At least now you know the lower limit of your engine! However, I'm sure that it'd run smoothly if several effects were disabled (moblur, etc.). Most production games have graphical options where one can opt to reduce or raise graphics quality. Just toggle those effects on and down.

Pairer object is a bit difficult to work with. As a tip from someone who's battled that eccentric object: don't mix families and objects. This alone will save a ton of time spent on the pairer object.

Runs slowly on my system, the mouse lags and everything is kinda choppy. 'bout 20 FPS, I'd say.

Celeron 2.4 GHz

ATI Radeon 9550 256 MB (PS2.0)

1.5 GB RAM

Windows XP

Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaap mobo

I have a feeling that the Else statement is screwing you up. Let's see what happens:

• checks if walking, plays the walking animation
• then if the above fails, it plays standing animation
• now check for key pressed, in this case it starts another animation

After one tick, it checks those events again, but the "key pressed" already triggered in previous trick, so it won't trigger in this one. Meanwhile, the above two events had triggered already, resetting the animation to either one. So, your X animation only plays for one tick.

I suggest replacing the Else event with this (right click the condition to invert it):

+ is NOT walking

+ X-animation is NOT playing

play idle animation

Also, you might want to add the "X-animation is NOT playing" condition in walking animation event, too.

In unlimited mode, it runs at just below 600 FPS, which is impressive for my machine. Neat effect!

As far as I know, the object always exists even if there are no instances of it. By adding them to the layout - even non-layout objects - you DECLARE them, so the runtime can use it. C++ and other programming languages are full of such declarations, so object type exists within runtime. You can create and destroy them within runtime as you see fit; if you remove them within edit time, they're gone for good.

I don't know, it feels like Frankenstein of RPGs. The story is interesting and the concept of companion conversations etc., but otherwise it all feels too familiar. Still, it is quite a nice game!

Only when they contract the bird flu.

Har, har! Geddit! Bird flu! Flying pigs!

...

Screw you. My dog still loves me.

Yeah, the flu is mostly dangerous to juniors and seniors. Juniors, because they haven't developed the immunity system fully yet... seniors, because their immunity system is having an Alzheimers or something.

But if your kids are healthy, you've got nothing to fear. I'd worry about kids whose moms kept them waaaaay too sterile. Don't say no when kids want to play in the dirt - it makes 'em into excellent candidates for Fallout-esque survival!

As long as they don't dig a landmine up, like it happened to one of kids I read about... eek. Luckily it didn't go off even as the toddler was hitting it with a toy truck. Imagine the father's face.

Err. Yeah, get well soon!

Instead of thinking in terms of "split screen", how about you think in terms of "two cameras"? Suddenly it becomes so much easier to develop!

PNG is de facto standard, though. Lossless quality, good compression?

Have several layers of background.

• bottom, fixed background - usually features that don't ever move as you do, a significant space feature such as galactic core, distant galaxies etc.)
• middle, "slow" layers - scroll slower than the main display - usually large features such as nebulae, dust clouds etc.
• top, "fast" layer - immediate surroundings scroll fast, typically planets and stuff