...Uh, you mean the "where are my groupies" thread? That's a little different from "Where are female indie devs".

I use MXML professionally, but I could see how it might be overkill for an indie game.

You can use CSS to set the background image of a standard MXML button to a Symbol/MovieClip of your choice, and you can set different Symbols for different states, i.e. Up, Over, Down, Pressed, Selected, Disabled, etc. Something like this:

Code:

.myButtonStyle
{
upSkin: Embed(source='/MyAssets.swf', symbol='myUpSkin');
overSkin: Embed(source='/MyAssets.swf', symbol='myOverSkin');
downSkin: Embed(source='/MyAssets.swf', symbol='myDownSkin');
}

Code:

<mx:Button label="Hello" styleName="myButtonStyle" click="doThing()"/>

And now, my grand unifying theory of gender roles. Starting from two presumptions:

1. Environment contributes to behavior. I mean, spelling contributes to behavior, for chrissake. (Psst, my name is NESky and I am a fanboy.) So of course people tend towards culturally defined gender roles in an effort to identify themselves.

2. Genetics and hormones, including sex, also contribute to behavior. I mean, how could they not? For starters, pregnancy is a huge life-changing investment that will never happen to me. Although the effect of pregnancy can be mitigated if you specifically avoid it, it's nevertheless a big deal that has a ripple effect on everything we do.

So my theory is that genetics tip us slightly off balance with relatively minor sex differences, and people pick up on these differences and focus on them and exaggerate them.

Females are naturally slightly smaller overall. So they go on diets to look smaller to be even more female, while males work out and "bulk up" to be even more male.

Behavior differences probably work the same way. Any imbalance due to "nature", however slight, will get exaggerated due to "nurture".

So here we are at the tail end of the bell curve, doing something that is for many reasons seen as "a guy thing". Probably some fraction of us wouldn't even be here if our gender wasn't seen as the dominant gender here. The same force that keeps women out of indie game development is keeping men in. We are able to identify ourselves, finding like-minded folk, in this community.

So is this a problem? Haha, well, that's a very subjective question.

Remember there are two things going on here: natural and cultural forces. I am totally okay with the natural ones. However, the cultural tendency towards gender roles frustrates me a little. I an interested to see the things that people would do if they weren't tending towards gender roles. I am interested in making people feel welcome to do whatever they want. I am interested in diversity, for its own sake.

Sorry. Maybe I'm too hesitant to derail.

You can achieve exactly what you're asking for using MXML and CSS.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-cssflex/index.html

One problem: my gamepad maps the D-Pad to buttons 1, 2, 3, and 4. The game permanently maps buttons 1 and 2 to shoot and power. So I cannot use the D-Pad without accidentally shooting all the time. So I have to use a keyboard instead.  

Wow. that is one godawful gamepad. Can you tell me what brand it is so I can never, ever buy one?

Xpadder or JoyToKey may be able to help you. AutoHotkey almost certainly can, but learning its scripting language may be more trouble than you want.

Too late, I already beat the game with a keyboard.  

The gamepad I have is an older version of the iShock. The left analog stick is mapped to LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN while the D-Pad is mapped to 1, 2, 3, 4 and the face buttons are 5, 6, 7, 8. This usually isn't a problem because most games ignore the direct input anyway and I can use JoyToKey to map the input to the keyboard however I like. But because this game tries to be clever about gamepad input, it screws me over.

The writer is female.

Why the aggression?

I like it!

Anyone know how to get to the "cold place"?

I have tomorrow off so it would be particularly convenient if you finish today. Otherwise, take your time, I'll need the weekend.

Yeah, after many attempts, I beat the game with 9/9 extra lives, because it's impractical to die.

I had an issue with constantly moving upwards but it turned out that my gamepad sticks were off center. The readme also says: "Plugging a gamepad on the fly can cause a slow down for a few seconds."

There are people who are interested in getting into video games, but have the same reaction to, say, Cave Story, or anything beyond Canabalt, that you guys are having to Hydorah. They want to like it but just don't have the right combination of skill and persistence. On the one hand, it makes me sad that so much of the video game community is out of reach of these people. On the other hand, Hydorah is awesome.  

I'm especially digging the Path of the Scylla level on the second fork of the map. EDIT: Jinx!

Nice!

I chose the default settings the first time I played, and I got a bunch of items but then the difficulty curve kinda skyrocketed. There was a difficult area that was far from my spawn point, so it took a long time to get there and when I arrived I died quickly. So then I started again with easier settings and it was more fun.

The music and the wall textures served to distinguish areas a bit, although I felt more could be done here. It didn't take long for me to notice that rooms seemed to be generated from templates. Like, it seems there's just one room to serve as a lock for explosives and lasers, so now when I enter that room I immediately know what I'm supposed to do there. I guess the grappling hook and morph ball have different lock rooms, and I like that the game continues to reinforce them after you pass the lock.  

The twitchy grass had an otherworldly feel, but I didn't spot any other graphical details like that...

I like the way the secret passages were handled.

I spotted one large boss. Are there more kinds of large bosses?

EDIT: Oh, and it looked like the map is a tree, with no loops/shortcuts. Shortcuts and checkpoints would have been helpful when I was playing a harder map.

I realize the controls are customizable. But on top of the customizable controls, there's a noncustomizable mapping on gamepad buttons 1 and 2.

This game is amazing and awesome.

One problem: my gamepad maps the D-Pad to buttons 1, 2, 3, and 4. The game permanently maps buttons 1 and 2 to shoot and power. So I cannot use the D-Pad without accidentally shooting all the time. So I have to use a keyboard instead. 

...Is that a StarCraft quote followed by a Mortal Kombat quote?

Why does every Sonic game have to be judged "for a Sonic game"? I mean, does anyone care if Super Paper Mario is good "for a Mario game"? What is it about Sonic that demands consistency?\

EDIT: Actually I see this all the time regarding Metroid games too.

Both of your suggested methods sound good. I don't know why they wouldn't work without more info.

This is how I do it:

Code:

for (var i: int = 0; i < array.length;) {
  if (array[i].removeMe) {
    array.splice(i, 1);
  } else {
    i++;
  }
}

Losing an hour of gameplay time is one thing, but if I lost something like 10, I'd probably just stop bothering with the game. Also, RE being story-driven to a certain extent would add even more frustration. Being forced to go through the exact same story over and over again is neither fun nor interesting.

I agree that replaying a long story-driven game can be frustrating. So just stop playing when you run out of lives, problem solved. Just because you never saw the "good" ending doesn't mean the game was bad.

But yeah, there are other ways to get you invested in the game without putting 10 hours of progress on the line.