ID:2821852
 
Well, this week did not pan out the way I'd hoped. Too many scheduling conflicts pulled me away from work, so I got way less done than I'd hoped. Next week will be much better.

Monday went pretty well, and that was when I got in some more changes to the new :: operator in 515. Now you can do stuff like myvar = parent_type::myvar + 5, which should compile as a constant. That kind of operation doesn't work with lists or matrices yet, but I'd like to handle that down the road. The uses for this are pretty broad, and I think they'll be helpful for games like SS13 in particular.

In my limited time since then, I've mostly dealt with working on the possibility of a better native library interface for BYOND, because the existing .dll/.so call method comes with some serious drawbacks. In particular, not only do I want to have a new way to call out but a way for the libraries to call back, at least in a limited fashion, so for instance they might be able to get and set vars. I wanted to get that done before committing to a beta release, in case any new instructions needed to be added. It looks, though, like I might be able to do this without new instructions and can proceed to beta without worrying about that. Only one niggling question remains, which I'll ponder over the weekend.

So at this point I have a few minor things to button up, but I want to get 515 into beta, finally, very soon. I think next week is very likely, although I'm gonna have to run some annoying compiler tests first so that's gonna be a time suck.

Huge thanks to all the BYOND Members and donors who've stepped up to support the project and keep this going. I couldn't do any of this without you all.

And now the big question: With fall well and truly underway and a spell of cold weather upon us, will I give in and buy chocolate covered donuts this weekend?
Lummox JR wrote:
In my limited time since then, I've mostly dealt with working on the possibility of a better native library interface for BYOND, because the existing .dll/.so call method comes with some serious drawbacks.

I’d happily contribute to this effort if you ever want some assistance. A proper C API would probably be one of my top 2 feature requests.