We're pleased to announce that the first .NET 7.0 Everest alpha is now available through the core branch! You can install it using Olympus or the in game Everest updater, both options requiring the latest dev build. As some of you might know, Celeste normally runs on .NET Framework - a technology which is not only exclusive to Windows, but is also severely out of date by now. By switching modded Celeste installs over to run on the .NET 7.0, the most recent .NET runtime as of the time of writing, we can not only ensure that Celeste modding stays up-to-date with general C# community, but also gain a lot of other advantages: For players: - full backwards compatibility with mods (if you find an issue, please let us know!) - core-branch Windows installs run as 64 bit instead of 32 bit processes. This means that the 4GB memory limit is no longer present, Celeste can now take advantage of all the RAM in your system! - big performance improvements on all platforms: load times have been reported as being up to halved (first starts may take longer to build the cache), room transition lag spikes are a thing of the past, and you should encounter less slowdowns and stutters in general For modders: - ability to use up-to-date cross-platform tooling to for your mods, including debuggers - access to modern .NET API improvements like e.g. fast Spans - reorg MonoMod is being used instead of the old legacy MonoMod, increasing performance and stability of hooks - full technical consistency across all platforms. Mods made on one platform should now always work on all other platforms out of the box, instead of sometimes encountering API differences / other compatibility issues In the long term, our plan is to make phase out .NET Framework Everest builds and fully switch to .NET Core. This alpha rollout allows you to immediately experience all the benefits, and allows us to collect feedback from the public until the new builds are stable enough to become the default. As such, please report any issues you encounter on the Celeste Discord!