Da 2024 Plan

these past 3 months, though somewhat darkened by illness and unshared personal tragedy, have been some of the best months of corru.works despite everything!! working full time on corru comes naturally, and I'm really glad I took the chance on this.

but wait - didn't I say I could only do this for like 4-6 months last update? aren't we running out of time? yes! sort of!! but don't worry!

financials are looking good for a while! I've been pretty careful, have a pretty low COL, and have also been getting support from various angles. not to mention the ko-fi and new merch store!!

I'm not going to be making elaborate merch drops every month or anything, but it's a good sign of things to come. all said, my current situation is going to let me continue on full-time for quite a while longer - maybe the whole year - especially if some other things go as planned...

you may have noticed that corru.observer has an oddly small footprint on the internet - this is no accident! not once have we ever tried to reach out for coverage or poked content creators, everything is word of mouth right now.

there are various reasons for this, but one of the most prominent is "the experience is inconsistent and has big flaws" - like it or hate it, u know I'm right!! a number of flaws and annoying quirks throughout the site have always been whispering from the corners of my mind in terrifying goblin voices--"you want to share the site? are you forgetting about us? we will KILL the visitors if you do!! EAHAHAHAA!! [HACKING COUGH] [SPIT ON GROUND]"--and it has come time to pick up my Freaking Keyboard and Bludgeon Them.

this is the first opportunity I've really had where I can take some time to look back at the earliest parts and think, "can we do this better?" for so long, I had been racing against my job burnout, but now we can really do things right.

if you've been following a while, you already know what's up: some very important early parts of the site are drastically less engaging than later parts, the stage system has weird camera issues, chrome has that horrible VRAM flickering on some machines, performance is wack on stages sometimes, and don't even get me started on widescreens...

I could go on, not just because I have a lot of gripes with my own project, but because I have a very specific list of them, split into 4 phases with solutions and execution timelines: "CRITICAL", "SHOULD PROBABLY DO", "NICE", and of course, "BONUS"

so since ADD2 dropped, I've nearly completed the first phase (CRITICAL), consisting of reworking the 3D cameras, fighting vram usage with peak madness in the form of on-stage canvases, and more!! it's the most technical and probably least fun, but it has been fun. what are the other phases? they will be a surprise!!

when complete, it's going to be a non-numbered update: not an ADD, not an EP - simply the "Engoodening." the 'engine' will run better, some sequences will be slightly reworked or improved (especially one scene that's always bugged me that I'm redoing entirely), and generally it should be a much better experience. it'll likely take a few weeks longer to wrap up!

I'm being very intentional in not making it into a 'big thing' that eats up more than that because I really want to move onto EP4. but this is really seriously important stuff!! because once I'm done, that'll be the moment that I'm comfortable sending it out to people more intentionally!

the timeline on EP4 is currently hard to place, but I would expect it like early Q3 maybe - depends on how hard it is to implement the structure for my insane plans

if ur looking for hints or more info, sorry, but I'll just say it's time for something new 😈

corru.store turned out awesome as I mentioned earlier, but there's a lack of things people have been asking for - stickers, pins, etc... we'll put up more stuff in time! stickers especially are top of da list!

we also want to work with some artists in the community and commission/buy designs for future drops - it could be pretty cool since there are so many talented artists in the community!

regardless, this isn't a topic I'm going to be exploring more deeply until the Engoodening is out at least - we got bigger fish to fry after all!!