Thanks you! and status update

Hi Everyone!

First let me say thanks to all of my current patrons for their support. It's very much appreciated.

Most of you have probably seen the link already when I posted it on discord, but here is the current WIP version of the "What's New" document for the next release:

https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit/blob/4216b5d10ee53eb123ab8c3157a977a0fe77576b/whatsnew.md

The main point that's still missing from it are ModGroups.

Work on initial Fallout 76 support has slightly distracted me from finishing the What's New document, though I expect to finish that in the next 2 days and then be able to put out version 3.3.0 BETA on GitHub.

Work on the FO76 definitions is going well, with basic support for the new record types introduced in 76 having been completed. But there is a very long way ahead still, updating the record definitions of the 140 or so record types inherited from FO4 to account for changes in FO76.

With the release of the beta, outside of working on improving the FO76 record definitions (which is relatively isolated from the rest of the program), future work will be limited to fixing reported bugs.

My plan is to spend about 2 weeks on confirming the stability of 3.3.x BETA, before releasing it as 4.0 on NexusMods.

Once 4.0 is released, I'll be starting work on 4.1

But the exact plans for what will be done in 4.1 are still open and are highly dependent on the level of support this Patreon will attract. 

Many of my future plans require the refactoring and modularisation of the current 20k LOC (lines of code) main form as a first step.

This will take a significant amount of time, and while this code is in the process of transformation, little else can be done on the project.

If I were to work on this strictly in my spare time, which would amount to a couple of hours a week, it would probably take close to a year, during which little other development work could take place.

After 4.0 is released, I'll no longer be able to shoulder to cost of fulltime work on xEdit (which has accumulated to many 1000s of $ from working on xEdit instead of my usual paid work) myself.

Current pledges are enough to finance about 3h of guaranteed xEdit work per month. So the future of xEdit depends directly on being able to find more people to support ongoing development.

Thanks again to all my current patrons!

ElminsterAU