2.5 is indeed dead. It inherited too many problems from the VB source without solving enough of them to make it worth while. The current code just suffers too much from code smell to make it worth while to port it directly to another language, IMO. Eric maintains the old code base, which is just fine with me, since it let's me focus on DB3 without letting the program grow static and die.
There were lots of possible languages to code a new version of DB in. I chose C# because it combined the WYSIWYG GUI creation tools of VB6 with a strong set of coding libraries (ie: the .Net framework), with the ability to somewhat easily link to libraries written in C.
As far as a release date, it depends entirely on the physics engine. The 2.5/C++ attempt taught me that, minus the physics, the program takes less than a year to code from the ground up. So in order to determine an actual release date, I need to know how long it will take to finish the physics engine, which I just don't know. At this very moment, I'm working on the physics engine. Darwinbots has some unique needs for physics, and after some failed attempts using two different 3rd party physics engines I've decided to bite the bullet and code my own. This physics engine is called "Lodestone", and is coded in C++ using the Test Driven Development methodology. It's about 10K lines of code at the moment. I still need to write various collision detectors, joints, and work on the core algorithms for collision detection and resolution. However my new job keeps me busy so I'm progressing at a snail's pace atm. Hopefully the pace will pick up when I get in to the swing of things, but it might not. You can see the SVN for the physics
here.
When it's done I'll write a .NET wrapper for it (which I've done in the past, and should just take two to four weeks), and then code the rest of the game (which should take approximately ten months), and then it'll be more or less done. Or an early bug ridden version anyway So I'd estimate 12 months from when the physics engine is usable to when I'll have an early version released. And at my present pace, I'd estimate 6 to 12 months to complete the physics engine.
I'd be more than happy to have other people work on this with me., if anyone's interested. Especially people who know C#, C++, and/or physics very well.