This week I was able to start moving forward on some remaining particle stuff, although I do have a couple of bugs in the works that I'm looking at. The good news is that I'm sure I can deal with the bugs I have test cases for.

The problem of independent particles, as I've been calling them, is looking supremely thorny, and I'm wondering if I shouldn't in fact tackle them in 515 after I've had a chance to overhaul the renderer, which is a major item on my to-do list. However on the other hand it seems like there are simple cases I can handle that should be quite doable if they're not abused, and maybe it's easier to get those done now. (The problem is, I know someone is going to abuse it.) So this actually needs a lot of thought and, well, I knew that going in. It's one of the reasons this got pushed off so long, because it's freaking hard.

Anyway that's going to take more thought, but I might well decide to either forgo independent particles entirely before the next major release or nerf the concept in a way that people will still find useful, hoping to do more with it later. The latter sounds like a better option all around and might be the way I'll go.

Thanks again to everyone who's helped BYOND through Membership or donation, here or on another platform like Patreon or SubscribeStar. For those who don't know, on SubscribeStar I usually do very short-form posts that are kind of like journal entries twice a week, and on Patreon I dig into under-the-hood technical discussions in more depth but make those posts early-access for Patrons. I also post weekly updates on the SS13 subreddit, that are more or less condensed versions of this post but with a story segment.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! Make it count because it all goes by so fast. I'll see about posting some raspberry pics when they ripen up. Speaking of summer, next Sunday is the 4th of July so I'll probably make either a 3- or 4-day weekend of it, depending on how things look. So far this weekend and the week ahead both look pretty sucky, but we'll see how it shakes out. Hopefully the rest of you have it better!