So many fixes, odds and ends

• Exclude dungeon files from AAMP merger
• Fix endian conversion for BYML actor params
• Minor UI fixes
• Fix Rust-end panics and errors
• Rework "no hard links" and improve merged linking/export process (also fixing options issues)
• Fix portable mode
• Improve cross-language/cross-region text handling
• Update PyQt dependencies on Linux

Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, and the surrender of the claim that science is true. We may be living nearer than we suppose to the end of the Scientific Age.
― C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Etc, etc

• Add workaround for message packs with junk files (I'm looking at you, Zelda's Ballad)
• Fix bad variable in Dungeon BFRES RSTB calc
• Good riddance, GameBanana tab
• Revert pythonnet version for Python < 3.9

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence, or our contempt. The reason why Coleridge agreed with the tourist who called the cataract sublime and disagreed with the one who called it pretty was of course that he believed inanimate nature to be such that certain responses could be more ‘just’ or ‘ordinate’ or ‘appropriate’ to it than others. And he believed (correctly) that the tourists thought the same. The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions. But for this claim there would be nothing to agree or disagree about. To disagree with This is pretty if those words simply described the lady’s feelings, would be absurd: if she had said I feel sick Coleridge would hardly have replied No; I feel quite well. When Shelley, having compared the human sensibility to an Aeolian lyre, goes on to add that it differs from a lyre in having a power of ‘internal adjustment’ whereby it can ‘accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them’, he is assuming the same belief. ‘Can you be righteous’, asks Traherne, ‘unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.’ St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics: but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful. In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.’
― C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Assorted fixes

• Improve Rust extension error handling
• RSTB bump for DLC shrine models (Closes #346)
• Fixes language select for multi-platform settings (Closes #221)
• Add workaround for null settings values

Actorinfo crash fix

Fixes crashes caused by null values in actorinfo logs. Should close #344, #341.

“You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Infinite hang fix

• Fixes hang during pack merger in some odd cases

Smoothing stuff

• Adds cross-region text diffing where possible
• Minor, random improvements which might fix random bugs

MOAR 3.9 hotfixes

• Fix actorinfo hang
• Fix quests sort

3.9 hotfixes

• Fixes 0-byte SARC issues
• Fixes output dir problems
• Fixes merged actor info location

Final major release: New Rust extension module, major performance boost

The primary changes: a handful of mergers have been reimplemented as Rust extension modules, greatly enhancing their performance. The pack merger is especially improved (good for large projects like Second Wind). It also reworks how the final merged pack is exported, offering a significant boost in the final merging step for many possible system configurations.

One or two other minor changes/fixes, including an encoding fix the dreaded One Sec hang.

3.9 will be the last major BCML release. There will be no more new features or breaking changes, only bug fixes and such for a little while.

---

In parting, I am asking you all to read this book:

Hotfix for 3.8.5

Includes several fixes for the release from yesterday

I'm not good with words, so have a song instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnT8ra9a2eI

What's Changed

• Cast add (oead.byml.Hash) to dict by @ArchLeaders in #319
  • This is overridden by the next part, but I'm leaving it in here because I appreciate Arch's contribution
• quests.py: Fix oead.byml.Hash pop() reference by @GingerAvalanche in #321
• quests.py: Fix oead.byml.Array index() reference by @GingerAvalanche in #324
• requirements.txt: Update pywebview dependency by @GingerAvalanche in #325

Full Changelog: v3.8.5...v3.8.6