Project update, 4 years in

Hey everyone! Wanted to do a quick update (and a first Patreon post -- long overdue!) on the state of the project, especially since we've had a ton of new people joining (welcome all!). We also wanted to discuss some of the next steps for Kaeru.

This is a cross-post from our Discord news channel, so if you've already seen that, you can skip this post if you like.

Firstly, we want to thank every one of you for your support over the years, whether through using our labours of love, financial support to cover our costs, or spreading the word so that others can enjoy the stuff we make too:)

I've said this before but it is genuinely staggering to see how far we've come since 2016, when a bunch of weird nerds came together and decided to make a Flipnote server. Speaking of which...

Kaeru Gallery

Work is nearing completion on the next update to Kaeru Gallery, which will bring with it a minor UI refresh, access to the Kaeru Gallery DSi Library on 3DS, improved search features powered by a new tags system, a full rewrite bringing further improvements to overall service stability, and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience. This will be released to everyone as soon as it is ready - stay tuned for more info :)

The next major update to Kaeru Gallery after this is planned to include social sharing functionality (e.g YouTube, Twitter, Instagram; this has been in the pipeline for a long time and thanks to your support, we finally have the resources to do this at scale!), with enhanced functionality for patrons, as well as the ability to manage & upload your Flipnotes on the web, and finally, to link multiple consoles to one profile - these functions will all be enabled by the introduction of Kaeru Accounts. We hope to share more about this in the coming weeks/months.

Kaeru WFC

We know it can be a hassle having to switch out your DNS settings to switch between different revival services; e.g, if you want to use Sudomemo but also play on Wiimmfi, or if you prefer to use AltWFC in some games instead.

Additionally, we understand some people have issues connecting to custom DNS servers on their networks.

We're working on solutions to greatly enhance your experience in both situations, and look forwards to sharing these with you, too :)

Kaerutomo

It's amazing to see so many of you enjoying Kaerutomo, and all of the creations you've been sharing -- we hope to continue expanding the feature set of Kaerutomo, and to improve overall service stabilty, especially on iOS devices.

We're working on bringing back Answer Central to the public version of Kaerutomo once our new moderation panel is finished; thank you for your patience.

Since it's hard for us to debug every single area of the app ourselves, and even then there might be something we miss, we're looking into the possibility of including simple crash reporting functions in a future version of the Kaerutomo tweak on iOS; stay tuned for more info on this.

Kaeru Duel

The response to Kaeru Duel has been absolutely mindblowing!

Thank all of you so much.

Looking forward, one of the big priorities is to improve stability of matchmaking. This is no easy task (there's a reason that games seem to struggle getting it right!)

For now, the main mode is Randomizer, which sees each player recieving a unique set of figures each time.

This won't remain the main mode forever, as we do plan to add deck creation.

Once that is done, randomizer will be a side mode, which will be playable through room matches.

We have some plans that we'll share as time goes on, so stay tuned for future updates!

Patreon

We've been utterly blown away by how many of you have pledged so far, and it brings us all great joy that we now have not just financial stability to ensure the project can continue on into the future as-is, but also room to expand and grow so that we can deliver more exciting features and add more capacity so that everyone can enjoy our work without slowdowns. Thank you all so much, it's hard to put into words how much it means to us to know that so many of you now enjoy our hard work <3

A few months ago, we said that we were planning to switch from offering new donors 'lifetime' access to our existing beta programs as a thank-you for one time donations, to a monthly Patreon model. Whilst the one-time model was useful when we first went with it, it led to a rather unpredictable income stream, which meant we didn't have the stability and confidence we needed to be sure that we could expand.

We've decided to go forwards on this basis for new offerings, such as Kaeru Duel, because we're planning to invest in more server capacity among other things - particularly important given the recent surge in popularity :)

We also have some features planned for Kaeru Gallery which would incur specific extra costs to provide, in the form of API quota, storage and/or cloud compute hours. These will scale linearly with usage, so it would be simply unsustainable to offer those on a perpetual basis.

However, in recognition of the general maturity and success of the Kaerutomo Beta program, we've decided to continue offering 'lifetime' Kaerutomo Beta access on the same terms as before to keep it as accessible to as many people as possible, and to widen the pool of beta testers here.

(As ever, please note that due to the nature of the project and in case some sort of dramatic event or anything else of our control happens, we can make no warranties or guarantees in relation to our services and reserve the right to stop or vary provision of them for any reason whatsoever. With that said, the only instance in which we expect to ever revoke this status on an individual basis is in cases where the user in question is permanently banned from our services.)

On Sunday 30th October, four years after the initial launch of the team's first project, Kaeru Gallery (then simply known as 'Project Kaeru') we're planning to sunset the 'Early Supporter' status for new patrons -- however, anyone who has ever donated at least $5 in total up until that cut off date (e.g existing Patrons and PayPal donors) will be able to retain this status and associated benefits indefinitely, as well as anyone who received the currently-purple 'Donators and Contributors' role / status for other contributions to the project.

We're looking at ways we can reward those of you who put your faith in us to deliver -- more info about this will come in due course, so watch this space, and thank you!

Some people have been asking for a way to donate to the people in Kaeru Team, rather than just towards expenses; given our current financial situation after 4 years of hard work, and how current global events have impacted us all, we feel the time is right to rethink our model. More details should be announced in the coming week - we're still running some calculations and exploring the best options.