Punxsutawney Phil gets to live. This year.

So far, version 510 is looking to be a lot more stable in the beta releases than I'd anticipated, now that the first couple of major bug rounds have been dealt with. That's really good news.

With things well in hand there, I've been able to shift some attention back to the webclient. KEEP_TOGETHER and KEEP_APART have been implemented now. PLANE_MASTER is still pending, as that's a whole can of worms I haven't completely figured out yet.

I dealt with some bug reports that have been piling up for the webclient, and improving speed is very high on my priority list. Low-FPS games shouldn't have too many issues there, but there are some lingering inefficiencies I think can be dealt with. One thing that I think will help is updating to a newer version of the StageXL library, which ostensibly has some improvements.

A few under-the-hood tweaks are on my radar too, in the hope of eking out more server-side performance in some big games. One of them will appear in the next release: Lists did not include very much slack space when adding to them a few items at a time, so now that's been increased a bit.

I'm aiming to get version 510.1323 out on Monday, and continue with misc. fixes and webclient improvements from there.

511 feature watch: I'm kind of drooling over the potential to maybe add filters to icons, e.g. for blurring, outlines, and drop shadows. I have some vague ideas for this. Nothing is definite yet.

Superbowl L is on its way this weekend, so get your party snacks together. (My blog has a lot of party-friendly recipes, especially of the cheese persuasion, if you're looking for something to bring to your own gathering. I highly recommend the chicken Parmesan meatballs, especially when stuffed with mozzarella.) If Nationwide pulls any depressing crap this year, get on Twitter and give them an earful of grief. And when you clean out your couch Monday morning, don't forget to send your loose change BYOND's way.