I've been checking this forum for over ~10 years now and i absolutly have to confirm you dan.. the user base never have been smaller. I think If there was a change of the forum server (like ~6 or 7 years ago), there wouldn't be much more than 100-200 users on the new server. That's really sad for an engine where the active and friendly user-base was (at least for me) one of the best "features".
If there is A9 in ~1 year (ofc without a stable / any android port) - is there really (!) anyone here who will BUY a9 professional? Are you REALLY willing to spend around 1000 bucks for an engine which is 1) outdated and 2) without any progress? The progress of A8 just makes me a little bit sad, especially because of the extremly bad communication of jcl. How often have you heard: "I'll put this on my list"? How often have there be no response at all to certain user requests? I asked jcl a long time ago for local variables debugging, which was an absolutly must-have feature for me. He more or less promised (privatly) the feature will be released in april 2011 (!) which is now also some time ago . The completle communication is neither professional nor user-friendly.
I just highly doubt that anyone is really working on the engine anymore. So in my opinion the only possible "life-saver" would be an open-source 3D-Gamestudio engine which is developed further by the best programmers here in the forum. Besides that ~20-30.000 bucks have to be invested to get a good working and looking world editor. As i do not see this coming for 2 years now, for me the engine is already dead.
