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Hopefully this is the right place for this, but I am observing a weird behaviour in AGS 3.5.0.
I use a button graphic to display some information, and just swap the buttons normalgraphic with code run when player changes rooms.
However, if the player saves the game, exits and loads the game, the button graphic defaults to the original default value given in the GUI settings for that button, rather than the state it should have been saved in.

Is this a feature or a bug in the AGS engine itself, or am I missing something here?

I just sent out the beta version of the game to a few friends to be tested. I might still add a couple small optional features tomorrow, but the core game is now fully complete!
Now to see how badly my friends can break the thing! 

I think it's perfectly fine for participants to vote, as long as they make a conscious effort to:
A) Not divert their votes for personal gain
B) Don't vote for themselves

The best way to do this is to read the entries, not look at how other people have voted, and then just vote how you feel is fairest.

[Tut-Tut]

The deadline is over and it is time to read, and also to vote.

Our stories this time around are:
Tut-Tut by Mandle
The man of the stairways by KyriakosCH
Ben’s Rum by Sinitrena
Ice Under Fire by Baron

Anyone can read the entries and vote. Each voter will have one vote to cast in each of the following categories:

• Best technical writing quality
• Best overall story
• Best secret or event revealed
• Best individual character

Votes must be submitted by the following deadline: 5th March 2021 - 23:59:59 UTC

I have reached the Minimum Viable Product -stage, where I have a game that can be played in a meaningful way. The current build has been sent to a couple friends so they can test it out and provide feedback (the first one already reported two minor bugs).
Next I will add new graphics and animations, as well as start working on adding the store and NPC's that the player can interact with between diving for more treasure.

I managed to score next week as vacation from work. A full week I should be able to dedicate to MAGS!

LET'S DO THIS THING!

(I'm still way behind schedule, but this gives me hope of making the deadline, at least.)

This is what seems to me to be a determination to defend the status quo - arguing either that the problem does not exist ("men are sexualised too!"), or that attempts to address the issue are themselves worse ("Oh noes! Anita Sarkeesian").

"Men are sexualized too!" is a true statement, but only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand. This thread was about how women are represented in media, and how we might increase and improve the quality of that representation. The fact that there are other groups out there who the media could represent better feels kind of off-topic, which I'd think we can agree on.

This whole discussion is about how entertainment affects our views on human rights, criminal justice and politics,
and if it didn't have this effect, there wouldn't be so many guys so ardently fighting to preserve the status quo.

I've yet to see a single "guy" in this thread "ardently fighting to preserve the status quo". I have, however, seen plenty of instances of people being accused of doing that, while trying to do the opposite, so this well might just have been poisoned before the conversation even started.

I dunno, Ali. I've had a few good laughs here! 

We're talking about entertainment products here, about things made to amuse and entertain and distract, not human rights or criminal justice or politics.

As is customary, I am well behind schedule, but still making progress. Finally made the functionality for player to expend and run out of air while diving, along with UI elements for managing consumables! Still need to make a proper inventory for the treasures you can collect, as well as code in the monsters you will face when diving. Once all that is done, I'll try to add some story elements, a win condition and a shop for upgrades, though that last one might not make it before deadline.

Today on: "Every opinion I don't like is a strawman."
It's like talking to a wall, and so I shall now cease for the time being.

Oh Gods, we've fallen to the Anita Sarkeesian level of nonsense! Abort! ABORT!

As for how women need to dress in videogames to appease everyone, there isn't a solution to be had. If you have any sliver of bare skin visible, some tier of feminist will complain it's titillating for men and thus wrong, and if you cover women up another tier of feminist will complain we are hiding women from sight and thus nullifying their presence.

As for guys, aside from that loud and obnoxious "muh hobby muscht be kept pure of the cootiesch" -crowd, they are usually just happy to have female characters around.

That's kind of funny. It seems that, like most icons, Lara is many things depending on who you ask. She's either a sex icon driving women away from games with her polygonal titties and short shorts, while male gamers drool over her, or she's a strong, inspiring female protagonist.

A thousand downloads is nothing to be scoffed at, and comparing yourself to AAA titles with millions of funding is senseless.
The whole game industry started from small, and grew up over time. Now we need to grow a new branch of it, if we want to see a new kind of audience catered to, and a thousand downloads is a damn fine start!

