This is all very interesting.
In my opinion, it's best to use a small amount of object types. For example, there's no need to have a 'tree' and 'rock' object if they have an identical function.
I'm interested in the alternatives for this? Isn't it easier, when building scenes, to have semantic objects for greater clarity? Don't families serve the purpose of grouping functionality?
Have your layer setup fleshed out before making the first level of a game with many layouts. It's incredibly boring to mirror layer changes across 50+ levels.
Totally agree with this. It would be great if we could add/remove and loop through layers at runtime and if inheritance layers made an appearance!
As far as I'm concerned, after working on some big projects, I noticed that I was losing tonnes of time looking for pieces of code in all my event sheets.
I agree with Jeff Skyrunner regarding event sheets. I too find the integrated search poor, so when wanting to search across multiple event sheets I use a text editor to search all xml files in the 'Event Sheets' folder. Ashley perhaps this highlights some potential search improvements :)
Most has already been covered but I'll add this:
I use families for any functionality. If I have an enemy, I create an enemy family, if I have a button, I create a button family. On a large project, functionality always ends up being duplicated at some point and upgrading the logic from objects to families is a pain and sometimes dangerous (despite being made easier recently).