With March behind us, naturally snow is back in the forecast. Hopefully it won't be with us long, and for us BYONDers here in North America hopefully we'll all have a great spring. And what better way to celebrate spring, besides cooking out, than to stay indoors and create a killer Metroidvania action strategy RPG?

This was a week of mainly webclient work, and today's release of 510.1336 should shore up even more on that front. In particular, I found another source of FPS woes, and there was a problem with the map glide not syncing up to the player mob.

I think we're getting super close to finalizing 510, which means 511 is on the horizon--after, likely, a short break to deal with some web stuff. During that time, hopefully I can come up with some ideas for features I've talked about before, like the potential for filters like blur, drop shadow, alpha masking, etc. I think the potential for some really cool stuff is there; it's just a matter of pulling it all together in a way that makes syntactical sense.

Another feature I'm looking at for 511 is true multithreading. Previously this was considered unworkable, but I've figured out a way to sync things up that shouldn't have the headaches our last foray into multithreading did. Realistically, this will probably roll out slowly over multiple releases as it gets applied to more and more things, with the first phase covering access to global and datum vars. I feel pretty good about this working out. Lots of games should benefit from this.

For another challenge, I'm looking at creating a true Mac port for the entire suite, including Dream Seeker. Of course this isn't without its share of difficulties, but the webclient has actually shown me a path forward that wasn't possible before. On the other hand, I don't own a Mac yet, but that's nothing a kidney won't pay for. Luckily, there are tools that should make this transition a lot easier than it was when the idea of a Mac port first came up. So Mac users, rejoice!

Since spring is here more or less, it's time to get your grill on and get your game on too. Make something great, and char some meat to celebrate. Higoten's always looking for good content to throw into his Within BYOND series, and the "Show me what you got" thread is an ongoing fountain of awesome. Get in there and participate with something of your very own!