Another solid week is in the books, and we're pretty close now to moving 516 to the stable channel. I still have a couple of little things to look into, mainly a couple of bugs that were on my radar a while ago but kept getting pushed back, but we're nearly there. I said not too long ago I'd be surprised if 516 wasn't in the stable channel by month's end, but I forgot how short February is and month's end is next week, so... it could go either way.

The latest beta release includes a big upgrade to the compiler, both the Dream Maker environment and the command-line version. Now the various stages of compilation show progress bars, as best they can, to give an indication of how the process is moving. In Dream Maker I was also able to make a radical improvement to the object tree, reducing the time to generate or update it substantially. I still want lazy loading there eventually for the images, but that can wait for another day.

So with 516 about to button up, we need to talk about 517. The movement overhaul and first stages of the renderer overhaul are my top priorities. I'm hoping to get off to a fast start and hopefully end up with a relatively short beta period, but it'll take a little bit of time behind the scenes before we can reach a new beta so 516 maintenance releases will continue.

Big thanks to all of the BYOND Members and regular supporters who keep everything running. This work wouldn't be possible without you.

Hopefully the snow will finally melt next week and I can get some errands done. Stupid groundhog.