Achievements are good in some games, like Peggle. The challenges kept me playing for a while longer than I would've. Ditto for .. WoW, where the achievements kept me going a little time.

The SDK can't do what I think some of you propose, which is to have the variables in layout properties.

Also, there is no definition I can find of workaround which doesn't mean working around a problem or broken feature; in this case there is neither, as better solutions than the supposed 'workaround' exist .

If you consider what a workaround really is:

"A workaround is a bypass of a recognized problem in a system."

"Typically they are considered brittle in that they will not respond well to further pressure from a system beyond the original design."

Then it's clear that using organised methods to hold your game data - such as a hash table or array - which can be saved to disk properly, unlike layout variables would potentially be able to - are neither a workaround nor tough solution, but a genuinely superior one for many uses.

Layout variables are a feature I can see some people using, but ultimately sometimes causing themselves more organisational or hassle as a result of, when there's easier solutions out there! The only caveat is that initial values for hash tables/array can't be set; this can be remedied via some very simple additions to the SDK. If a dev wants to take it on I can send them the sources for either.

All I ask is to make NPCs more than game tokens, I want them to invoke an emotion in the player.

An idle animation - a monster scratching its bum or farting or drilling its nose - would invoke a laugh and keep you entertaining as you progress, wondering what idle animations other types of monsters have.

That is just one example.

Precisely! This is what makes a lot of games more fun, than just NPC's doing nothing.

FileListFiltered can get files with a given extension.

I'm not sure what you mean with background layers but there isn't a concept of backgrounds in Direct-X - and thus Construct - as everything is redrawn every frame.

Running applications silently would have to be implemented via a plugin as I don't remember any way to do it currently.

It's fixed in 0.99 yes.

I'd think that page would get a little hard to maintain; it's possibly easier to check the bug tracker (which can be searched) to see if an issue is known about.

A crash was fixed where if you didn't open the layout where the inherited layer was before others, it'd crash/infinite loop.

It still represents a decent solution till 2.0, for 1 byte of VRAM .

I think the basics should be there, with the note that full info is on the wiki. It's handy to have some handy info there for quick reference.

And as it's free, you should be able to bundle it with your game.

File object expressions would do the job.

It's definitely exciting if acclaimed or professional developers choose to use Construct, as the publicity that comes with their games created by it should bring in more people.