November is here, and the snow came with it. That snow didn't stick around too long and this week has gone out with some beautiful weather, but there's no doubt that winter is coming. Although with the way this week has gone, it reminds me of a different context where I've heard that phrase. Yikes.

This week started out with a very strange compiler bug I had to diagnose, which turned out to lead me down a strange path into the guts of the compiler. As it turns out, the null-conditional ?. and ?: operators I introduced in 512 had a fatal flaw in how they were being compiled; it didn't matter enough in most cases to be a problem, but someone found a place where it broke down. This forced me to completely rearrange how these operators are used. I'll go into more details on Patreon.

After that, my journey into the renderer began, but it began slowly. Once I had a test case to look at I started investigating, running client-side profiles, etc., but I couldn't see the problem I'd been asked to look for. There was no real smoking gun to explain the rendering performance, and even though the performance for me was nowhere near as bad as it was for the game's owner, I still saw it needed improvement. This of course led to more testing, more questions, more examination of the code.

What I think is going on here is that some of the performance issues that were brought up to me had nothing to do with the renderer at all, and were in fact network issues. But some were not. One of the ideas I had for improving the renderer, though I didn't know how I was going to do it, was to front-load any KEEP_TOGETHER groups and plane master drawing, but that turns out to be fairly irrelevant to this case. I think instead there's a much bigger need for the use of a texture atlas, which is basically a sprite sheet with some extra work done so you don't see seams at the edges of icons. This kind of thing minimizes switching of textures, which is GPU poison. To that end, I've started work on code for texture atlases in 514.

You can help support BYOND development as a Member or through various donation channels, which includes Patreon and SubscribeStar. Thank you to everyone who's been a part of that so far. Your help keeps new versions coming, and new features with them.

My dad called while I was writing this to let me know one of our radio stations has gone all-Christmas, which means the holidays are approaching fast. Me, I have to scramble to fill a wish list for Christmas and my birthday, which is hard when I'm at the point where most of what I want is either too expensive, won't fit in the house, or is a gift card. Send me some silly suggestions, or even practical ones; maybe they'll inspire me. In the meantime get those blankets and cozy books ready, because Winter Is Coming.