but if you have to write pages of code only to init the engine and than additional pages to let some balls jump up and down, than this effort is not worth the result.

I agree a lot with that, even managing animations is too much like on the WIKI.
There are engiens having more highter level programming, all stuff being alreday optimised and coded C++ internally.
Even Ogre 3D that is C++ alos seems incredibly lot more easy :

// Set idle animation
mAnimationState = mEntity->getAnimationState("Idle");
mAnimationState->setLoop(true);
mAnimationState->setEnabled(true);

//Update animation function
mAnimationState->addTime(evt.timeSinceLastFrame);

It's only 4 lines, some others engine propose one line with a call to a function with paramters !
It's lot lot more easy than C4 and it's framework and all precoded stuff.

Just my personnal taste also !