per our conversation and the repro link I sent.

Getting runtime errors because the named var no longer exists. This means Item/New() is never called which means layer is never changed from FLOAT_LAYER to 1.
All of the layers are now floats, and therefore all resolve to the parent layer (which I assume is MOB_LAYER) and keep their original order.
So basically you've got weird inconsistent layering because FLOAT_LAYER is resolving in ways you can't easily predict, and removing that var from New() fixes the issue because it takes the layer=layer+2 line out of play which affects both Item and the animation, keeping them on float layers as well.
Whew.
But I think there is a bug here, which is that FLOAT_LAYER on a visual contents item is allowed to resolve itself from the final icon list (for the main object) instead of simply inheriting the parent's layer which makes WAY more sense.
If you want to put up a report for that (it can go in regular bug reports since it's unrelated to 513 foo) I can put it on my docket and get that sewn up for 513.1525.
Since I just released 1524 today though a new release isn't likely till at least Monday.
I kinda wonder if I should add some kind of power-user debug mode that simply dumps a list of all sprites on the screen and their properties to a file.
Wouldn't be able to get an icon filename or state out of that based on how things currently work, but just being able to see item names and IDs and such would be big.