that no new features will be added and no new fixes either. But if your current version was stable enough to work with for the last few years, then the above is no concern.
Again, no one is forcing you to learn or move onto A7. I don't see where that comes from. As we have seen in every transition, lots of people stay with the past engine because they have to complete their projects. As a matter of fact I'm one of them. I've tested my code under the new engine and it bodes well for the future but I can't develop in it just yet because it's a HUGE risk to develop in a brand new language after years of work. But when it comes to "the next step" in my operations, I will be considering how A7 and C-Lite stack up to my other options and not A6 and C-Script.
I think I speak for the entire community when I say that if you complete a game , it won't matter one bit if it's in A5 or A4 or A3! It's complete! It's a game! It's more than the majority of A7 users will achieve and that is admirable. I suggest you stay the course with your version of choice, finish the game, and then, when it comes time for the NEXT ONE, determine if A7 is necessary of if you can do it with A5 or A6.
But the bottom line is that 3DGS MUST move forward and that can't nor should be stopped. You have no need of ints and bools or linked lists but maybe that's because you haven't used them yet.
Perhaps once you are introduced to these standard programming constructs, you'll see they aren't so bad and not so far removed from what you already know. Note that this is the important part of this change: C-Lite brings the 3DGS scripting language closer to standard languages and data structures and this will benefit the majority (and eventually the entirety) of the 3DGS community. It means that the C books and the C class that people take will be more relevant. It means that things that before took HUGE workarounds are now trivial. Surely you can understand why that would be of benefit to 3DGS, right?
(PS: I can't speak to the templates for I've never used them. They have always seemed more trouble than they are worth and this is a case in point. Templates IMO are great if you have zero experience with programming and are new to the game dev scene. After a while however I believe you should "outgrow" them and will find that your particular game, your particular vision, is best served by not using templates. I don't know. But A6 templates have been around for a LONG time and thus if you had problems with them then, it's a bit too late to complain about it now... and if you did complain and got to action, well, then it's REALLY too late.
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