The work has commenced on converting over to the new map style. While it was entirely possible to rewire the existing systems to support the new stuff, I went ahead and took this opportunity to clean up the code a bit. The map stuff was certainly the worst thing in the game, I had two different generations of system hot wired to work together. One of those systems had been mangled to work in ways it was never designed for. The numerous changes to maps over the years have taken their toll, especially considering it was rushed to completion so it wasn’t in a great state to start with. I’m not so much throwing away the old code so much as completely restructuring it. It feels great. Like lifting an albatross off my neck. While I’m adding a whole lot of extra work if we ever decide to revert back to the old system, I don’t really care because if this new system doesn’t work out there won’t be enough time to try anything else anyway.

As a result, the process of building the new map style is a little slower than it might otherwise have been. But I think it’ll be playable this month pretty easily. The rework will probably make it much faster to add new things to the map as well.