ID:2430760
 
This week I've again worked on some 512 bug reports and have some fixes in the pipeline, though I'm waiting to see if anything pans out on another report of an intermittent issue before doing a new release.

I've also, of course, been on new feature work, though slightly interrupted by more dentistry and other side concerns. I decided to change the new proc measuretext() to client.MeasureText() after all, because it makes more sense to me in hindsight, and I've done some work to shore up some of the big-deal stuff for the Unicode project, with text handling still to come.

The other day I was working on stuff and had a good idea for 513, or really it was more of an idea I already had but this time I thought up some technical details I'd need to make it work, and this idea is rendering targets. That is, any atom could specify a render_target and/or render_source, and that would be a named "slate" (a temporary drawing surface) that gets reused. I'm also wondering if I should allow render_plane for the same thing, or just allow planes outside of the current -100 to 100 limit to be used this way. This would allow you to group planes underneath each other for more interesting visual effects, and should pave the way for shadowcasting should I add a filter for that in the future. I'll talk about the ramifications and implementation more on the Patreon post today.

The reason I thought of doing something with render targets is that one of the things that has long been requested, that works better as a query to a client than trying to make the server do it, is GetFlatIcon() to convert a whole Appearance to a single icon. I've had some partial code to help with this on the server for a while, but I need to add the rendering hooks to make it actually happen. I know a number of games have been dying for this, so they're gonna get it.

And to make things easier on SS13, I think the hooks that handle \ref values in the browser window, to convert those to icons, should also be made to handle Appearances.

I'm brimming with gratitude for all of you who supported BYOND through your Memberships, donations, and on Patreon or SubscribeStar last month. Thanks for your help keeping things going. I'm working on the new features that will make your games and the other games you love even better.
"and should pave the way for shadowcasting should I add a filter for that in the future."

Yes please!
Are there any other examples you can provide for this rendering idea? It definitely sounds interesting, I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around it.
For one thing you'd be able to take any image on the screen (any icon or combined icon via KEEP_TOGETHER) and repeat it, allowing for possible effects like, for instance, drawing low-alpha copies of an icon at slight offsets so it looks like it's shaking.
O.o