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It occurs to me - how often does a character stand at exactly the same Ypos as a walkbehind? It looks bad if a character passes through a walkbehind, so surely most of the time the walkable area is setup in such a way as that rarely if ever happens? Could that contribute to why lots of us haven't noticed?

Well, it can happen when we have a background of a field with high weeds for example and we want the characters to go through those weeds. We draw enough layers of objects or walkbehind and the characters can go through the objects/walkbehinds to give the illusion of shuffling through the weeds.
This is one example of a situation where the characters can have a matching y-position with the baselines.

To better illustrate, if an artist/level designer wants to do stuff like this :

The problem that the character and the objects have a tendency to 'forget' their baseline in D3D9 is something I got a couple of times. It had mostly happened when the y position of the character is the same as the baseline of the object, and I can speculate, since D3D9 mostly uses floats to calculate positions, the rendering messes up because of a rounded float or something like that. It happens too with walk-behinds since they are processed as objects in the D3D9 renderer. It also happens with characters when two are overlaping and have the same y position. Often flip-floping with behind and front of each other.

I managed to find a way for that problem to occur less frequently. I discovered this with scripted disappearing objects, where suddenly the character appeared in front of an object when another one is visible, and appeared behind the same object when that other one wasn't visible.
To avoid that I had to make sure no object and walk-behind have the same baseline value (always have a difference of 1, for example). Doing so, objects forgetting their baseline didn't happen anymore or very rarely.

Have you tried Build -> Rebuild all files? This should resolve the problem.

[types of games]

To answer your question, I think people project their own ideas about what she is saying based on knowing beforehand that she's a feminist and she's critiquing their one true love (gaming and gaming culture). It was very obvious to me this was the case when watching LimpingFish's video. There were a lot of points in which Thunderf00t's arguments boiled down to "some feminists say this, so this is what Sarkeesian thinks and says. She is so stupid".

Well. That surely explains it about the dectrators' side. Though I also saw the other type of misinterpretation where there are people who interpreted it has a true sign that video games using the Damsel in Distress trope are the cause why women are downgraded, the cause of domestic violence or all the ugly things that are done to women.
Or I also saw that some people are considering that any game using that trope is automatically lazy and/or bad.
And this despite the fact that Miss Sarkeesian never said such things. But I guess the psychology behind this kind of misinterpretation is the same.

While these types of games are a refreshing departure from the standard formula, and something I'd generally like to see more of, the focus is still squarely on the male characters and so at their core these games are really deconstructing the player's assumptions about the traditional hero archetype. A true subversion of the trope would need to star the damsel as the main playable character. It would have to be her story. Sadly, there are very few games that really explore this idea.

I will be a bit pedantic about some details on that part. It won't dismiss her point, but there are some little mistakes that are mostly semantic. The first part of that quote isn't really a deconstruction ('Shadow of the Colossus' is more of a deconstruction than the situation with Elaine); it is mostly accepted as a true subversion. What she calls a "true subversion" is actually an inversion and, depending on how it's written, it can jump into a different trope that isn't contained by the Damsel In Distress one. More details on this page about how to play with that trope.
But again, the point stands.

While the delivery isn't perfect, so what, the sentiment is clear. "I would like to play as a woman more often in an inspiring role". She didn't ask for LESS of anything, nor for WOMAN BEATS THE MENS. She asked for more heroic women. Heck, the example game she states is an example of subversion (instead of deconstruction) of the trope in action.

Still. 3 videos to present that sentiment, even if the "Damsel in Distress" trope is an interesting subject that takes its share of time to talk about, confused more people than it should. I say her videos are functional for that extent. Neither good nor bad. Just functional. Although I wished more thorough revisions on her drafts to put more weight on points people seem to have missed. To me, it gives the feeling she didn't prooftest her lecture enough with the target audience, but only with some people who already was agreeing with her sentiment.

Genuine question here. Why is it that Miss Sarkeesian's videos are so easily misinterpreted by, what I could see, a major lot of people? I read/watched a bunch of lectures, thesis and research papers, also I checked - always out of curiosity - to see the reaction of the people when I could. So generally it's not something that happens with a well researched and constructed lecture - even a controversial one that touches the status quo. If the point and message of a lecture get mostly through to all parties (pro and detractors alike), it means it was correctly written. That's my personal observation though.
I'm rather confused (and probably naive) of the difference between the message that people seem to get and what Miss Sarkeesian actually says.

It makes toast. What the hell more could you possibly want?

Jam?

After months of real life issues I had to tackle, I still managed to advance with the development of game on my free time. With the feedbacks I had, I improved some parts and some mechanics. I still have to finish a proper teaser video.

To thank you for your patience and support, here are some new sneak peeks with two screenshots from the PixeLand section and some NPC Character Designs.

PS: Also I cleaned up some screenshots in the head post. There were a little too many.

Globally, you should first make a rough outline of your overall story. Depending how you want to cut down your story - in acts, chapters, missions, days, etc... - let's go by splitting the story into linear sequences of important plot points.

Introduction to plot point 1 -> plot point 1 to plot point 2 -> and so on until -> plot point N to conclusion.

Doing a flowchart here is useful. And generally 7 major plot points are a good basis.
Each sequence has the introduction of the player's situation and the goal. At this point you have to build your puzzle backward by beginning from the goal.

