Whew, okay, this one is pretty huge: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.740_Code_Panopticon
The idea of a "panopticon" is that it's a structure where there's absolutely no privacy, and there's perfect observation of everything that happens inside. Dystopian thought, right? Well, in this case, I've been working on constructing a panopticon... for memory leaks. The idea is for myself or modders (whoever has caused the memory leak) to be able to get a few core dumps (you can generate those by just hitting F7 now) and then have an idea of what is leaking, which then makes fixing it much easier.
A rather nasty memory leak bug has been lurking for a few weeks now, and I do think I solved it, to be honest... but before you get too excited, there's at least one new one. Or maybe it's a different flavor of the prior one, but the new one acts different, so I suspect it's new. As I've been constructing my panopticon for bugs, there's been a lot of adjustment required in many areas of the code. I clearly have a few blind spots remaining, so it's not a true panopticon yet, anyway.
That said, the game is playable enough for the beta branch, and there's great stuff going on in here, so with a few caveats please have at it! One of the caveats is that if you change around your selection of mods and/or dlcs that are enabled, right now that can cause a lockup or a bunch of errors or work perfectly, variably. It's on my list.
But what else is new? A number of other folks have been super productive, too:
Tom from discord has offered to help with a "bit" of bugsmashing, after examining the open source parts of the code and noting a few things he could fix. He's then been on a real tear throughout the codebase, just fixing tons of items and resolving lots of tickets. That's super helpful, and I'm incredibly grateful!
Among other things, the Fallen Spire are mostly playable again. They're still missing the ability to switch which fleet is being bolstered, and the modular ships aren't in there yet, but Tom has tested and fixed everything else except for the transciever, which is wicked cool and saves me a ton of time I can put into other things for you guys.
Badger decided the AI needs more mean things it can do to you, so he's working on a Svikari variant that can be friends with the AI instead of you. He also made the planet sidebar way more informative when you've got a crippled flagship, versus being misleadingly stuck at one health tick.
Zeus is back in the saddle with a number of balance changes, plus a number of not-listed-yet really cool things for DLC3. One of them involves a gravity well full of orbiting guard posts, which is... just plain awesome.
Daniexpert fixed up the Lost Spire Frigates to "Roam if Instructed" by default, which was a satisfying venture into code for yet another modder/volunteer.
For those with DLC3 early keys, Badger also majorly reworked the Necromancer, and they're ready for some serious testing. Right now it's just the Necromancer helper, so you need to add them as a secondary faction to your main empire and then hit F4 to swap to them. The solo-focused necromancer empire will be coming before too long, and Puffin had some great ideas on that which I'm excited to try out.
I still have a number of code things to fix up in the wake of this panopticon business, but I'm hoping that this will be the last truly large refactor of the game. I'm ready to just focus on bugfixes and more features and such, versus rearranging things in painful detail like this. But things are going to be in much better shape for modders for the long haul now, despite the short term bugs, so I'm definitely pleased about that.
Lots more is coming soon.
Enjoy!