Ahhh deep discussions, I like these
There isnt an Amiga fan around who has not been impressed by this new wave of asm coders, mcgeezer in particular is really pushing the bar and Steril707, the fact you self taught from scratch is a massive achievement, plus your gfx talent shines.
Game engines come and go, I remember SEUCK and that was pretty cookie cutter style, a couple of other emerged, again they dont really cut the mustard, fun to tinker but not serious.
Redpill comes along and Zener's engine is really neat, especially as it works on the actual Amiga. Then earok with Scorpion comes along and makes massive waves. It is very easy to see why to, it is a very versatile engine that is being constantly updated with features with the awesome and pro active earok being massively helpful to boot.
That said, it has its limits which a capable asm coder doesn't have. Please also bare in mind, while it is fairly simple for an asm coder to pick up, it still takes a lot of work to achieve results. Have spent over 100 hours on Wonderboy so far alone, you get bugs and you have to use logic to achieve results, its not all click and go tbh.
I simply do not have the time to learn real code, I learnt AMOS many years ago but it was very buggy and cumbersome to use, no fun at all. I also had the time to do so, these days I have approx 2 hours per day (at best) spare to tinker with Amiga.
Hope the snobbery regarding real coders and engine users is light hearted, end of the day you get far better polished end results with asm, but scorpion and redpill are getting people involved and active, that what this scene is about isn't it?
My humble 2 cents anyways!