Version 509 is not quite at the stage of being a stable build yet, but I think it soon will be. There's one bug in particular I'm waiting for more information on, since it's a big deal and I'd just as soon not deal with it once the 510 process gets underway.

There's a new release today with a few important fixes, one of which has been plaguing SS13, and a couple impacting the new client color/animation features. I'm hoping that a very longstanding issue with the client map apparently freezing may be fixed, but it might be a long shot.

Brainstorming on 510 continues. I'm trying to work out a way to mark an atom as a "plane master", and also trying to decide if it's feasible to do this at a smaller level with overlays or even entire atoms. One thing that's shown up in feature requests since alpha was introduced is a way to flatten out an atom and its overlays so that when applying alpha to the atom, it acts as a single icon instead of the multiple icons it actually is. I really want to be able to introduce this feature in 510 because I think it'd be really good to have, and also it's something I've run across myself.

My personal wish list also includes filters like blurs, outlines, drop shadows, but right now that's still all in the wishful-thinking stage. The webclient can do those things, and I think it's clear enough how I'd manage them in DirectX, but the structural mechanics needed to support them are kind of a bigger deal to work out first.

One thing I've started working on this week is support for ad displacement in the software and on the webclient. There's been some interest expressed in hosts paying for ad removal for their non-Member players. As a result I've added something to the new software version that can be used for this purpose later on (for remote games though, not single-player), and I've been working out a way this whole thing can shake out. The concept I'm working with is that I'd allow someone to buy either an ad-free period or a number of free plays (I haven't decided which and it will likely be done on an experimental basis), for a combination of hub entry, domain, and port range; most of those are optional. So basically, I'm planning on something fairly flexible, and with what I'm setting up it should even be feasible for hosts to purchase ad freedom for every game on their server. I have no exact ETA on this, but I wanted to let everyone know it's going forward; and when it goes in, it probably won't be setup for automatic payments like Membership is for a while, at least not until I get a feel for how it'll work.

(Yeah, I don't love that we have ads, but it does help pay the bills. So does becoming a Member or donating to BYOND, so if you or a lot of your game's community haven't gotten in on that yet, it's always a good time to do so. Time I'm not spending trying to help the revenue stream is time I can spend fixing bugs and developing cool new features!)

NaNoWriMo is going on right now. If you've never done it before, it's a pretty darn fun experience. Granted I only did it once a few years ago, but I got a pretty good book out of it. (This year's reason why I'm not participating: I had just started on another book already.) For those who are trying it out this year, best of luck! If you haven't tried it yet, it's not too late to jump in. As it's only day 6, all you need to do is turn out 2,000 words a day instead of about 1,666 to pull together a novel by the 30th.