A New Year, and a New Chapter for CaVE

As most should know now, CaVE v1.5 is public again! Though I have still kept the Beta label. I am not sure when I will drop that.

The future is uncertain for the project. It's hard to say how many supporters will drop, or how many potential new supporters I would have otherwise would decide to not support. Support is what keeps me motivated.

But of course, I have done everything I can to give users a good reason to support! So for now I just have to hope that is enough.

---

Going forward, of course I will address any issues that crop up. I doubt I have fixed everything. But I will soon start work on new features.

The first of which is FTP support.

It's incorrect to say "start work" on this, as I have worked on it already. But when I can, I will re-enable the code and give it a thorough look with fresh eyes. Adjust anything I need to. Then try to get the feature in the hands of users.

To be clear, FTP support would function like MTP/SD card syncing. You run a FTP server app (like DBI) on your Switch, and press the Sync Database option in CaVE. The difference is that there is a toggle for using FTP or MTP syncing. And like SDcard/USBMS devices, FTP lacks save management support (this would require a app like DBI to expose save NAND via FTP... and DBI is unlikely to see this now with the war the author has against English speaking users).

The feature that will need much more work is, the improved preset database access. Currently, preset databases exist as packages that contain a json and maybe images. This new feature aims to directly link with Google Sheets/Drive API's, and allow both importing from sheets/drive folders, and exporting. This means that users could get more up-to-date metadata/images, and certain users (having export access would be more restricted) would be easily able to make and post there metadata/image updates for immediate use.

The preset database feature is nice. And I'm sure people appreciate it. But... not many contribute to it. And thus, it and CaVE suffers. In the past, I have taken steps to try and encourage people to contribute. I debuted the feature by leading by example and doing the ENTIRE SNES US catalog. That wasn't enough, so I figured people were being lazy and finding excuses like "I don't want to look up Product ID's". So... I went and added product ID's and game titles for as many games for all the platforms that I could. That has not been enough. So... again, taking this as an issue that I need to find a way of addressing... I figure it needs to be EVEN MORE SIMPLE for users to contribute.

Added a game to your personal database, and customized the metadata and found proper images? Click a button to export and share with everyone!

The only real hurdle is... of course I cant allow everyone upload access to a drive folder or sheets. Trolls exist, and they love to target my community resources. So access is granted via me bestowing that privilege. Which means... I'll have to come up with a policy and system on who I grant access too. I don't want it to be too restrictive. Like only a few long timer supporters. But I don't want it to be a wide open door either.