So, the plan was to get another release out this week. Why didn't I? Because a number of other issues had piled up, and I was waiting on some more reports that haven't yet come through. (Most of those revolve around the map editor.) Mostly it's the bugs, not much in the way of crazy interruptions at home for a change. Next week all those crazy interruptions get worse, though, so it'll be "fun" to figure out how to navigate a schedule.

Byondapi is getting some big upgrades with new access to some of the built-in procs. Some interesting discussions came up around the topic of Byondapi as well, leading me to some ideas for improving performance when we get to BYOND 516. It's also been requested that I add an ultra-fast version for radically unsafe calls, and while I'm still not willing to do some of the insane stuff like open up direct memory access to strings, I do think there's another option that covers some of the use cases that were brought up.

With BYOND 515 in the wind-down phase and nearly the new stable release, I need to do a bunch of prep work to get ready for a new system so I can hit the ground running for 516. WebView2 is on deck, and I know that's been something a lot of you have been looking forward to forever. Me too.

This is also a time I'll be reviewing other possibilities for 516 features, and other miscellany during the maintenance phase for 515. The topic of dark mode in Dream Maker came up again recently, for instance, and it's something I very much want to revisit.

Thanks a ton to all of you whose contributions helped out this past month. All of you Members, donors, and the supporters on Patreon and SubscribeStar are important.

Another thing coming up in the near future is the Great New York State Fair! This year I'm hoping it really is great, or at least better, because since the pandemic (and since Governor Grabass wrecked it with the 18-day run experiment that crashed and burned) it's been a little thin. This year, I think I'll even forgo a scooter, which wasn't possible a year ago. Progress!