It would be nice, but in reality, it means holding off making anything new, or useful, for two years, or more. There's no reason that changes can't be reintegrated, if the changes are logged. In fact, most of what I've been doing should be reusable as-is, either way.

It cames down to:

1. New functions, tied into the ZScript bytecode tables.
1a. Drawing related.
1b. System-environment related.
2. Bison/Flex improvements and expansions.
3. Class object->Property additions.

By the time we get 'round to doing some of the things on the list, if there's a cleaner basecode, we'd use that, but there's no valid reason to put what we're doing on hiatus for an indefinite duration, nor does any one of us want to sit down and rewrite all of the enemy, or Link, collision, or weapon handling at present.

FFC improvements, as I mentioned, should in theory be a drop-in replacement for either branch.

In fact, in the process of expanding various components, it is possiblethat they'll be cleaned up. I'd like to make the process of adding ZScript instructions clearer, too.

You also need to keep in mind that the rewrites might fail. There is no way to determine hw long it will take for a 3.x rewrite to be stable, at all, if ever. I was around for the 2.11/2.5 rewrite. It was a period of eight years of darkness, and I eventually gave up feeling that it was vapourware.

A fair amount of what I'm doing, is finishing features that were planned, or intended for 2.5, and left unfinished.

You also need to pay attention to the general lethargy in the userbase. We really have had little to no influx of new users, since 2.50 was released. New releases, even if imperfect, revitalise the community, by drawing interest of new users, and by reigniting interest of present users; as they try to top one-another in 'showing off' what they can do with the new/updated widgets.

I'm watching every day as users fade out, and no-one replaces them; the general activity tapers off, and interest wanes. In two or three years, with nothing new or exciting to offer, there won't be anyone left to use or appreciate a cleaner codebase. People want features to compete with other tools, and without them, they'll just use other software. Once that happens, good luck getting them back.