Cryb Forecast: November 2019

Stickers, money and bugs

JeDaYoshi
JeDaYoshi
Nov 8 · 7 min read

September was a crazy month for the Cryb Team. October and November are also some crazy months for all of us while we work on Cryb.

If you haven’t been tuned into the Cryb Discord server lately and/or the Cryb GitHub and you don’t know me — no worries. I am JeDaYoshi, a new member into the Cryb Engineering Team. I do the fun programming part.

I mentioned we haven’t made a Cryb Forecast this month, so now I will take the opportunity to write it. Keep reading to know more about the status of Cryb since it went open source.

Before starting, I’d like to really thank everyone who has stayed with us since the announcement, who have been talking into the #tech-support channel on the Discord server and contributing via guides, support, code, or even financially via our Patreon. We wouldn’t have gone this far without all your support. You all keep us going, and we’re working hard to deliver a good Rabb.it alternative.

Now, let’s go into the details.


It works. And yes, I am not very funny. At all.

Yes, Cryb works since it got released — even with a bunch of bugs persisting since we were in private beta. Only @cryb/web (one of the most parts of Cryb that presents more issues), has got 29 bug issues reported on GitHub, of which 16 are still open. That being said, some of the biggest issues have been fixed already — even though some still persist. Cryb should still work enough for now in some cases, although not most.

As of now, I’d like to do a summary of the issues that might prevent you from enjoying Cryb:

  1. If you’re the room owner, you’d need to drop the control and re-take it or refresh the page for controller to work. Other users in the room are not affected by this.
  2. Audio chokes, mainly depending on the network, or sometimes depending on the computer (although you’d need a bad machine for it to be unusable)
  3. That being said, you need a good network to be able to watch the VM stream properly. A normal speed with a low delay should be okay. This has affected me in development, making it hard to test things properly, living in Venezuela where the network infrastructure is… pretty bad. What you’d see would even get delayed a lot from its current state, as it currently won’t skip frames to it be totally live.
  4. Video might corrupt itself sometimes, too. Do you know those deep fried memes? Your VM will look like that until you refresh the page. I’d like to consider this more than a feature than a bug, but I can’t. (sorry)
  5. Portal (VM) currently only understands the US keyboard layout. You might have issues when using a different layout. (editor note: DVORAK FTW)
  6. Scrolling in the VM doesn’t work in Firefox. Chromium works fine though.
  7. Connecting from two different tabs/devices from the same account can cause issues until you refresh.
  8. Users might randomly show as disconnected until you refresh, which could even cause issues when giving the controller to another room member.
  9. You can’t currently view DRM-protected content, which would affect sites like Netflix, as we use Chromium and we haven’t yet added the components. We’re looking into this.

And when hosting an instance…

  1. You need a good computer/server to host Cryb. This isn’t really an issue, but we can probably reduce the load it causes. Network is also a factor.
  2. You only can run a VM into the same server, or all the rooms will get the same VM, replacing the one that was already running before.

Ignoring those facts, you can host it right now if you have the right knowledge to and use it. You can follow the guides our community has made if you’re unsure what to do, or ask us in the Cryb Discord server in the #tech-support channel.

You could watch polar bears with your friends.

We’ve been reviewing bugs, fixing them, adding new features and reviewing features that our community has contributed via pull requests to our GitHub repositories.

We have also been talking internally about ways to go in order to achieve the best performance and quality from Cryb, and to ensure a good user experience for the most of those who will host and use Cryb instances.

We’re really busy. Most of our team have got to deal with school/university, some with jobs. We had even a whole 2-week hiatus period, where pull requests weren’t even being reviewed and no commits were done. We’re still getting to it and we won’t give up, though.

I am not sure, honestly.

There’s still a lot of things to be done, like polishing our code to ensure it’ll work properly for everyone. We could achieve it if the team was active, and possibly if the community contributed to this more so — but most of us are still busy. If you want to contribute feel free to look at the open issues on GitHub and make pull requests! We’ll review them and merge them in if they work properly.

I hope we won’t take too long in releasing a stable version. We know you’re all waiting for a good Rabb.it alternative that’s stable and easy to use — and we are going to achieve this the best we can.

Even by giving support in the Discord server or contributing guides/scripts you are doing something and it’s appreciated! You can also contribute via pull requests and reporting issues in our GitHub repositories. We’ll keep an eye on them while also doing our part.

There’s also something we started…


Patreon

You can now contribute financially to Cryb development!

We have opened a Patreon page in order to allow our community to contribute financially. You’ll receive access to some exclusive Patreon posts and some extra stuff before everyone else does, while keeping Cryb free, open source with the same features for everyone. You’ll also support the project and our contributors as our income through Patreon will go to those who contribute code to Cryb, based into their contributions per month.

Currently, we have three pledges, the last one which gives you access to a Patreon-only category in our Discord server. We’ll be increasing the rewards as we develop Cryb further, so keep tuned! You can also suggest options and things you would like to receive as a Patreon, and we’ll take them into consideration.

That being said, we have already got some supporters already — thanks for supporting our project! It is really appreciated, and REALLY helps.

We also have another option which will support Cryb…

Cryb Stickers

They are pretty, actually.

You can now buy Cryb Stickers through the Cool Sticker Shop and stick them anywhere you want to. This will also contribute to us! If you are interested in them, you can buy them now.


We are trying our best to keep transparent to everyone at our community and also integrate with them. Your word counts for us, so go talk with us in our Discord server about any questions, suggestions or issues you may have.

As I mentioned previously, I don’t want to keep you waiting. While this is a hobby project since a start, it has become bigger than expected, and we shouldn’t disappoint all the community we’ve built. Patreon supporters are also waiting, and we have got even some people wanting to be partners, but want a stable release first.

We’ll be contacting possible future partners as we progress so we can have running instances when we get to a more stable codebase so everyone in the community can start using Cryb from a hosted instance, without needing to go through the hassle of setting it up. We’ll also be making the process of installing and setting up an instance easier.

For now, you can try setting it up yourself or ask in the #unofficial-sites channel at the Discord server for a room in an instance. While not much people is doing it, you could get one. Feel free to offer them if you can, either way!


Thanks to those who are contributing via code, as we have got some cool stuff in the works, and to those who have contributed financially via our Patreon or through individual donations. For example, I got some donations myself plus my Patreon part, and it keeps me alive into development as I have to live with mobile data while having no income to maintain it. Even to those working on guides, as it makes it easier to setup a Cryb instance for people without too much knowledge into SysAdmin.

And thanks to everyone in the community for being with us, for testing Cryb, and for having fun times with us. We’ll still be here and we’re trying our best to give you the best experience with Cryb. Love you all.

JeDaYoshi

Cryb

Cryb makes it easy to enjoy what you love with your friends

JeDaYoshi

Written by

JeDaYoshi

Developer @ Cryb, also doing random stuff.

Cryb

Cryb

Cryb makes it easy to enjoy what you love with your friends

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