Older version does support shader on blocks, it just that the binormals that doesnt get calculated properly.

To use spec parallax you need to have normal texture(1) that has height map(2) as alpha cannel. There are some nice software to create those normal map. But you must manually combine the heightmap(as alpha channel) to the normalmap, with GIMP it's just a matter of some mouse clicks.

Note:
(1): Texture that contains normal(direction of normal) data instead of RGB data
(2): Texture that contains height data