I have successfully migrated the GBDS softwallet to use ElectrumX nodes instead of an Insight Explorer API. This has improved performance, reliability, and ultimately makes the game operations more decentralized. On startup, the game will query a set of known master servers (in case any of them are down), and request a list of all connected ElectrumX nodes, then find and use the one with the lowest ping time for operations. One big performance improvement is that it is setup to "subscribe' and receive notifications of new blocks, instead of having to poll the API every second to see if there are new blocks, significantly cutting down on network traffic, server load, and local CPU load.

I have also transitioned the game to Unreal Engine 5.1 (from 5.0), which will bring some very nice performance and graphical improvements, particularly for the foliage (trees) and water reflections. Enabling Nanite (pre-computed dynamic Level-Of-Detail for meshes) helps both in performance and the size of the final released game. The size of the released game is important because itch.io has a 1-GB limit, and I'm already sitting at ~800-MB; I have to be careful what I choose to add to the release at this point (but I am probably overstating the importance of that).

Of course, these are major changes that have caused some bugs to creep in! Bug huntin' time! :)