its the same damn conversation everytime.. *shakes head*
shaders are not required, but they'd be nice to have to fully realize environments that may be in the head of even a hobby dev. Every time someone brings up how nice a shader package would be someone talks about how shaders are useless. No, if you want to dynamically change the way a surface looks, they are required, pure and simple. cartoon games can even use a good normal map if done in some ways.
It would be nice if someone did make this, but as said its a lot of work, so i guess we can all agree that it would be great honor to someone who did. for instance boh_havoc, slin, etc. they have all done it, and im pretty sure they have the respect of everyone here on how much work they did for free.