Keeping the news short again because, well, looks like I'm sick again after not quite completely bouncing back from the last thing. You can blame my wife's coworkers for this one.

But the show must go on, and development has not stopped. I put all my effort this week into two goals: move further on the webclient 512 features, and figure out the image hanging bug. I managed to do both, and after careful review of the code and some minor adjustments to make sure everything was consistent, I think the turf image hang bug is finally a thing of the past.

The image fix is thanks to two users' test cases. For those who wondered why that kept happening, the short answer is that DS used to handle turf images in a very different way, but that different way was also a problem because it caused bugs in numerous situations. The changed system is a bit easier to handle, but the code that kept track of whether an image was in a list already was sort of fragmented and not very robust. Basically, at any given time there was no way to 100% be sure that an image hadn't been put into a linked list already. Making things worse was that the image code for turfs relied on the turfs' lists being rebuilt from scratch now and then when major map changes happened--and that's still a thing. The most recent hang happened because the turf image lists got rebuilt when things were in an inconsistent state.

Images on the client had two variables that were in play: where the image belonged, and where it would belong next. My big-picture fix here was to change the meaning of those variables: where the image IS (what linked list it's in), and where it belongs in the next update. By keeping the where-is-it-now variable consistent, this should completely obviate any chance of the bug recurring. In theory.

Big thanks go out to everyone who's been a part of supporting BYOND. Your contributions mean a lot.

Tonight is the opening ceremony for the 2018 Winter Olympics! Competition has already started, which I always find a bit odd, but they're gonna take a break for some flag waving and torch bearing, and probably some insufferable K-pop. (Just kidding; K-pop will, I'm sure, play a much bigger role in the closing ceremony.) Me, I like the alpine events the best, but I'm down with all the rest. So turn on the TV, and while NBC is bombarding you with fluff instead of actual coverage, you can get inspired to work on some winter sports games of your own--like Free Ski, but not sucky.