It's been a strange week here, where I got derailed a number of times trying to button up for a release, and as a result, well, that release hasn't happened. I'm gonna aim for early next week, and I want to try to speedrun through some map editor issues in the meantime.

The good news is that the first disbursement of the Indiegogo campaign funds has just come through, with only a small amount of the remainder held in reserve for now. I don't know how long I need to give that to clear, but chances are I can actually proceed with the order either today or early next week. And then... the waiting. And then an intense period of chaos.

I'm really looking forward to the new development machine, but boy is October gonna be a stressful month. I can only hope that WebView2 starts to pull together relatively quickly without throwing me too many curve balls. I'm actually deeply concerned that there's a hidden gotcha standing in my way, but the only way to find that out is gonna be to dive in.

I've been building up rather an extensive list of other possibilities for 516 to hopefully go along with the WebView2 upgrade without being necessarily gigantic overhauls (since that's a big deal all on its own). But I suspect that, unless the rendering ends up being a problem, a render-stack rework will come later. The whole Unity debacle has also been a strong reminder that BYOND's standalone distribution needs to be a lot easier and more accessible, so at some point I want to get on that as well.

But at the moment too many balls are in the air and there's no telling what the next steps will be, apart from this:

1. BYOND 515 beta release under a newer Windows compiler to test that everything is good to go.
2. Complete wind-down of the old system for transfer to the new.
3. Hook up the new system and go insane in a long process of spinning it up.
4. Begin a 516 fork and investigation of how to get started with WebView2.
5. Move 515 to the stable channel and continue maintenance releases.

That list isn't nearly as modest as it sounds. It involves a whole lot of question marks and time commitment.

As always I'm grateful to all of you who help support BYOND through Membership and the various donation channels. For those who haven't yet, now's a great time to contribute to keeping the lights on; this always seems to be a rather lean stretch of the year.

I bought donuts. Don't judge me.