Well, I've heard back from the FMOD author and the new licensing system apparently applies to anything released in future using FMOD, regardless of whether Blitz3D was purchased or not.
I strongly disagree with this interpretation, but I no longer have the contract from 20 years ago (not sure I ever did, I think Guildhall did all that) and it's conceivable the contract did have the famous 'no engines' clause in it and no one noticed, and I have neither the time, energy or money to argue it anyway, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.
But in light of this development, I have put together a version of Blitz3D that's Windows 95 compatible and that uses SoLoud instead of FMOD. More details here:
https://blitzresearch.itch.io/blitz3d/devlog/754345/blitz3dx95-v1109-for-windows...
I would love to hear how people get on with this, I've only been able to test it on an emulator and that's pretty ropey with *all* audio. But it is at least recognizable and the 3d stuff appears to be working.
Bye!
Mark