It has been a long sleep road for my DS3 too. You are not alone in that. He/ we coped with sleep terrors early on through until almost his 3rd birthday, and woke several times per night until a couple months ago when he started sleeping through more nights than not. He is sensitive to food and drink needs, and now will wake if he needs to use the toilet, or because he's hungry or thirsty. Our nighttime routine includes snacks now, and is fairly routine (run or jump on the trampoline, bath, snacks and books) so he can be prepared for what comes next. He still takes between 45m and 2 hours to go down at night wanting to play talk games or play so we've built that into his schedule. He too hasn't taken naps at home since his 2.5 summer. I too worry about not enough sleep, but there are nights (few, sigh) that he will tell me he is tired and will put on his pjs very early and go to bed. He is still an active sleeper/ dreamer (often talking or moving around in his sleep). We do not have animated videos before bed (sometimes we'll watch something like next gen star trek..). One thing that I think helped was installing some low light remote control solar system models so it wasn't totally dark. He can control them from bed and it provides for isolated focus. Hang in there. Sadly, no magic solution to share - just a smile for you in your struggle.
