I just suceeded in getting this the engine mode to work both as a regular Windows .exe app and also as an MFC app. I'm experimenting and trying to find the right approach for integrating my editing system (a separate app) into the game. Can you explain what you mean by typecasting the vars? I haven't tried to declare and use any vars in this engine mode yet.

BTW, I recently upgraded from VS 2003 to VS 2005 and I wish I had done it sooner. One of the biggest advantages is how quickly it will start up your app in debug mode (compared to VS2003). In fact, after the first debug run, it seems like it can start up in debug just as fast as regular mode.

Another thing that is really cool is the "tooltips" in debug mode (datatips?). They actually have little treeview controls embedded in them, so if you pass your cursor over an object variable, you can see all of it's properties and if it has an object embedded in it, you can expand it and see those props too. And the help system works much better -- you tell it to filter on Visual C++, and that's what you get! I found VS2005 at softwaresurplus.com for $125.