What obstacle is stopping the player to get to that goal? -> What solution does the player have to overcome that obstacle? -> Does the player need something to overcome that obstacle? -> If so what? -> Can the player get what he needs immediately -> If no, this sets a new subgoal. Repeat from step 1 for this subgoal, then as many times you feel it is needed until you get to the player's initial situation.

And then you "reward" the player with the continuation of your story up to the next sequence. You can add some character development, or presentation of the universe of the game during the solving of the puzzle - for example you need to open a door, but in your Universe the door only opens through genetic signatures; how the characters react when they interact with the environment or other characters while trying to figure out the puzzle.

This is game story scripting at its simplest; linear and bare.

You can then add depth with either a new gameplay idea (like the memory system in Resonance), or presenting more tools to the player to overcome the obstacles (like some puzzles in Zack and Wiki), or branching storylines (like the Pandora Directive)... Well at this point possibilities are endless.

The document Crimson Wizard posted is also a good template to inspire from.

Oh! That would explain that background sounds and music suddenly stopping. I wasn't able to reproduce that.
Good job.

Alternatively you can set a global Character pointer like characterFollowing. That way you can keep track which character is following your PC, and if it's set as null it checks that no NPC does.

It was worth the wait. Great job!

Hearing myself on video it always feels like it's a mirror that talks me back.

- a left sided sole (since the eyes of that flatfish are usually on the right side)
- a 13 leaves clover
- a crystallized rainbow that is harder than diamond
- a kitchen knive inhabited by the spirit of a Master Chef
- a misprinted comic book whose even pages are on the right
...

I can go on all day. =D

Well, that comforts me a bit.

There's no bool in AGS script, it is a mystification .
In the engine code, it was "int".

For some reason I remembered it as a bool in the engine code, but now that I checked, you're right.
Man, I got confused.

I am not sure it will optimize anything. AFAIK such parameters are always passed as 4 bytes (on 32-bit platforms) regardless of the type you declared (int, short or char).

Wait?! You mean I took the time in my AGS scripts to carefully use the adequate type for a given variable, for being concerned about memory space, for nothing? GAAAH!
No seriously. I was mostly using shorts and chars, then int for last when I knew I had to deal with really big numbers.

It was originally a bool.
The char comes mostly out of an optimisation habit.

For the save file format, I was once considering a new one as an encrypted XML file. This idea came when I once wished I could retrieve a variable from any save file using only the known variable name. However I don't know the feasibility of something like this yet with the current AGS.

So far the AudioChannel.SetRoomLocation() with the new parameter is normally backward compatible. I made the parameter optional (the default value is 0 where it calculates the range of the sound like the old way).
The opacity of the Overlay so far was always in the source code but never actually used. The only thing I did for now, I just changed the optional 'transparent' parameter in Overlay.CreateGraphical(int x, int y, int slot, char transparent) where the transparent value is now a char that can set the opacity (1-255) of the overlay when it's set higher than 0. This solution's really ugly and not very user friendly on a coding standpoint, but it was just for personal use, so it didn't bother me that much. But I'm open to a better solution.

The bugs are, of course, an exception. But, there may be bugs that existed for so long, that people started to rely on them. In this case, they should be treated as feature. If you fix em, increase version number, test against engine version stored in game, and choose between backwards compatible and new paths.

There was an old one in the version 3.1.0 of the engine - or was it 3.0.0? I'm not sure - about the Character/Object/DrawingSurface.Tint(int red, int green, int blue, int saturation, int luminance) function in D3d where you could change the tint RGB values without the need of the saturation and luminance, as opposed as in DirectDraw mode. I was quite accustomed to that bug (which I thought was a feature) until I was taken aback when it was corrected on the next versions. When the engine went open source, I changed it a little so that when 'saturation' and 'luminance' are both set to 100, the function only used the RGB values to change the tinting. Again, not very pretty, but functional without breaking anything. Though a Character/Object/DrawingSurface.RGBTint(int red, int green, int blue) - or Character/Object/DrawingSurface.RGBATint(int red, int green, int blue, int alpha)? - function would have been better.

If Alan is okay, I'm in favour to include the features Alan did for his build of the AGS Engine.
On a creative standpoint the little features and enhancements he put are interesting. Like the auto panning on the sounds linked on the animation frames relative to the screen, the new filters in DirectDraw, the new parameter in ChangeRoom() to set the loop/direction, the improved vSync and Gamma in D3d for windowed mode and the fact he setup the backbuffer in D3d to retrieve the screen faster which can open to some interesting ideas for postrendering.

I also added some features in my build with an added optional parameter for AudioChannel.SetRoomLocation(int x, int y, int radius) where you can set the radius of the sound earshot, and auto panning relative to the character position; and a variable to set the opacity of Overlays;

Edit: Ignore me. This post isn't here.

The GhostPoster.

I'm pretty sure Nefasto is asking elentgirl if she uses this, not if AGS has it.

My mistake too. I should've pointed the question to elentgirl.

Unfortunately I can't manage to reproduce the bug on my machines. I also used a global sound channel pointer. Assuming the modified build and editor are both used the sound channel location, radius and volume return correctly once the game is restored.

Is there an on_event with a 'eEventRestoreGame' somewhere?