More importantly, saying "women need to make more good games" risks placing the responsibility for fixing inequality on the people who are disadvantaged.

True, but telling male devs who want to make the kinds of games they like that "you need to make these other kinds of games despite not wanting to" isn't likely to produce quality games either, and will just end up leaving all parties unsatisfied. It happens already, it's called having a crap job, and it is exactly how games like Barbie Horse Adventures and such come to be.

The bingo thing still makes sense, though, if we look at the games and their stories from a purely supply and demand point of view. There is clearly a millions strong audience out there, hungry for these kinds of power fantasy games with 'gritty' stories and hulking rolemodel protagonists that are just bad-boy enough to be kind of edgy and controversial, and every kid I grew up with had one or more phases where fantasies of military and combat experience, however unrealistic, ran rampant. Trying to say "We want games to stop catering to this pre-existing audience and instead cater to a different audience" is a futile effort, and seems misguided to me. Rather than trying to say "those games and characters are bad design", we need people actually making those different and better designs, showing off it can be done, and then we need new audiences to find those games and enjoy them.

The question is: is the demand really there? And what will it take to get game companies to take the plunge and make an honest effort at stepping out of their comfort zone and profitable, pre-established market?

In my opinion, it will take a similar growth story that the currently dominant market was born out of. Small indie developers creating new things, and building those up into something greater over time, eventually becoming a business rather than an art. Sadly, 'games for girls' that exist nowadays didn't really start there, and seem to come from one of three backgrounds:
1) The corporate cash grab, along the lines of barbie horse adventures, where a big corporation makes a half-hearted token gesture to the female gamer market.
2) The Bejeweled / mobile game, which is technically a game, but has little to experience and often no story or characters at all.
3) Traditionally male focused games being turned into female variants of themselves, often by developers who aren't entirely interested or are working under such strict limitations that the whole idea is dead on arrival.

What I think we need: more female indie game developers doing their own thing, proving themselves and making the kinds of games that are both worth playing and something these female developers actually want to see.

Am I the only one who looks at that list of "generic white dudes" and can't find two who are really all that alike? Is this just a reverse case of the "all asians look the same to westerners" trope? That image alone hosts a wide array of different nationalities, facial structures, archetypes, hairstyles, skin colours and more, and thus seems to already represent a wide array of different races where one might well argue several of them aren't even all that white.

Also: when did this thread become about white men being a problem again? I thought we were talking about gender equality?

[depth]

Damn! Finished already?
And here I am still struggling to put together to core gameplay loop, and after I finish that I still need to work for at least a few more days to give my game about diving for deep sea treasure some depth. I'll be traveling this weekend, though, so I expect to have to crunch quite a bit during the next two weekends, so I can meet the deadline.

[stolen]

Ah, I see Mandle has stolen away with the first entry! Good, good!

Japan still stubbornly think there’s going to be an Olympics this year. I can’t see it happening. We haven’t even started vaccinating yet. There’s talk of having it behind closed doors but what would be the point?

TV rights and money, I'd guess.
The 2020 Hockey World Championships were insured, so the organizers got a hefty paycheck when the competition was cancelled. Maybe the Olympics, with special infrastructure projects and vastly greater investment, is in an opposite situation and a lot of people stand to lose a lot of money if the contest isn't held? Even if the contest is held behind closed doors, in a stump version of itself, at least the organizers can say they held it and fulfil a contractual obligation. Or maybe it's just a matter of pride for them.

As for my own pandemic experience, it's turned out quite well up here in Finland. Maybe a third of people wear masks in public places, though social distancing and inviolable personal space were core concepts of Finnish culture well before the pandemic (in Finnish culture it is generally considered rude to stand within stabbing distance of other people), so that might have helped restrict spread. My office of 100+ workers currently has maybe 3 to 5 people present at any given time, and I myself go there once or twice a week just to get out of my home for a bit. Almost everyone works from home if their job allows it. Grocery store food delivery service industry is booming as people avoid going to the shops.

Government has set a goal to vaccinate 70% of the country by July, which most people consider "a tad optimistic". Currently less than 4% vaccinated. Daily new infection rate in a country of about 5 million people is around 400.