It seems to be another weird winter so far, but whatever. Things still feel like they're in the "getting past the holidays" phase.

This week I did some solid work fixing bugs for the next 513 maintenance release, but I don't want to jump into that right away so I'll probably put that out next week. A couple of small items are on there that I'm considering getting to. There's also an annoying one that's gonna impact how I handle the renderer, so I'm probably punting on that till 514 is underway; fortunately there's a workaround for the current use case where it comes up.

For 514, I actually ended up throwing in some work over last weekend because I was passionate about an idea. With the concept of color spaces built into 513's color matrix filter, and with color gradients implemented for particles, I wanted to do a few things. First, I felt gradients needed color space handling. Second, I wanted a gradient() proc that users could use to interpolate between colors easily, and make better use of gradients. Third, with this stuff in place it seemed only right to improve color handling in general, so rgb() has been expanded to take a space argument so you can use it for HSV, HSL, and HCY, and there is also now a proc to reverse rgb() and give you a list of components—in the color space you choose.

There's one more item on that list, which is adding color space to animations. I think this is important with the new direction but I also discovered all the helper routines for animations would need revamping, and this includes an exported structure used for filters, so I need to rethink. The last thing I want to do is end up in a situation where a "simple" function ends up with a dozen arguments instead of a few well-structured ones. BYOND used to be lousy with that kind of thing internally, and in some places it still is to some extent.

My plan however is to give 514 a big push of work next week to finish up remaining issues before the beta. This includes a new feature suggestion I think needs to go in now, so I'm putting that at the top of the list. Also world.movement_mode was partially done but left that way, so I need to see where it's at currently and then finish up anything it's missing, then document; fortunately I think other than documentation, all of the version-critical stuff is done and if it has any issues they can shake out in the beta.

Huge thanks to everyone who's supported BYOND recently through Membership or on our other donation platforms. You keep all this work going, and soon you'll see a new major version to reward your contributions.

As we slide into the butt end of January, let's warm ourselves with fun development projects and playing the games we love best. Recently Nadrew has been hosting some old classics, and I'm hearing some scuttlebutt about GIAD 2021, but you'll probably get a full scoop from Within BYOND when the time is right. Don't forget to contact Spevacus if you have any projects you want to show off there, even if you're working on things like icons or libraries; it's not all games. But whatever strikes your interest this winter, do it with gusto, because we need to show 2021 who's boss.