Well, hello there! You really thought It was going to take 3 years to finishg the SpriteMancer's v0.4.0.0 update, but it took a few days less than that!
First of all and jokes aside, I'm really really sorry that it took this long to update. I embarked on a major system rework just before my life went havoc. I became a father and my kid took priority over everything, and I also started working on Tinkerlands which has consumed almost all my time during this time. Despite that, I've never stopped working on SpriteMancer and have ocasionally shared progress on the Discord community. And now It's finally time to share what I've been working on for so long.
The new v0.4.0.0 update completely changes the node system, which now supports other parameters apart from the main texture as node parameters, making the possibilities of the node system pretty much infinite. I approached this design trying to achieve a mix between the previous system and the new one, so It should feel intuitive to use for any current SpriteMancer users, just with more capabilities.
Apart from the node system itself being different, it now features a proper node menu that shows the preview for all nodes, applying the currently inspecting node (or canvas, If no node is being inspected). It also features a search section. All nodes have been migrated from the previous node system, and many more have been added, with more to come in future updates.
There are also many new features that have been developed during these years, like the new 'Vortex' attractor. Or the 'Trail' element that keeps a stack of the texture updates and creates a trail between them.
And much more! There's a lot of bugfixes (and also new bugs to discover, yay!), small changes to improve UX and other misc changes like recovering unsaved projects, or updating some exports to support better standards.
And of course, If you don't like the change (which is understandable, It's a big one) you can always go back to the previous version, or even olders builds by selecting them in the 'Game Versions & Betas' section in Steam.
And that's all for this post. I'll focus on fixing any potential issues that might arise with this update. I've also learned my lesson and won't be tackling major reworks or big features like this update anymore, and will divide it on smaller task so the next update doesn't happen in 2029. And If no bugs appear (yeah, good luck), I'll see you on the next update which will be Bones & Inverse Kinematics.
Thank you all for the patience and for being there after all this time. 
Changed files in this update