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Keeping it short this week, because things are a bit in flux, but overall I'm happy with the direction things are headed.

Forward progress on 515 has picked up this week, with more under-the-hood work on savefile compatibility and things like that, although I struggled for a while with the default vars and ended up adding code and ripping it out multiple times. So maybe not so much forward progress as circular progress, but it's progress.

I spent an unhealthy amount of time investigating shader-friendly noise hashes that I could use for a potentially interesting new filter or family of filters, but that was an uncomfortable rabbit hole that mostly led me to the conclusion that man, I really wish I could revamp the rendering pipeline. I had talked about doing that for 515 but it's a huge project and I'm still not sure how to proceed, except that I think 515 will streamline some things that might make that easier. Ultimately I want to be able to modernize that not only for performance but to use newer features, which will require moving away from a fixed-function pipeline. But none of that is easy. For now if I proceed with noise filters I'll have to use some simpler hashes, I think.

Anyway we're very nearly at last call for new features in 515. A few of the items that were high on my list involved major rendering changes I don't think I can tackle yet, but at least there's a lot of good stuff to work with here and hopefully I can plot a path to a better rendering pipeline sooner rather than later.

Thanks everyone who's helped support BYOND and push these new features forward, whether through Membership or our other donation channels.

February has always been kind of a "meh" month for anything but playing games and making them, so use this time to get creative and make something fun happen. Me, I'm gonna make up some chicken Parm meatballs that I haven't made in a while, and settle in hard. Whatever you do, have fun with it. I'll see you next week.