Most of this week revolved around 513 stuff as I had more bugs to attend to, but it was kind of an eclectic mix of things from all over the project grabbing my attention. The main issues in 513 were maptext-related, due to some recent changes; suffice it to say 1530's fixes didn't go quite far enough to deal with the maptext bugs that got introduced recently, so the new release had to finish the job. There was also kind of an esoteric thing with savefile.ImportText() that, honestly, wasn't likely to come up again but I'm glad I tackled it.

I was reminded that one of the things I need to look at in earnest for 514 is improving the file delivery queue, because right now it is a queue and that's not always the best way to handle things. Some games (we all know which one) use a ton of resources for their browser controls and use browse_rsc() to deliver them, but that means browse() events have to wait for them to complete. Unfortunately the file transfer system was never planned to scale that far, so the constant ping-pong of messages—usually just the client saying "Thanks, I already have it; next, please!"—ends up being a problem.

Also I decided to do some minor refactoring for the compiler. It was nothing major, and it isn't really even fully finished, but there are a lot of places where vars are changed temporarily that turned out to mix really badly with software exceptions. I'll explain more on the Patreon post where I always post the technical stuff, but anyway it's interesting stuff. It's also frustrating stuff, because I made a mistake that got past me in testing so last night's 513.1531 release had to be redone today as 513.1532. Technically this counts as getting bitten by the Friday curse since I put 1531 up after midnight.

Another interesting development this week was that I started looking into Microsoft's WebView2 API. Essentially, it looks like Microsoft is doing the legwork of the CEF project for me, in a way that's much closer to the current embedded browser implementation in terms of how I'd mesh it with BYOND. This is huge news! It means I might not have to bash my head against the desk quite as much to replace old IE with something newer: in this case, Chromium-powered Edge. The Microsoft API is quite new and very much in flux, so I'm keeping an eye on it for now to see how it progresses, but this is super promising!

Big, big thanks as always to those of you who've helped support BYOND and keep development going: whether by Membership or direct donations, or through the other donation channels. You guys are the best.

My BYONDiversary was this week, and boy is it amazing how the time flies. It's been _{mumble mumble} years and so much has changed, but the great thing is seeing how far the engine has come since the days when I was driving Dan to frustration with my LandWar project. Cheers to Tom and Dan and all the great gurus who've been a part of this adventure. But now, Labor Day is upon us and fall begins the day after (because the autumnal equinox doesn't count). Time to get to work on your fall games and especially get ready for Halloween, but do your teeth a favor and wait to buy bags of undersized candy until the middle of October when cravings overtake guilt.