I started out the week focusing on 513 stuff because I'd like to get a new maintenance release out, and got a few things done there, but various factors led to my attention drifting back to 514. Particles were too far along not to pay them more attention, and I wanted very much to get something to the proof-of-concept stage where I could set some vars and see a result.

Getting to that stage required ripping out some work I'd already done, and in fact I'm not done yet. Not too long ago I had special value types for generator functions and particles both, but now I don't think either of those are needed, and in a lot of ways it greatly simplifies everything. But I also had to figure out how to make generator functions wrap properly in a datum, and the particle datum was its own set of concerns.

I'll go into the technical details of those changes on today's Patreon post, but for now the good news is that I have successfully gotten a test case for particle effects working, and done things like change the gravity of the particle set on the fly. Some things have been less successful, like for instance I noticed sometimes the thread for the particles seems to get "hung up" for a bit which causes particles to stop spawning and may even interrupt map drawing. Yikes. But I'll figure that out as I go along.

I want to thank everyone who's helped contribute to BYOND so far this month as a Member, Patron, or on SubscribeStar. Your support is greatly appreciated and I'm putting in the work to show it.

We're reaching the tipping point of summer where it starts to think about changing over, so enjoy it while (and if) you can! I'm still baffled why the hottest states in the US begin school in August instead of after Labor Day like civilized people, but rest assured when I become a supervillain that will come to an end. The summer-to-fall transition time has always been a fun gaming season for me and it's when I first came to love BYOND, so break out some old classics and get to work on making your own.