a first attempt at a monthly devlog

hello! we're working on veadotube.

i don't really like writing updates that are just "we're working on it" when i already said that the last time, but people seem to think that the project is dead if i don't do so, which makes complete sense, actually. so i decided i would try and post a "we're working on it" devlog every month, and also take the opportunity to write a bit more about development! and probably answer a few common questions.

what's going on with the lab?

we went through some of the replies on the lab form! we haven't let anyone in yet, however. at the time i thought i'd be able to provide a new test build for mini 1.5 in a short time (which is why we announced it at the time), but i forgot to consider that i'm very slow with development AHSDAHDA so essentially i'm waiting until i have something to show. sorry for the delay! development is hard.

how's development?

since the closure of the patreon and the release of mini 1.4, i've been rewriting a lot of the core code, to make sure things are ready for the full version, and that they're more stable for mini as well. the main changes here are:

•  better media input! less microphone bugs, more things you can do with it, integration with voice detectors and whatnot so that noise can be filtered, etc. for the full version, webcam stuff!
• nodes! the entire backend of veadotube is now powered by a node graph of inputs and microphones and states and whatnot, which are invisible to mini 1.5 but will be fully customisable in the full version.
• interprocess communication! aka, the thing that will let other apps control veadotube. aka, stream deck support!

most of these are ready, and what's left for mini 1.5 is essentially putting everything together with a new UI. that's what's taking most of the time, actually, because UI design is hard, UI programming is harder! but speaking of new UI, here are a few things you should expect from that:

• more menus! more options for resolution, frame rate, window title, recent files, etc.
• even more menus! we're redoing the avatar editor menu (the top bar) and you'll be able to fine tune animations, combine them, etc. the state list should also let you reorder states, rename states, all that!
• that's it, actually. it's just a bunch of new menus. i'm so tired of making menus please help me.

i can't give an exact timeframe for mini 1.5 (especially with those Unity news that you probably heard of, making everything harder for everyone) but i'm hopeful that i can have a few test builds ready for the lab by the end of the year. genuinely sorry for the delay here, folks. wish i had something better to say other than "i work slow".

if you're ever curious about the more technical side of veado (and doesn't mind irrelevant updates on the project or anything else), i got a personal dev blog! the idea is to try and write an itch.io devlog every month to gather most of the important stuff, and remind people that i'm working on it, actually.

ok, what about those Unity news?

so Unity is essentially gonna charge for each install of an unity app (how they're doing that is pretty vague). there are a few conditions to that, like earning a certain amount first, and having a certain amount of downloads, etc etc. this makes me very afraid! in general that's not something that affects mini, and i'm not expecting the full version to reach the threshold (even though i could use the money tbh), but it's still... not good?

i'm hopeful that they're gonna roll back on that, because literally everyone hated it. but it made me realise how much of a bad idea it is to continue using Unity for veado in the long-term. i'm already using Godot for other stuff, and veado is my last Unity project. but with the way things are, i'm studying the possibility of taking the Unity runtime out of the project -- e.g. taking all the C# code to Visual Studio and building it with SDL or something like that. of course, that's a lot of porting work, and actually not something i wanna do right now (i'm already doing UI!!!) but i suppose it doesn't hurt to start considering all that.

how are you guys doing?

we're... mostly ok! we're still battling debt, bella has been away from the project for a while for medical reasons (which is why there aren't any bella updates in here!) and i'm taking my time with programming both veado and whatever contract job i'm working on at the moment. it was our cat's birthday recently and we made special birthday food for her. the future looks bright!