The winter solstice is almost upon us, the lights are up, and packages singing songs the Blues Brothers did better have arrived. Wow this month has flown by.

We have a new release today, 513.1504, which should be the last of the year. I'm pleased to say that there were no Unicode-update issues reported this week at all, even from the Russian SS13 server admins and players who usually spot all kinds of stuff. For as long as it took to pull the code changes together before even the first private beta, I'm shocked that the beta process got us to this point so quickly. I mean this is a huge, huge upgrade and the growing pains were expected, so it's nice to see them done with by the end of the year. On the downside, I now have to tackle updating the website for the same reason.

Speaking of the website, I went ahead and snuck the new reference onto the site this week. I'll endeavor to keep that updated even with beta stuff from now on. On top of that, I'm also considering updating the ref to include updated versions of all of the help files. My reasoning here is simple: the old help files are way out of date and hard to keep updated, but making them reference entries will be much easier. That however is a long project in itself.

The CEF project is slowly spinning up again, which is to say I've dealt with a few of the prelims and I'm about ready to try building with the right libraries and .dll files attached. Once I can do that, I can start the long and arduous process of actually hooking in CEF, which also has to include building some kind of stub application for the fact that CEF is multi-process. So that'll be fun. Also I'll want to change the installer so it can download the CEF files instead of including them in every update. I don't expect any of this to go quickly, but I wanted to let you know it's been started. Also, it should be possible to keep it going parallel to other development.

The fundometer got out of the gate a little stronger this month, but it's stalled a bit lately, so if you've appreciated all this development, please show that love back by helping support BYOND as a Member, donor, or via Patreon or SubscribeStar. It's a good way to earn last-minute points for the nice list. And for those who already have or do, I'm deeply grateful.

Also a quick note: If you want to get in on GiaD, you have this weekend to do it! So get your game on!

Today's news is likely to be the last of 2019, because the only day left before the break is Monday and even Monday's looking kind of iffy; anyway who needs news three days after the last news when two of those days were the weekend? But I'll probably keep posting on SubscribeStar twice a week during that time frame, and might post something for the SS13 subreddit somewhere in there. So to everyone I wish you a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year, good health and good cheer and good food. Enjoy your friends and family and have a blessed season.