Why is 0.5.0 so delayed? (Patreon)

I apologize that this is taking so long but I keep getting sidetracked. At least 0.5.0 will contain some major improvements. I was intending on having the HUD out last week, but then I realized that I had totally forgotten to implement the class selection in the new UI. And while I was at it, I also implemented a soundtrack system and have gone over the first two quests adding soundtracks.

So then I was like "yeah let's just do some quick test plays and get an RC out there for people to test". But while testing I realized just how painfully slow it was in coop. Singleplayer still ran fine. So I decided to log all link messages received in the HUD during a 12 sec battle with a skelcrawler. These are the results of that and my comments.

From the preliminary testing I discovered an inherent flaw in the new XOBJ version what would cause incorrect callbacks from being sent occasionally. I've patched that issue. I also found a legacy event being raised every now and then that I removed. Other than that I also found a lot of code that could be shortened a lot, and I'm also intending on taking a look at the FX system as a whole to see if I can speed it up by using strided lists instead of JSON.

That's why I'm going to get to work on Operation Optimization during the coming days. You can follow my progress here. Once I'm done and have tested those updates, I'm going to release an RC, hopefully with a full 0.5 released a few days after.