Really interesting discussion! Thanks to everyone participating!

Funny enough, I'm actually deliberately looking for older, more limited engines. For multiple reasons.

For one, they were generally simpler to work with - looking at Unreal Engine, or Unity, etc these days.. there's a whole learning curve to just using the software before you even get to the part about making games.

For another, I feel more limitations requires one to be more creative, turning those limits into strengths. For example, how Silent Hill took a means to limit draw distance for performance, and turned it into a way to enhance the game's atmosphere.

My favorite era of gaming, in terms of graphics was the PS2/PS3 era. When pixel shaders were still uncommon, and the artwork did more of the heavy lifting to create the look/feel of the game.

It's fortuitous, too, that retro, old-school style games/graphics are seeing a return to popularity.

I've also been looking at other engines, like the old Torque Game Engines, TGE and TGEA. But support for those has all but evaporated, especially as you can no longer purchase a license.

I don't think older DX versions will ever be completely eliminated, so long as people continue to want to play those old games using it. So that's not a concern. Maybe it'll be "emulated", or run through some "translation layer" or something. But with the power of computers now, I don't expect there'd be a noticeable difference.

There's a number of beautiful looking, fun games made with 3DGS, so it's certainly capable.

So, my concerns aren't 3DGS itself, or its capabilities.

My concern is more "will Conitec decide one day it's no longer worth selling or supporting the software with even a discussion forum?".

And it isn't an unreasonable concern.

GarageGames, creators of the Torque Game Engine and others, shut down their main website not long ago. All those resources are gone. Forums, tutorials, downloads, resources, etc. If you didn't download and backup your purchases before that, you're out of luck if you want to get them again... outside of acquiring by other means I don't advocate for. There's torque3d.org, but that's 99.999% focused on the MIT version of the engine, "Torque3D", which I'm not really a fan of - especially their latest 4.0 version. It feels like they're trying to make it as complicated as possible to use.

So... that's my concern. Not the age of the engine. Not its limitations. Just "can I safely expect there to be a community around this engine into the future where questions can be answered, info can be researched, etc?" Without that concern, I have no trouble at all purchasing a Pro license.

Are there any other active communities for this engine outside this website? I've seen some, but they seem to be abandoned, lots of broken links, etc.