ID:2044101
 
The end of February is upon us, which means in a few more weeks car dealerships will stop advertising their Presidents' Day sales. Monday is Leap Day, which I'm pretty sure was named for the usual crop of US presidential candidates making voters want to leap out of windows.

Astute developers will note there has been no release this week. One bug fix is in the pipeline, and I'm still making up my mind on a related issue regarding right-click menus. (On the one hand, I don't think it was ever appropriate for them to pick up atoms with mouse_opacity=0; on the other, some games rely on it and I don't know if the inconsistency is all that awful.)

The main reason there's been no release yet is that I've been busy on a few fronts, the biggest of them being a potential fix for the big icon issue. Namely, that big icons sometimes appear or disappear suddenly instead of being in view when appropriate. I'm working on a solution to that that I think ought to work, hopefully with negligible impact on performance.

The setup I'm working on divides the map into rectangular chunks in viewer-pixel space. Every appearance, movable, and image has visual bounds. (Turfs will join them later, on an as-needed basis.) Those bounds don't take client.dir into consideration, because screw that, but they should handle most other cases. Each server tick, any movables that have updated get re-positioned into the correct chunks. Whichever chunks are in the player's viewport are scanned for items that the player should know about (which is the part I'm working on next).

This is a big-deal change, and it's important because not only have some games had major headaches with big icons, but with 510's new lighting capabilities it's going to affect all kinds of stuff. Plus once this is in place, I can start phasing out my old big-icon code from 455, a system that was limited and a little bit buggy, and a pain in the butt to maintain. That code did try to take client.dir into account, but screw that.

For the first run I expect not to port any of this to the webclient. Which is fine, because the webclient isn't dealing with the old big-icon code anyway. When I do get around to it, the change should be pretty straightforward--much easier than trying to bring over the old code, which is why I never did it in the first place.

Webclient front-end work is underway as well, in which I hope to alter the way play/embed links work so that they're more convenient and can use your current BYOND login. Additionally I have not forgotten some FPS-related issues, where I think I can improve performance. The Pixel Realms team has also let me know that there's some kind of devilish caching issue, so that's on my radar to look into again as well.

Finally, I have my eye on some possible site and hub changes related to pager messages and the ban system. One thing that's been on my list awhile is a setting that allows only friends to page you, and that code is pretty much all in place except for the site part, so I may get to it quite soon.

Hey SS13 friends, a lot of the changes I've been working on all across the board are to help you guys out. For those of you who aren't Members yet, this is a good time to show some love and help support BYOND--and pass the message along!
Really looking forward to the big icon fix. :D
In response to Reformist
Reformist wrote:
Really looking forward to the big icon fix. :D
In response to Ter13
Ter13 wrote:
Reformist wrote:
Really looking forward to the big icon fix. :D

In response to GreatPirateEra
GreatPirateEra wrote:
Ter13 wrote:
Reformist wrote:
Really looking forward to the big icon fix. :D


In response to Audeuro
Audeuro wrote:
GreatPirateEra wrote:
Ter13 wrote:
Reformist wrote:
Really looking forward to the big icon fix. :D



One thing that's been on my list awhile is a setting that allows only friends to page you, and that code is pretty much all in place except for the site part, so I may get to it quite soon.

:(
In response to Kozuma3
Kozuma3 wrote:
One thing that's been on my list awhile is a setting that allows only friends to page you, and that code is pretty much all in place except for the site part, so I may get to it quite soon.

:(

Why the frowny face? All this does is give people who want to be left alone the option to have just that. The default setting will be the way things are now.
In response to D4RK3 54B3R
D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
Audeuro wrote:
GreatPirateEra wrote:
Ter13 wrote:
Reformist wrote:
Really looking forward to the big icon fix. :D




In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Kozuma3 wrote:
One thing that's been on my list awhile is a setting that allows only friends to page you, and that code is pretty much all in place except for the site part, so I may get to it quite soon.

:(

Why the frowny face? All this does is give people who want to be left alone the option to have just that. The default setting will be the way things are now.

He's just sad it's gonna make him realize nobody has him on their friend list.
Mean.
In response to Nadrew
Lmfao. Savage Nadrew strikes again!
In response to Nadrew
Nadrew wrote:
Lummox JR wrote:
Kozuma3 wrote:
One thing that's been on my list awhile is a setting that allows only friends to page you, and that code is pretty much all in place except for the site part, so I may get to it quite soon.

:(

Why the frowny face? All this does is give people who want to be left alone the option to have just that. The default setting will be the way things are now.

He's just sad it's gonna make him realize nobody has him on their friend list.

OHHHHHHH. OHHHHHHHH. WORLDSTAR. OHHHHHHH. REKT ON WORLDSTAR. OHHHHH.
In response to Kumorii
Kumorii wrote:
OHHHHHHH. OHHHHHHHH. WORLDSTAR

This is what I thought when I first saw it :c

Daaaamn Nadrew, back at it again with the insults
Show me wat u got Nadrew >.>
I'd say ten times more friends than you, but I have more than zero friends.
Lummox only listens to his friends.
Being someone's stalker isn't the same as being their friend, guy. (We should really stop, hilarious or not, this is Announcements.)