cal3d is possible, but if you use it I would be prepared for a lot of debugging with the plugin.
There is also the genmesh animation format, and they are working on a new advanced animation plugin.

yes, it supports them, this is where you could find one as far as I know

CS\data\shader\specular\specular.cgfp

The link I gave you is the version they are working on. It does do it, and more than that it has object to object baking, ie high to low res. It has an occasional crash etc and other problems because it is not an official release.

I have read that any object that animates or rotates needs the tangent space one. I tested my normal maps in the blender game engine from inside blender too, that may be a good place to test for now.

Blender 2.45 has normal map baking, but only the development version version is  suitable for game related baking.

some of Crystal space's shaders are normal map shaders, even if they call them  somthing else, because they support normal maps. light_spec_bump and parallax work but I have errors with objects with seams.

I tested blender's internal normal mapping, the new version, and it worked correctly, but I ran into problems using it in crystal space. http://www.graphicall.org/builds/index.php has the version I am talking about but of course use it at your own risk, it's not an official release.

I tried some shaders and did get an effect like that, with bumpmap or light bumpmap for example, but if there is a shader specifically for spotlight like type lighting I'm not sure, maybe someone can answer that?

The lighter2 program will draw a lit area on the textures nearby the light.
Shaders will do it but in a very different way, and it is 'realtime'.
I'm not sure from your file what you're trying.

I thought there was a way to repeatedly draw and update the image with iProgressMeter as certain loading operations continue, but now I am unable to figure how to do it...
there was a threaded map load function but I presume it also is not implemented. Other options like threads are pretty technical but possible.

If you are planning on being fullscreen you should be able to draw a fullscreen pixmap once when the plugins have loaded. This should stay until other loading is done, but if it is windowed it would need to be drawn periodically or with some kind of refresh system, I'm not clear on what that requires, there is a progress bar system in CS. I may be able to help more if you need it.

does CS have 2d features like these 2d filters for BGE described here:
http://blender.gameengine.googlepages.com/2dfilter_introduction
(motion blur)
and here
http://blender.gameengine.googlepages.com/2dfilter_introduction2

This is what most of them look like

Code:

      <submesh name="house.png">
        <indexbuffer components="1" type="uint" indices="yes">
          <e c0="3"/>
          <e c0="2"/>
          <e c0="1"/>
.....
        </indexbuffer>
        <material>house.png</material>
      </submesh>

can't you turn off mip maps?
I have tried to do that in some cases but there was no effect
I'm not sure if it didn't turn them off or they simply don't have a visible difference.
Maybe someone can explain?

example CreateTexture(name, name, NULL, CS_TEXTURE_NOMIPMAPS | CS_TEXTURE_2D);

That I don't know exactly

blender will create the normal map, commands are in the render menu, look for info at blenderartists.org or other blender sites.