It's hard to believe a third of a year has already passed since VNgen first released in Early Access. With the advent of GameMaker Studio 2 requiring some extra strategizing for the release of version 1.0, the EA period has definitely gone on longer than originally intended, but not unproductively. VNgen has grown by leaps and bounds both internally and externally such that its code is barely recognizable as the same product that shipped in late 2017. As the march towards 1.0 continues (and indeed is nearly drawing to a close), each component of the underlying engine is being re-evaluated. Why does X feature exist, or why doesn't it? How does it work, and how can it be standardized to work like everything else (or vice versa)? Does it feel natural to use? All of these are important questions, and only scratch the surface of tests a new change must pass to determine whether it fits the image and scope of VNgen 1.0. But there's also another question that's often more fu...

As the saying goes, premature optimization is the root of all evil . On the other hand, this means there are some necessary evils in programming before optimization can happen. Up until recently, that's where VNgen has been, but now with 1.0 fast approaching it's my job to root out those evils. In other words, it's optimization time. But don't let that word conjure up false impressions of fanboy wars arguing over whether Game X is poorly-optimized or their platform of choice is just inferior. Optimization is... well, a lot of unexciting humdrum much of the time. But it also has a habit of producing new tools you can use, and with the latest update to VNgen, there are several—and you can use them right now! Better Trigonometry The first of these tools has actually existed for a while, and if you have the latest version of VNgen, you already have access to part of it. The final product is called Trigger (get it?) and is a spin-off from VNgen's improved trigonometry ...