So I missed my unannounced self imposed deadline of early August kinda badly. Sometimes you know exactly what you want the finished feature to look like but when it comes down to implementing it you begin to realize that you didn't think of everything initially and it will be a lot harder than you thought. Such is the case far more often than we'd like but there's not much you can do about that besides try and power through it which doesn't always work out well. Regardless, we're committed to getting 79 out ASAP.
Dunk has been busy rewriting a lot of his old code so that I will stopping having to crack the whip at him about #dunkcode 
. As a result we have some simpler, prettier, and faster code for various dunk blocks 
. He's currently working on re implementing the armor stand in a way that it should cause far less problems than before.
I'm currently jumping around a lot from feature to feature tweaking things to various degrees. All the while I'm still working on all things taste, meals, and cooking. Most recently I've rewritten how food is cooked all together into a system that more closely resembles actual cooking (I'm spending way more time on cooking stuff than I ever imagined). As a result all foods now can be cooked to varying degrees. Keeping steak on the fire will start to make it char and turn black which affects the taste as it cooks more and more (But maybe you like your steak burnt to a crisp, yucky). As announced on Twitter, the type of fuel that you're cooking with will also affect the taste of food as well. Even pickling and salting have an effect. Right now my biggest issue going forward is balancing all of the taste numbers and making sure that it all works right.
On that note, recently added is the ability to pickle fruits, vegetables, and meat to extend their shelf life. The bonus from this is similar to salt, providing a 0.5 multiplier to base decay rate. This is multiplicative with salt so Pickled Salted Venison would last 50% longer than Salted Venison does in 78. Along with the pickling comes the ability to store pickled foods in a container full of vinegar to prolong shelf life and drastically reduce environmental(temperature/humidity) related decay.
That leads me to Large Vessels and Barrels. Since I first implemented Pottery many builds ago, I've always intended to add a large version of the Vessel that would operate similarly to Barrels as a storage medium that you didn't generally carry with you. Until now, I wasn't really sure how I wanted to do it. However thanks to my rewrite of the very messy barrels everything became orders of magnitude easier to accomplish. On that note, something that I thought I'd mentioned in a previous SotM but apparently failed to do is that Barrels now operate as either a solid storage medium OR liquid storage. By utilizing the Forge Liquid Dictionary our barrels can hold 10000mB and 5000mB in Large Vessels. Alternatively barrels and large vessels can hold up to 12 or 9 itemstacks respectively.
Because we don't want these to become simple inventory expanders like how small vessels are used we have started to create a system for equippable objects. There is currently no UI as the system will not be completed in 79 and will instead be expanded upon as needed. For now the only slot is for the players back and we'll continue to use the slot as seen in 78. As a result, blocks which we deem to be superheavy will require being equipped on the players back in order to move. Holding any of these items in your inventory will cause a message to appear warning that you are overburdened and you will be unable to move while it remains. With that said, I want to make sure that these mechanics remain easy to use and not more of a burden than necessary for gameplay purposes, so Empty barrels and vessels will not be considered equippable and will not overburden the player. Did I mention that these objects will render on the player's back?
Lest I forget, there is a very simple yet controversial change coming as well. If you don't follow me on twitter then brace yourself. Torches will now burn out and cannot be recovered after 48 hours in game. Having said this, I have to address the the very first question that everyone with a keyboard will want to ask which is, "Is there a permanent light source coming as well?". The answer is both yes and no. Currently there are no plans for a lantern in 79. There are however plans for one later on.
For far too long torches have been an easy escape from the perils of the dark. After a little while, large sections of the map turn into torch forests, and this to me has always been a major flaw with the core MC design. As a result, I want to see what happens when this escape is lost.
To compensate for the increased need for torches, I've made torch lighting 4x faster. Additionally torches can now be created by right clicking a placed torch with a stick in your hand, although this is not as efficient as making them in a firepit. Keep in mind that this torch change can be toggled in your configs.
Torches now have another very important role to play in your life as well. In B79 charcoal pits are no longer lit from the bottom via firepit but from the top instead by dropping a torch on top of a logpile. After a few seconds, the logpile with catch fire and this will propagate to all other logpiles that are touching. As a result, our charcoal code is extremely simple compared to the past (hooray less bugs!). This finally brings charcoal pits in line with my original vision when I first implemented them in Beta 1.
I'm sure that there is more that I want to put here, but for right now these seem like the most important bits. As you can see 79 is shaping up to be a monster, but hopefully a friendly one. As for a release date, I can certainly say that we are far closer than we were last month. As usual I have a release date in mind which I wont be saying publicly. Here's hoping that we can hit it this time 
Edit: You forgot to plug our twitters! Follow us @TFC_Bioxx and @TFC_Dunk for news, updates and images about development in progress! -Dunk
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