I've been so busy with last-minute server stuff that I actually was late to write this post. I'm confident now that I can jettison the old server at year's end, but some of the roadblocks I'm running into presently, while they don't prevent that, certainly aren't making my life easy. Yet I've been pushing hard on this because time is almost up.

516 has to get into beta soon. I really want to get that out into beta before the Christmas break, even though it means bug reports piling up. To be honest, it's such a potentially bad situation that I'm tempted to say screw it and release that to beta in the new year, but if I can get it out and have confidence I'm not gonna go nuts trying to fix unexpected crap, I'd like to. The problem is really not the ordinary types of "this looks weird" or "this behavior changed" bugs, but anything involving client-server communication I might have failed to anticipate that ends up being a bigger problem than anyone in the alphas has discovered so far. Is that likely? Almost certainly not, actually, but the concern is real. I can't stress enough that there's a real balancing act between wanting to give you guys a nice Christmas present and needing to preserve my sanity.

Still, I'm trying to squeeze in a last-minute feature in between bouts of server annoyances, and I'm nearly at the point where I can test this. So I'll probably try to get some more work on that done today, possibly even over the weekend. This is a feature that people have wanted for a long, long time, so if I can get it working I will. If I can't get it working before the beta, I'm confident I can do so during the beta, even though the beta will be short.

I know Christmas is coming soon but the fundometer could use some love too, so I hope you'll dig deep in those couch cushions and spare a few bucks to keep the lights on. Thank you so much to everyone who's helped support BYOND through Membership and as regular subscribers on donation platforms.

We're down to the wire now! After today it's just six official days left before the break. Let's make do this Christmas up right and mak gam. And hopefully it snows this time: not too much, but just enough. In the meantime, I'm waiting for a new batch of frosted gingerbread cookies to come my way (the first batch apparently missed out on some baking powder, so they're a bit tough). Get your shopping in, including for your friendly neighborhood developer.