may devlog + the Platform Interest Fundraiser

hi! we're working on veadotube, sort of!

so what's new?

in terms of development... not much new, actually </3 i had weird symptoms by the start of the month that turned out to be pre-burnout symptoms, so i forcibly removed myself from the puter and took the month to rest and do other stuff. Bella's also going through medication changes which obviously makes things harder. and then last week we caught the flu so yeah we couldn't do much for the program itself.

we've been however keeping up with all new folks in the early access -- welcome everyone!! there's lots of new people experimenting with the full version, giving us a lot of feedback, and we can't wait to start fixing bugs and adding new features again. the plan continues to be more camera nodes, like face/hand tracking stuff :]

as always, people have been already building things with it -- some early access folks shared their creations for us to post them here:

4 dabloons

well since we don't have anything else to add then let's talk money i guess!

first of all we're so very much grateful for everyone joining the early access. we paid our bills last month without having to worry about them, how absurd is that??? genuinely thank you so much <3

people have been asking whether veadotube the full version will be paid. answer is yes! it's a 5 year long project that we're doing full time, and we'll need to continue paying rent after the early access. so, currently expected rundown:

• expect it to be in the twenty usamerican dollars price range. seems to be the sweet spot between not underselling too much compared to other vtubing apps in here, but still keeping it somewhat accessible.
• veadotube labs members and members of the early access, including those who were members at some point but are not anymore, will receive a key for free. obviously!
• itch.io only for now. no plans for Steam, and honestly the plan is to avoid Steam altogether. that platform sucks and the community sucks. we'd also like to keep it as DRM-free as possible.
• still no expected release date, apart from Certainly This Year, 2025. we're hoping it's not gonna be too late into 2025, but with these forced breaks we cannot promise anything so far other than Certainly 2025.
• if you won't pay for it, remember to pirate from reliable sources, and if you're ever torrenting something, use a VPN!
• BRASILEIROS: a gente tá vendo se tem algum jeito de fazer pagamento por pix, pra fazer uma taxa de conversão menor pra cá. oremos.

anyway, speaking of money...

the second (and possibly last) fundraiser

so as long as the early access keeps up as it is, we can say veadotube as a project is fully funded, and this year we'll be ready to release it for Windows and Linux, two platforms that are cheap to develop towards, as any computer can be used for that purpose.

that's mostly good enough, as Windows is the most used computer OS out there, and Linux is a pretty good alternative for when you're done dealing with Microsoft. (we're also looking into Flatpak'ing the Linux version to make it easier to install btw!)

now, macOS... as important of a platform as it is, ever since our old MacBook broke, we've been having issues keeping the macOS version updated. our past fundraiser for the macOS version was to help us rent a cloud macOS machine, just so that we can continue exporting the app, as it's a whole lot cheaper than buying a macOS machine especially here in Brazil. but as it turns out, we cannot use it to fix most of the bugs that have been popping up in both veadotube and veadotube mini (mainly the memory leak one but also ones with hotkeys, microphones, etc), and oh the delay. i cannot type code in that thing it takes years for it to go through the cloud and back to my screen. debugging in that thing is so bad.

on top of that, we continue receiving a lot of mobile port requests. as we've previously stated, we're not gonna work on mobile until we're done with the full version... but hey, we're close to crossing that threshold, i guess! nonetheless, mobile ports are complicated and expensive, including paying for developer accounts, and oh yeah you also need a macOS machine to make apps for iPhones and iPads.

so we thought. hey. if people want those... we should ask them for help to pay for those, right? so hey mobile and macOS users, get ready for the-

the Platform Interest Fundraiser will be streamed on May 4th starting at 4 PM BRT on my Twitch channel, and Bella and i will be your hosts, playing uhh games on the App Store i guess, and chatting with you guys about veadotube and not veadotube!

apart from giving you guys rewards for raising money (including avatars made by Bella for you!), we only have two goals here:

• $500 USD: just enough to get a second-hand (recent, Silicon) Mac mini here in Brazil. this guarantees:
  • a stable, Universal macOS version of veadotube (and veadotube mini), without any memory leaks or microphone bugs.
• $1000 USD: prev + just enough to pay for mobile developer accounts and get a second-hand iPhone. this guarantees:
  • signed macOS version! no more having to fix a "damaged" app when downloading it.
  • future veadotube apps for iOS (with face tracking through the TrueDepth camera), iPad, and Android!

this won't be like the previous fundraiser where we had funny goals after the main one, those were mostly to help us with rent and whatnot (and god did it help). since we're doing better now, we're just gonna ask for help with things that directly cost us money to do!

so again please understand these are not things we need. this is so that you can support us in supporting you, the user of many different computing devices. hence the name of the fundraiser. if we don't reach these goals, it's fine! we'll make do with the macOS port. if things go too wrong, we'll just have to accept it and not release it alongside Windows and Linux -- better than having people pay for a broken app.

what would the mobile port even look like, anyway?

we had a lot of different ideas of what this very desktop-centred program would look like as mobile apps:

• for phones: a more veadotube mini-like app, where you can import images, change the background, and assign regions of the screen and gestures as shortcuts for states. no huge editors like the full version since that doesn't fit a vertical phone screen UI.
• for tablets: port the full version of veadotube as it is, with just a few UI changes to make it better for touch usage. we want artists to be able to create and rig entire avatars without needing access to desktop devices, i think that would be neat.
• for both: a companion app for the desktop versions of veadotube, where you can stream microphone data, face tracking, and state changes to the node system in the full version, or just simple microphone/state stuff in mini.

worth pointing out that there would be no built-in record/stream features. every phone/tablet comes with screen recording tools nowadays so we can just let the user record by themselves and then edit later and whatnot. we're not implementing an entire OBS Studio inside our apps!

if we reach the mobile goal, the plan continues to be to look into these after the full version is done on desktop. so around early 2026? if we don't, we could still look into Android in the future since it doesn't require a bunch of development fees, but no guarantees.

anything else?

that's about it! we hope to see you in the fundraiser. Bella and i are getting our stream setup ready for this and hopefully we can start streaming some more games and development stuff together again.

we also hope to see you in the early access or in the future release! it's been really fun seeing people build stuff with veadotube :]